“I thought you were never coming,” said he, as Enoch approached. “Don’t you think we had better give it up and find some other way of learning about their plans?”
“Can you suggest any other way?” asked Enoch, in reply.
Jones was obliged to confess that he could not. He had racked his brain in the hope of discovering some less dangerous mode of procedure, but his thinking had amounted to nothing. In fact, there was no other way in which the two spies could gain the information they desired than the one Enoch had selected, because the first-class fellows kept entirely to themselves while they were strolling about the building or grounds, and if a lower class boy had attempted to approach them when they were discussing their plans, he would have been ordered away without ceremony.
“Well, then,” said Enoch, “I don’t see any way for it but to hide under the benches and take the chances. We’ll go one at a time, and I will take the lead. When you come in, give a low whistle, and I will reply in the same way to show you where I am.”
The spies separated and began walking up and down the hall, moving in opposite directions, and all the while drawing nearer to the door of the room in which the meeting was to be held. Watching his opportunity, when none of the boys who were gathered around the stove at the upper end of the hall happened to be looking that way, Enoch darted into the room and, in less time than it takes to write it, was concealed under one of the benches. A few minutes later Jones was crouching by his side, and none of the boys in the hall were the wiser for what they had done.
CHAPTER IX.
LESTER BRIGHAM’S STRATEGY.
“Now we shall see what we shall see,” whispered Enoch, as he and Jones drew themselves into the smallest possible compass and waited, with beating hearts, to see what was going to happen. He spoke calmly enough, but the thought of what might be the result of his rash undertaking caused him no little anxiety.
“I wish Lester Brigham had been down in Mississippi before he proposed this thing to us, or else that he was here in my place,” whispered Jones, in reply. “Let’s get out of here while we have the chance.”
It is possible that Enoch would have agreed to this proposal if a way of retreat had been open to them; but before he could speak, the door opened, and the first-class boys came pouring in. It was too late to repent now.
It required all the fortitude Enoch possessed to carry him through the hour that followed, but he had come there to listen, and he did not forget to do it; while his timid companion, who was trembling in every limb, did not understand half a dozen words that were uttered in his hearing. Enoch was greatly amazed to learn that, if the idea of stealing the dinner which the graduating class had prepared for themselves and their friends was original with Lester Brigham, he was not the first student to propose it. In the years gone by, some of the mischief-loving fellows who then belonged to the academy had thought of the same thing, and, moreover, they had worked to such good purpose that they had given the first-class boys no end of trouble. This knowledge was so very encouraging to Enoch that he almost forgot that he was frightened; and when the meeting adjourned, and he and Jones stole out of the recitation room and made their way toward their dormitories, he told himself that if he were as smart as he thought he was, he could do more than make trouble for the graduating class—he could make Lester’s scheme successful.