“I’ll try. If you see a chance, sail in and lick him.”
“I will,” promised Nick, but Sam’s chance came sooner than he expected, or, rather, he made the opportunity.
There is a certain fine powder, a sort of a pepper-snuff so fine that it can not be seen floating about, yet which, if scattered about a room, will irritate the eyes, nose and throat in a marked degree. Sam bought some of this powder, and making it up into a small paper parcel, he watched his chance to slip it into Tom’s handkerchief pocket.
“He’ll pull it out in class,” Sam explained to Nick, “and set the whole room to sneezing. I’ll try and have him do it in Latin recitation, and Skeel won’t do a thing to him, for Tom sits in the front row, and the prof. will see him.”
“Suppose Fairfield catches you?”
“I’ll take care that he doesn’t,” declared Sam, and he was lucky enough to bring about his cowardly trick undetected. As the students went into the Latin class, presided over by Professor Skeel, Sam slipped the sneezing powder into Tom’s pocket, on top of his handkerchief. It was quickly done, and, in the press, our hero never noticed it. Then Sam quickly joined one of his classmates, with whom he was more or less thick, to prevent detection.
The recitation was about half over, and Tom, who had been called on, had made a failure, for a very hard question, and one he had never dreamed would be brought up in class, was asked him.
“Remain after the session, and write me out fifty lines of Cæsar,” ordered the mean instructor. Tom shut his laps grimly. A little later he pulled out his handkerchief, and, as might have been expected, the powder flew out, scattering from the paper. A few moments later a boy began to sneeze, and soon the whole room was doing it—even the professor.
Now Professor Skeel was no simpleton, if he was mean, and he at once detected the irritating powder. He realized at once that some one had done it for a trick, and he had seen the paper fall from Tom’s pocket, as the stuff scattered.
“Fairfield!” he exclaimed angrily, “did you scatter that powder?”