"What was it, the headless horseman or the slaughtering ghost of the Barrows' football team? Did it walk or skate?"
"No, we're telling you the straight goods on this. Jimmy, Lewis, David and I saw it, and watched it for five minutes. It disappeared down by the river bank. It didn't walk on the ground at all, but seemed to be floating through air."
"Poor fellow, poor fellow," said the Codfish mournfully. "We'll get a doctor in the morning. That algebra has gone to his brain."
"Well, you can believe it or not," said Frank. "We saw it sure enough. It came apparently from the river, and seemed to go back to it down there by the football field."
"By Jove," said the Codfish, after a moment's reflection. "One of the fellows at this school was drowned in the river just a little below the bath-house float three or four years ago, and they recovered his body down there by the football stand. I wonder—— I wish I'd been here."
And Frank and David and Jimmy and Lewis also wondered, and the latter, when he was ready for dreamland took a long, long look out onto the silent playground. "Gee," he said to himself, "and I thought of going down there to-night, it looked so pretty in the moonlight. What do you suppose it could have been?" He took the precaution of closing the window tight that night, leaving only those windows on the yard side of the rooms open. That night he dreamed that a headless woman dressed all in white stood beside his bed, and offered him her head which she had tucked nicely away under her arm, and when he looked at it more closely, he saw it was a football and not a head at all.
CHAPTER XV.FRANK WINS HONORS ON THE TRACK.
David very quickly dropped into the school life, just as Frank had done. The two room-mates were always together. David was eager to see everything, and every day found him, after the school work was done, down at the track or the gridiron. He also found time to get acquainted with the muscle building apparatus in the gymnasium. A certain small amount of gymnastic work was required at Queen's, but David had determined to take up some specialty. From the nature of his infirmity those things which could be done with the arms and body were, of course, the only things open to him. Patsy's assistant in the gymnasium, Harry Buehler, took him under his wing, and set him at tasks which would help to develop his arm and shoulder muscles.