“Well, I claim I’m a Sophomore, and I would be if I had a fair show. I thought I had a right to help haze.” Sam was whining now, like all cowards when found out. His trick, which he had formed with the aid of Nick, had failed. The two had planned to get Jack and Tom off alone, during the general excitement over the hazing, and thrash them.
“You’re not a Soph, and you can’t do any hazing,” declared Wendell decidedly. “You ought to be hazed yourself, and you would be, only you got yours last year. Come along now, Fairfield, and take what’s coming to you.”
“All right,” agreed Tom good-naturedly. He was satisfied with what he had done to Sam. The crowd of Sophomores was now so large that there was no chance for our hero and his chum to escape.
“Take your medicine, Fairfield,” advised Bruce with a laugh. “It won’t be very bad.”
“All right,” said Tom again, and he and Jack were led back to their luckless mates, the little group of Seniors following.
The hazing was not very severe. The Freshmen were made to wade in the river up to their knees, and then, with coats turned inside out, forced to dance in a ring, while the Sophomores laughed their delight, and played mouth organs. Some few were tossed in blankets, and much horse play was indulged in. But the discovery of Heller’s trick rather discomfited the second year lads, and they felt that there was a little blight on their class. Otherwise the hazing might have been more severe.
“Now then, form in line, and give three cheers for the Sophs, and you can go home to your beds,” declared Wendell. “Only remember, every Freshman must wear his cap backwards every time he comes on the campus, for the next two weeks, and salute every Sophomore he meets, under penalty of being hazed over again. Remember! Now for the cheers!”
They were given, and the hazing was over. No one had been much annoyed by it, save perhaps Sam Heller.
“It didn’t work,” he grumbled to Nick, later that night. “We had a fight, though.”
“Did you lick him?” asked Nick, who had been separated from his crony during the fracas with Tom.