"Somebody's been playing a trick on me," murmured Stowell to himself. "Just wait till I find out who did it, I'll fix him!"
He remained standing on the chair, not caring to venture on the floor in his bare feet and with the mice still at liberty. He had placed his shoes under the head of the bed.
"I've got to clear them out somehow," he muttered to himself. "But I guess I'd better put my shoes on first. Then I'll get that baseball bat in the closet and do it."
With extreme caution Codfish descended from the chair and walked hurriedly across the floor to the head of his bed. He drew forth the shoes and started quickly to put them on.
His toes were just going down into one of the shoes when he let out a yell which would have done credit to a wild Indian. One of the mice had found refuge in the footwear, and now it gave a bound and scrambled up inside the leg of Stowell's pajamas.
"Hi! Get out of there! Help! Murder! Take that beast away! Oh, my! he'll bite me sure! Ouch! he's bit me already!" And then the sneak of the school began to dance around wildly, in the meantime clutching savagely in the region of the knee where the mouse had found lodgement. Caught, the little animal had nipped Codfish in the finger.
"Gee, this is the richest yet!" chuckled Walt Baxter.
"Better than a moving picture," was Gif's comment.
"He'll wake the whole school if he makes much more noise," remarked Jack. "Be prepared to skip out when the time comes."
"I'll have somebody arrested for this," howled Codfish, as he still struggled with the mouse that was up his leg. "This is beastly! Oh, dear! what in the world shall I do?"