At last he managed to free his legs from the sticky mud and reached a comparatively firm place. But what a plight he was in! Plastered with swamp-ooze to his waist, he looked like some sewer laborer. Though he did not know it, his face was spotted with globules of mud, splashed up in his struggles to get from the bog.
“Well, I certainly am in bad,” he remarked to himself. “Lucky I put on old clothes. I can’t get much worse, that’s one satisfaction. I might as well keep on. Maybe I can get that fox now.”
So he continued through the swamp. His speed was better, for he no longer paused to pick his steps, but splashed on, careless of the mud and water. The fever of the chase was in his veins, and another glimpse of the fox convinced him that the animal was heading for its burrow. At last, after a tramp of a mile, Sid was successful, and, in the fast fading light of the fall day, he snapped the creature, just as it was entering the hole, when it turned for a final look at its tireless pursuer.
“Well, it was worth it all,” sighed the naturalist as he closed up his camera and started for home. “Now I wonder where Phil and Tom are.”
Remembering that they had called to him that they would wait out on the road, he took that highway back to college. On the way he found several specimens which he needed in his evolution work, and in thinking about them, and his success in photographing the fox, he forgot about the plight he was in. He did not meet his chums, of course, and it was dusk when he got back to college. The mud had dried somewhat on his trousers and shoes, and, incidentally, on his face and hands, for he had, unconsciously, run his hands over his countenance once or twice, so that the mud globules had increased in surface area.
It was a very strange and somewhat disreputable figure that entered the west dormitory a little later and started up the stairs, but Sid did not know that, having no looking glass at hand.
Now it so happened that Professor Tines was just leaving the dormitory. He had called to see one of his pupils who was ill—a “greasy dig” student—to use the college vernacular to designate a lad who burned midnight oil over his studies. The professor having finished his call came upon Sid in the corridor. The instructor saw before him a young man, mud covered, carrying a square, black box, and the countenance, spotted with specimens of swamp muck, was unfamiliar to him. Professor Tines at once suspected a student trick.
“Here! Where are you going?” he cried, blocking the way of Sid.
“To my room,” answered the luckless naturalist, who, of course, not appreciating that he was most effectually disguised, thought that the Latin teacher had recognized him.
“Your room! What do you mean by such nonsense? What student put you up to this joke? Tell me, and I will have him punished at once. How dare you come in here?”