It was all over in an instant. The masked figures had scattered in all directions, and Jack was cutting the cords that bound the prisoner. And by all that was wonderful, if it wasn't Tom Jones, a Fairacre boy, and a member of the Sophomore Class at Queenston College. The boys stared at him, open-mouthed.
"Take out the gag; he's trying to speak," said Dick Long, excitedly.
The gag was quickly removed, and Tom sprang to his feet.
"Well, you are a fine set of blooming wooden-heads," said Mr. Jones, reproachfully.
The boys looked at him in astonishment. Under the peculiar circumstances the remark savored of ingratitude, to say the least.
"Perhaps you would have preferred that we had not interfered," said Jem Smith, with sarcastic politeness.
"I wish to goodness you hadn't," was the disconcerting reply. "Well, old man, are you much hurt?" Tom Jones had hurried to where the wounded man was lying propped up against a tree, and was bending over him with anxious solicitude. His mask had fallen off, and his face looked familiar enough, though nobody could place him exactly.
"See here, Jones," said Jack Howard, with a desperate effort to shake off the growing conviction that the whole affair was nothing more than an ugly dream, "what does all this mean, anyhow? Haven't we just pulled you out of a pretty tight place—saved your life, I mean?"
"No, you haven't," answered Tom, snappishly.
"You've gone and interfered with my initiation into the Order of Ancient and Royal Druids, the best secret society in the college, and you shot in the leg the Captain of the university team, and the only decent half-back we have this year. That's what you've done."