"Better luck next time," said Mose philosophically, as he struck out for home, followed by the others.
They had proceeded about two-thirds of the way home, groping their way as best they could through the thick darkness, when a shrill, prolonged scream directly ahead of them, and apparently at no great distance, broke upon their startled auriculars.
"Painter!" ejaculated Mose, in a low tone of voice, though sufficiently loud to be distinctly audible to the professor, at the same time springing to one side, and the next moment he was out of the professor's hearing.
The fact was he had only taken a couple of steps and then squatted in the grass as completely concealed from his companions by the intense darkness as though he had been on the opposite side of the globe.
"Painter!" repeated the other boys, following Mose's example, of springing to one side and squatting in the grass.
Left alone, the professor, with hair on end, paused a moment to collect his scattered thoughts; but only for a moment.
Another scream long drawn out, and apparently but a few yards distant, set his dumpling-shaped body in motion, and the next moment he was streaking it across the country as fast as his duck legs could carry him.
Tumbling over a log lying on the edge of a bank some twenty feet high and nearly perpendicular, down which he rolled, he landed in a mud hole at the bottom.
Gathering himself up he began looking for his hat, which had parted company with him on the way down the bank, when, another scream breaking upon his ear, he struck out once more on his race for life, hatless and covered with mud from his head to his heels.
Coming to a brier patch, he was on the point of diverging from his course in order to try and go around it, when another scream precipitated the terror-stricken professor into the patch like a catapult.