“He knew just what to do and when to do it,” Harry went on. “Only for that there would have been a bad mix-up.”
“Well, there wasn’t!” grunted Arthur, “so don’t say any more about it. It gives me the creeps to think of it. That fellow has some nerve. Wonder what he was doing on our road? You can’t get anywhere except to Hilltop Academy that way. If he’s a new student why didn’t he come with Bucephalus and the coach?”
“Can’t tell you. Maybe he didn’t know anything about it.”
The boys reached the bottom of the hill without further incident and went on to the little railroad station, hearing the sound of the expected train as they dismounted and stacked their wheels.
The colored coachman of the Academy, who bore the high-sounding name of Bucephalus, but who was almost always called Buck by the boys and by the people of the town at the foot of the hill, sat on his box as if carved out of black marble and neither looked to the right nor the left, considering it beneath his dignity to converse with any one in the village while on duty and seeming to see no one.
“Did you meet a young fellow going up the hill as you were coming down, Buck?” asked Harry, stepping alongside the big coach. “A new fellow, do you think, Bucephalus?”
“Ah dunno, sah, Ah done paid no attention to anybody Ah met on de road, sah. Ah done had ’nuff to do to look aftah mah hosses witho’t catechisin’ or scrutinizin’ strangers, sah.”
The whistle of the train was heard again at that moment and in a short time it arrived and many of the passengers alighted, among them being two or three boys who were warmly welcomed by the two students.
“Hello, Dick, back again, eh? Glad of it. How are you, Billy, how do, Tom? Ready for work, of course?”
“And incidentally, a bit of fun,” replied one of the newcomers. “Hope we will have a good crowd this term. Any new ones to put through their paces and make toe the mark?”