The winter had passed rather quietly, the boys going home only for the Christmas holidays. During that time there had come only one surprise, and that was the news concerning Longley Academy. This institution of learning, which had been in existence only a short time, had been devoted very largely to physical culture and athletics and had an extra fine baseball grounds with a beautiful grandstand and bleachers. But strange to say, the athletics had not been as prosperous as the management of the institution wished, and a good many of the pupils had been on the point of leaving, and several had applied for admission to Colby Hall.
As a consequence of this the owners of Longley had turned the academy into a military school with a section devoted to horsemanship. The cadets were given a most striking uniform, and everything possible was done to induce the cadets of Colby Hall to shift to the other institution.
“And I call that about as mean a piece of business as could happen,” was Jack’s comment, in talking this over with some of his chums. “Of course they have a perfect right to make a military academy of Longley if they want to; but they have no right to steal away our cadets.”
Among the boys to leave Colby Hall and go to Longley were Paul Halliday and Billy Sands, who had been great chums of Brassy Bangs while that individual was a cadet. Of course, Colonel Colby was sorry to have any of his pupils leave him, but the Rovers were rather glad to see Halliday and Sands go.
“It’s good riddance to those fellows!” Fred had remarked. “I never considered either of them much better than Brassy Bangs himself.”
“Oh, I don’t think Halliday and Sands are quite as bad as Bangs was,” Randy had answered. “Still I’d rather have them somewhere else than here.”
During the winter the cadets of Colby and the boys at Longley had had several contests on the ice and had also indulged in several snowball fights. In one of these fights Fred had received a black eye from a snowball hurled by Billy Sands. In return for this Sands had been caught a little later and rolled down into a snowy hollow, much to his disgust. In one of the skating races Paul Halliday had come in ahead of two of the cadets from Colby, and because of this he and the other cadets from Longley had done considerable crowing.
“We’ll show Colby where they get off!” had come boastfully from Tommy Flanders, a youth who on several occasions had pitched for the rival school.
“You’ll never show Colby anything!” Jack had retorted, and this had made Tommy Flanders very angry, because he had been virtually “batted out of the box” by the Colby baseball nine.