[CHAPTER XI]
AN ELECTRIC SHOCK
Late that same afternoon Tom, having gone to town alone, that he might accomplish his mission unobserved, came back with a coil of telegraph wire concealed under his sweater at his waist. He smuggled it to Langridge’s room without being seen.
“That’s the stuff, old man,” cried Langridge heartily, but there was an air of patronizing superiority in his manner that Tom did not like. Still, he reasoned, the other could not rid himself of an inborn habit so easily, and it really seemed, in spite of the fact that Tom might be regarded as a rival of Langridge, that the latter was doing his best to be friendly.
“I s’pose it wouldn’t do to ask what’s up, would it?” inquired Tom as he was about to leave.
“Hardly,” replied Langridge with what he meant to be a genial smile. “It might get out, you know. But you can be in at the death, so to speak. The whole freshman class will assemble at the boathouse about nine. There’ll be a full moon and we can have a good view of the sophs’ pavilion.”
“Are they going to be there?”
“I hope so. In fact I’m counting on it. This is the night of their annual moonlight song festival. They gather in and about the pavilion and make the night hideous with snatches of melody. They’re rotten singers—the sophs this year—but that is neither here nor there. The point is that they’ll be there, and it’s up to us freshmen to give ’em a little surprise party.”
“I suppose you’re going to arrange the wire so they can’t get into the pavilion without cutting it,” suggested Tom, “or else put it across the path to trip them up.”