"Very sorry, my dear, very sorry," came from May Powell, in as deep a voice as she could command. "I have important business to attend to."
"Oh, Jack, what an awfully big girl you do make!" screamed Ruth, when she discovered his identity behind the little mask he wore. "I didn't know you were so large."
"And what a little man you are," he answered, gaily.
"Don't say a word," she returned. "See these sleeves? They are all rolled up; and I had to do the same with the trousers," and she laughed merrily.
Although acting against the rules, the Rovers and their friends found an opening in the fence, and for a brief quarter of an hour mingled with the girls on the campus of the school. They had "a barrel of fun," to use Andy's way of expressing it, and left only because it was getting late and they knew they would have to walk all the way back to Colby Hall.
"This is about the best Hallowe'en fun we ever had," remarked Jack, while he and the others were on the return to the school.
To make time, the boys did not take the regular road through Haven Point to Colby Hall, but tramped along a back highway which was considered something of a short cut. This presently brought them in sight of a large farm which belonged to a hard-fisted man named Elias Lacy.
"Say, we ought to call on old Lacy and give him a scare," said Randy, coming to a halt near the farmhouse.
"It would serve him right!" answered Fred, promptly.
None of the Rovers had a kindly feeling for Elias Lacy, for the reason that the old man had once caught them getting chestnuts from a tree on the corner of his farm and had made them give up all the nuts they had gathered and had then threatened them with the law if they dared to set foot on his premises again.