'Think!' replied the monitor with wonderful dignity, 'why, that you lower school fellows have been getting out of your dormitories and playing tunes upon combs, jew's-harps, and other instruments of music, when you ought to have been asleep, with a lump of yellow soap between your jaws to keep you quiet.'
'Oh, stow that,' replied Snap, 'fellows don't play such tunes as the Head has heard for the last week on jew's-harps and combs. Either those fellows who belong to the "concert lot" had a hand in it, or there is something fishy about it. I say, Frank, be a good chap and tell us, are the Sixth in it?'
'The Sixth in it, I should think not,' replied Winthrop; 'but I can't answer for all the monitors, even if I wanted to.'
Snap winked at Towzer at this rather cautious denial, remarking:
'Well, it is a good thing the ghost has not forgotten his music. He has been here every year since Fernhall was a school.'
'Yes,' broke in Billy, lifting his snub nose from the depths of an empty coffee-cup, 'and to-night is the night of the Ninth; the night, you know, on which it walks round the Nix's garden and across the lawn.'
'Does it?' quoth Frank. 'Well, if it is wise, it won't walk across that lawn to-night. If it does, it will get snuff, I can tell you.'
'Why, Major, why should it get "bottled" to-night more than any other night, and who is to "bottle" a ghost?' inquired Snap indignantly.
'Never you mind, young 'un, but you may bet your bottom dollar that if the ghost walks to-night it will be walking in the quad at punishment drill for the rest of this term.'
As this was all the boys could get from their senior, they had to be content with it, and before long took their departure. At the bottom of the stairs Snap took Billy's arm, and conferred earnestly with him as to what the great man's prophecy might mean.