“Look here, Mack,” said he, in a suppressed whisper. “There will be the very mischief to pay if we don’t get out of here before four o’clock. The boys expect Lester and his party to return from Bordentown at that hour, and they have made up their minds to give them a good pounding.”
“That would never do—never in the world,” replied Mack, in a tone of anxiety. “Such a high-handed proceeding on the part of the members of our class would be an everlasting disgrace to them, as well as to the school. We’ll nip that little arrangement in the bud. It will make the boys mad at us at first, but they will thank us for it after they have had time to cool off a little. I, for one, am not half as angry as I was a few minutes ago, and, now that I think of it, it was a pretty sharp trick on Lester’s part, and we have all seen the time when we would have done the same thing, if we had been bright enough to think of it. I’ll warrant that Don Gordon is laughing fit to split, and that he feels like punching his own head because he did not propose something of the kind when he was running with Tom Fisher and that crowd. But we can’t have a free fight here in the depot, and we won’t, either. Now, Walker, you stay here, and don’t allow a single boy out of your sight until we come back. The president and I are going up to the hotel to talk to the superintendent about it, and while we are gone, you must be very careful what you say in the hearing of the boys. Some of them are too highly exasperated to be reasonable, and if they should find out that they are not to be allowed the privilege of fighting Lester and his men, they would slip out into the city and lie in wait for them. If they begin to act in a way to arouse your suspicions, order the last one of them into our two cars, and keep them there until we return.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Captain Walker, raising his hand to his cap. “But between you and me,” he added, in a lower tone, “I really wish our boys could interview Lester and his party before we go back to the Academy.”
“It is about the neatest trick I ever heard of,” said Colonel Mack, as he and the president hurried away to pour their sorrows into the sympathizing ear of the superintendent, and to tell him of the plot the first-class boys had entered into to take summary vengeance upon the despoilers of their feast when they came in on the Bordentown train. “Those fellows must be as well posted in our plans as we are.”
“Of course they are,” was the reply. “Otherwise they could not have sent me that telegram which purported to come from Blake, and which assured me that everything was ‘O. K.’”
“That’s so; where in the world is Blake now?” exclaimed Mack; and apparently forgetting that Blake was the very boy they had been wishing for ever since the train came into the depot, he and the president stopped in their hurried walk and looked all around in search of him. “Say,” added Mack, a moment later, “I have my own ideas regarding the manner in which this trick was sprung upon us——”
“So have I,” interrupted the president.
“And I want you to remember what I say,” continued Mack. “When we get to the bottom of this day’s work, you will hear some things that will make you open your eyes. What do you see to interest you so much?”
Receiving no reply from his companion, who, having come to a sudden halt, was shading his eyes with his hand and gazing intently at some object he saw in the distance, Mack also stopped, and looked in the same direction. Before him was the river, along whose banks ran Hamilton’s principal business street. Near the head of it was the hotel toward which they were hastening, and a short distance farther on stood the transfer-depot. All the passengers who came in on the main road, and who were bound for Bordentown or points farther north, were conveyed from one depot to the other by an omnibus line, while the luggage and freight were taken over on drays.
Directly in front of the transfer-depot was the bridge that crossed the river, and beyond it, for three miles at least, the track was almost as straight as an arrow. The boys could plainly see every rod of it from where they stood. As Mack looked up he saw, coming into view around the first bend in the road, a locomotive which seemed to be moving with terrific speed. Mack didn’t see anything surprising in that, not even after he had taken a second look, and discovered that the engine was drawing a couple of flat cars that were heavily loaded with something; and it did not take him long to tell his companion so.