“I never did!” declared the Virginian.
“Then you missed a lot of fun,” asserted Merry.
The sophomores had gathered in a body on the walk, blocking the advance of the freshmen. The two classes came together with a fearful crush. The men clung to each other, and the crowding was something awful. Men who were in the middle were unable to breathe, and their eyes bulged from their heads. The upper classmen looked on in placid contemplation of the scene. They had witnessed such things before, and had taken part in similar rushes.
But it was the unexpected that happened. The sophomores, smarting over their treatment of a short time before, had gathered in a body to turn the tables on the freshmen. But the freshmen held the sidewalk, although a few men were picked off on the outside, and the sophomores were fairly crowded out and swept away. It was a fair-and-square victory for the freshmen. Again and again the sophomores returned to the attack, but they were unable to resist the freshmen that night.
“Well, that’s like old times!” chuckled Frank. “It makes me feel just like taking a hand, and the sophs seem to need assistance.”
“They do,” grunted Browning. “They need it bad. The freshmen will own the campus after this. That fellow Ready will be cock of the walk.”
It was some time later, while Frank and his friends still lingered, discussing the rush, that Jack Ready and some chums came up. They were in time to hear Rattleton tell about the matter in which the sophs had walked all over the freshmen the second year of Merriwell’s college life.
Ready laughed.
“It would be a good thing for the sophomores if they had somebody like Merriwell to help ’em out now,” he observed.
“Well, it would be a bad thing for the freshmen if they had,” flung back Rattleton.