“Well, boys, if you must do it to preserve your honor, let me take my clothes off first,” said the pleading voice. “This is the only suit I have in the world, and if I get it wet I shall freeze to death, for I have no fire in my room to dry it by.”
“Then go to bed,” was the rough rejoinder.
“Why, what in the world are those fellows going to do?” said Bert, who had listened in great amazement to this conversation, every word of which came distinctly to the ears of himself and his brother. “I am afraid they are going to do something to somebody.”
“Have you just found it out?” exclaimed Don, who now discovered that the boys were making their way toward a hole that had been previously cut in the ice. “A party of students, led by Fisher and Duncan, are going to haze a Plebe by ducking him in the pond. Now I shall have a word or two to say about that. They are the same fellows who blocked up our path this morning and wouldn’t let us go by. You know they promised to settle with me some day for showing so much ‘independence,’ as they called it, and they might as well do it now as any other time.”
“O Don, mind what you are about,” cried Bert.
“I will. I’ll black the eyes of some of them before they shall stick that boy through the ice. Why, Bert, what would father say to me if he should hear that I stood by and witnessed such a proceeding without lifting a hand to prevent it? He would tell me I wasn’t worthy of the name I bear.”
No one who knew the temper of the academy boys, and the tenacity with which they clung to the “time-honored customs” of the institution to which they belonged, would have thought Don Gordon a coward if he had taken to his heels and made the best of his way to his room. He knew very well that if he attempted to interfere with Tom and his crowd, he stood a good chance of being ducked himself; but the knowledge of this fact did not deter him from promptly carrying out the plans he had resolved upon. It would have been bad enough, he told himself, if the students had selected as a victim a boy who had an extra suit of clothes, a change of linen to put on, and a fire to warm himself by after his cold bath; but to pitch upon one who had none of these comforts, and who ran the risk of being thrown into a dangerous illness by the folly of his tormentors, was, in his estimation, a most cowardly act, and one that could not be too severely punished.
“Bert, you had better stay here where you will be safe,” said Don.
“I’ll not do it,” was the prompt reply. “If you are going into danger, I am going in too.”
Don, knowing that it would be of no use to argue the matter, ran out on the ice, and when he came up with the crowd his coats were off, and he was in his shirt-sleeves. Fisher and his companions stopped when they heard the sound of his approaching footsteps, and some of them acted as if they wanted to run away; but when they discovered that Don and Bert were alone, they waited for them to come nearer, thinking that perhaps they were a couple of the members of their own class who wanted to join in the sport. When they saw Don pull off his overcoat, however, their eyes were opened.