“Sure,” replied one of Hansel’s companions, “but he put up a dickens of a fight. What’ll we do with him?”
“Wanted to fight, did he?” asked Harry as he came up with two or three other fellows. “Who is it? Cartwright? Oh, Billy never could take a joke. We ought to show him how. There’s a brook over here somewhere. Do you think we can find it?”
“Easy!” answered some one. “Where is he? Hello, Billy! Still feeling scrappy?”
Cartwright replied that he was, only he didn’t confine himself to a simple statement of the fact. The Schoolers listened to him disgustedly.
“You make me tired, Billy,” said Harry at last. “Shut up or we’ll half drown you! Say, fellows, let those dubs go and come over here. There’s something doing.”
A moment later Cartwright was lifted over the fence, no easy task for his captors, since he still struggled fiercely, and was half pushed and half carried across the meadow. No one knew just where the brook lay, and it was finally discovered by one of the Schoolers stumbling into it.
“Are you sure this is it?” laughed Harry.
“Sure!” replied the fellow succinctly as he wrung the water out of his trousers. “And it’s good and wet, too!”
“All right then, fellows. Lift him up and when I give the word drop him gently into the seething caldron. All ready? Then—let—him—go!”
He went. There was a splash, a torrent of choking remarks from Cartwright, which was drowned by the laughter of the Schoolers, and then he was crawling out on the other side, dripping and somewhat subdued.