“Yes.”
“Then I’m going in,” answered the bully, and ran off without another word.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RESULTS OF A FIRE
That morning Dan Baxter did not appear and it was reported that he was sick.
“He acts to me as if he were going to die,” announced Mumps, when appealed to. “I don’t know exactly what is the matter with him.”
“Can this be true?” asked Pepper of Jack. “I’d hate to think that Baxter got sick through what we did to him.”
“More than likely he is shamming,” said the young major, and he was right. But to make sure Captain Putnam sent for Doctor Framley, a physician of Cedarville, who made a careful examination.
“He is nervous, as if he had been frightened, that is all,” announced the medical man. “Let him keep quiet for a day or two.”
Baxter had hoped to scare his tormentors into thinking that they were responsible for a serious spell of sickness. When this plan failed he quickly got around as before. He tried his best to find out who had hazed him, but the cadets kept their secret well.
On the day following the hazing Jack chanced to go down to the lake front. He was just entering the boathouse when, to his astonishment, two men stepped forth. They were the individuals he had seen several times on the mysterious sloop.