After the third caning, we had a committee meeting in my study, and decided that something must be done. Wilson wanted to drop Graham into the pond, and Rupertson suggested that two chaps should hold him down while the three who had been caned through his jokes gave him a good thrashing; but Shepherd, the smallest boy in the Fourth, hit on the best idea, and that was to pay him back in his own coin.
Shepherd had heard him planning with another boy in his dormitory to dress up as a ghost that very night, and come into ours, and scare us into fits, and we determined that the most scared chap should be Graham himself.
We had all been in bed about a quarter of an hour when there was a rustling sound at the door, and in glided a figure that might have made us creep if we had not been prepared for it. It had a great head, with glaring, fiery eyes, which made one feel a little uncomfortable, even though we knew it was only a turnip. Its body did not show, but only great shining bones, which Graham had painted on his pyjamas with phosphorus, just as Shepherd had told us he meant to do.
We kept dead silence till he got to the middle of the room, and then Shepherd gave the most horrible groan I ever heard. He imitated a real one splendidly; it finished with a kind of choke.
That was our signal, and we all sprang up and crowded round his bed.
'You have done it now!' cried Rupertson in a terrified voice.
'He's not bad!' gasped the 'ghost.'
'Yes, he is,' replied Rupertson. 'See how white he looks!'
'Who is it?' groaned Graham.
'Sergeant,' said Rupertson.