“Perhaps so,” confessed the freshman; “but when I came to think it over, when I remembered how it felt when I drove the knife into your ‘monster,’ I knew I had not stabbed anybody. I knew you were soaking me, and I got back.”
“Fellows,” said Frank, “he’s turned the tables on us, and we can’t squeak out of it. All we can do is grin and bear it.”
“I’ll bear it,” said Browning; “but I’ll be blowed if I’ll grin!”
Frank offered Ready his hand.
“It may be a case of nerve,” he said, “but I wish you’d take it, old man. You may say what you like about this affair, I’ll always swear you are a man of nerve.”
Jack accepted Merry’s hand, and then Frank called the others up.
“Shake hands with a fellow who was clever enough to fool us all at our own game,” he said.
They did not refuse.
“Say,” said Ned Noon, “if you’ll keep still about it, Ready, we’ll blow you off to a great spread.”
Jack shook his head.