THE BULLY-KILLER
Salmon's House, to which division of Deepwater College Jack Symonds and his study-mates belonged, was famous for its exclusive set of youngsters—a band who had clubbed together for their own advancement, and the confusion of everybody else, and had named themselves the Crees. It amounted in the long run to a sort of secret society; it had its president, but no one outside its numbers knew who he was. It was never known for certain who the members were, either; and that gave a delightful uncertainty to everything connected with it.
It so happened that both Jack and his friend Billy Faraday were members. With the others, they were notified that on a certain afternoon a special meeting would be held. They knew well enough the object of the meeting. Dick Richard, the founder of the Crees, and the society's first president, had left at the end of the previous term, and there would be some hot contention for his position.
"Do you mean to go for the job, Jack?" asked Billy, as they strolled across the fields to the appointed spot—a secluded position in the rear of a waste of scrub-land.
"Why not? It'd give me a bit of a pull, and there's no end of fun to be got out of it," returned Jack, in his practical manner. "I don't see anyone to give me much of a run for it."
"Except Cummles."
"Except Cummy, of course. And he can't do anything but bluster and kick up a dickens of a row. What sort of a time would we have under him?"
"No sort of a time at all. The man's got no initiative."
"No—but any amount of push and brute strength!" Jack laughed.
When they arrived at Three Skull Hollow—an entirely fanciful name bestowed upon it by the Crees—they discovered that most of the Crees were already assembled, and the loud voice of Les Cummles was dominating the assembly.