“Yes! I saw it staring at me, all white in the darkness! Ugh!”
Just at this moment there was a movement in the bushes. The yearlings glanced up, just as a face protruded.
It was Parson Stanard, peering down. The Parson’s cadaverous, bony features shone out pale and white, and but one idea flashed over the badly-scared Rogers.
“There it is again!” he yelled. “The skull!”
The roar of laughter that followed defies description. Even the yearlings joined in. They imagined that their classmate had originally seen the Parson’s head and taken it for the “skull.”
Of this idea, however, they were speedily disabused. For the Parson stretched out his long, bony arms, and the next instant the yearlings found themselves half buried beneath a shower of clattering white objects—the skeletons of the counterfeiters! When the yearlings looked up again Parson Stanard was gone.
The cadets were too much amazed and horrified to say anything. They could only stare—and listen. They heard a loud voice inside, and this was what the voice said:
“By the bones of my ancestors, was there ever such an outrage? Yea, by Zeus! By Apollo and the Heliconian Muses! Unhand me, gentlemen, I say! I will not stand it! I will out and at them! I will scatter them to the six winds of Æolus! The very idea! My head a skull! What is there to warrant so outrageous an insinuation? Why, it is enough to make the ashes of my noble grandfather burst forth into flame. And am I to stand it? No, by Hercules! I feel the might of a Centaur rising within me. Like Hector of old, will I sally forth from my citadel and smite the insulters of my race. Just think of it! My head a skull!”
There was a brief silence after that, succeeded by the sounds of a struggle.
“Steady, Parson!” said a voice. “You don’t want to go out there. Take it easy now——”