"Come in, whoever you are," he muttered. "Guess I was almost asleep." He reached up a hand and turned out the gas. The room, almost dark before, was now blackness from wall to wall. "Pshaw," said Neil, "I've turned the pesky thing out! Just stand still until I find a match or you'll break your shins." He groped his way toward the mantel. Now was the soph.o.m.ores' opportunity, and they seized it. Neil had done his best to imitate Livingston's careful and rather precise manner of speaking, and the invaders, few of whom even knew the president of the freshman cla.s.s by sight, never for an instant doubted that they had captured him.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Neil found himself suddenly seized by strong arms. With a cry of simulated surprise, he struggled feebly.

"Here, what's up, fellows?" he remonstrated. "Look out, I tell you!

_Don't do that_!"

Then he was borne, protesting and kicking, feet foremost, through the door, out into the hall and down the stairs. When the front door was thrown open Neil was alarmed to find that although almost dark it was still light enough for his captors to discover their mistake. Hiding his face as best he could, he lifted his voice in loud cries for help. It worked like a charm. Instantly a carriage robe was thrown over his head and he was hurried down the steps, across the muddy sidewalk, and into the waiting vehicle which had been driven up before the house. Once inside, Neil was safe from detection, for the hack, the shades drawn up before the windows, was as dark as Egypt. Neil sighed his relief, muttered a few perfunctory threats from behind the uncomfortable folds of the ill-smelling robe, and, with one fellow sitting on his chest and three others holding his legs, felt the carriage start.

Despite the enveloping folds about his head he could hear quite well; hear the horses' feet go _squish-squash_ in the mud; hear the carriage creak on its aged hinges; hear the shriek of a distant locomotive as they approached the railroad. His captors were congratulating themselves on the success of their venture.

"Easier than I thought it'd be," said one, and at the reply Neil figuratively p.r.i.c.ked up his ears.

"Pshaw, I knew we'd have no trouble; Livingston was so c.o.c.k-sure that we wouldn't try it that he'd probably forgotten all about it. I guess that conceited little fool Fletcher will talk out of the other side of his mouth for a while now. What do you think? He had the nerve to tell me last week that he guessed _he_ could prevent a kidnaping, as there were only about a hundred of us sophs!"

The others laughed.

"Well, he is a chesty young kid, isn't he?" asked a third speaker. "I guess it's just as well we didn't have to kidnap _him_, eh? By the way, our friend here seems ill at ease. Maybe we'd better get off of him now and give him a breath of air. We don't want a corpse on our hands."

The soph.o.m.ores found seats and the robe was unwound from about Neil's head, much to that youth's delight. He took a good long breath and, grinning enjoyably in the darkness, settled himself to make the best of his predicament. Now that he had discovered Tom Cowan to be one of his abductors, he was filled with such glee that he found it hard work to keep silent. But he did, and all the gibes of his captors, uttered in quite the most polite language imaginable, failed to elicit a reply.

"Beautiful evening for a drive, is it not?" asked one.

"I trust you had not planned to attend the freshman dinner to-night?"

asked another. "For I fear we shall be late in reaching home."

"You are quite comfortable? Is there any particular road you would like to drive? any part of our lovely suburbs you care to visit?"

"Surly brute!" growled a fourth, who was Cowan. "Let's make him speak, eh? Let's twist his arm a bit."

"You sit still or I'll punch your thick head," said the first speaker coldly. "What I dislike about you, Cowan, is that you are never able to forget that you're a mucker. I wish you'd try," he continued wearily, "it's so monotonous."

Cowan was silent an instant; then laughed uncertainly.

"I suppose you fancy you're a wit, Baker," he said, "but I think you're mighty tiresome."

"Don't let it trouble you," was the calm reply. Some one laughed drowsily. Then there was silence save for the sound of the horses' feet, the complaining of the well-worn hack and the occasional voice of the driver outside on the box. Neil began to feel rather drowsy himself; the motion was lulling, and now that they had crossed the railroad-track and reached the turnpike along the river, the carriage traveled smoothly. It was black night outside now, and through the nearest window at which the curtain had been lowered Neil could see nothing save an occasional light in some house. He didn't know where he was being taken, and didn't much care. They rolled steadily on for half an hour longer, during which time two at least of his captors proclaimed their contentment by loud snoring. Then the carriage slowed down, the sleeping ones were awakened, and a moment later a flood of light entering the window told Neil that the journey was at an end.

"Far as we go," said some one. "All out here and take the car ahead!" A door was opened, two of his captors got out, and Neil was politely invited to follow. He did so. Before him was the open door of a farm-house from which the light streamed hospitably. It was still drizzling, and Neil took shelter on the porch unchallenged; now that the abductors had got him some five miles from Centerport, they were not so attentive. The others came up the steps and the carriage was led away toward the barn.

"If your Excellency will have the kindness to enter the house," said Baker, with low obeisance, "he will find accommodations which, while far from befitting your Excellency's dignity, are, unfortunately, the best at our command."

Neil accepted the invitation silently, and entering the doorway, found himself in a well-lighted room wherein a table was set for supper. The others followed, Cowan grinning from ear to ear in antic.i.p.ation of the victim's discomfiture. In his eagerness he was the first to catch sight of Neil's face. With a howl of surprise he sprang back, almost upsetting Baker.

"What's the matter with you?" cried the latter. Cowan made no answer, but stared stupidly at Neil.

"Eh? What?" Baker sprang forward and wheeled their victim into the light. Neil turned and faced them smilingly. The four stared in bewilderment. It was Baker who first found words.

"_Well, I'll--be--hanged_!" he murmured.

Neil turned placidly to the discomfited Cowan.

"You see, Cowan," he said sweetly, "one against a hundred isn't such big odds, after all, is it?"

CHAPTER IX

THE BROKEN TRICYCLE

As soon as Livingston heard the kidnapers staggering down-stairs with their burden he unlocked the bed-room door and stole to the window. He saw Neil, his head hidden by the carriage robe, thrust into the hack and driven away, and saw the conspirators for whom the vehicle afforded no room separate and disappear in the gathering darkness. Livingston's emotions were varied: admiration for Neil's harebrained but successful ruse, distaste for the sorry part taken by himself in the affair, and amus.e.m.e.nt over the coming amazement and discomfiture of the enemy were mingled. In the end delight in the frustration of the soph.o.m.ores' plan gained the ascendency, and he resolved that although Neil would miss the freshman dinner he should have it made up to him.

And so in his speech an hour or so later Fanwell Livingston told the astonished company of the attempted kidnaping and of its failure, and never before had Odd Fellows' Hall rang with such laughter and cheering.

And a little knot of soph.o.m.ores, already bewildered by the appearance of the freshman president on the scene, were more than ever at a loss.

They stood under an awning across the street, some twenty or thirty of them, and asked each other what it meant. Content with the supposed success of the abduction, they had made no attempt to prevent the dinner. And now Livingston, who by every law of nature should be five miles out in the country, was presiding at the feast and moving his audience to the wildest applause.

"But I helped put him in the hack!" Carey cried over and over.

"And I saw it drive off with him!" marveled another.

"And if that's Livingston, where's Baker, and Morton, and Cowan, and Dyer?" asked the rest. And all shook their heads and gazed bewildered through the rain to where a raised window-shade gave them occasional glimpses of "Fan" Livingston, a fine figure in dinner jacket and white shirt bosom, leading the cheering.

"_Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Fletcher_!"

The group under the awning turned puzzled looks upon each other.

"Who's Fletcher? What are they cheering Fletcher for?" was asked. But none could answer.

But over in the hall it was different. Not a lad there, perhaps, but would have been glad to have exchanged places with the gallant confounder of soph.o.m.ore plots, who was pictured in most minds as starving to death somewhere out in the rain, a captive in the ungentle hands of the enemy.

However, starving Neil certainly was not. For at that very moment, seated at the hospitable board of Farmer Hutchins, he was helping himself to his fifth hot biscuit, and allowing Miss Hutchins, a red-cheeked and admiring young lady of fourteen years, to fill his teacup for the second time. From the role of prisoner Neil had advanced himself to the position of honored guest. For after the first consternation, bewilderment, and mortification had pa.s.sed, his captors philosophically accepted the situation, and under the benign influence of cold chicken and hot soda biscuits found themselves not only able to display equanimity, but to join in the laugh against themselves and to admire the cleverness displayed in their out-witting. Of the four soph.o.m.ores Cowan's laughter and praise alone rang false. But Neil was supremely indifferent to that youth's sentiments. The others he soon discovered to be thoroughly good fellows, and there is no doubt but that he enjoyed the hospitality of Farmer Hutchins more than he would have enjoyed the freshman cla.s.s dinner.

At nine o'clock the drive back to Centerport began, and as the horses soon found that they were headed toward home the journey occupied surprisingly little time, and at ten Neil was back in his room awaiting the return of Paul. To Neil's surprise that gentleman was at first decidedly grumpy.

"You might have let me into it," he grumbled.

But Neil explained and apologized until at length peace was restored.

Then he had to tell Paul all about it from first to last, and Paul laughed until he choked; "I--I just wish--wish I had--seen Cowan's--face when--he--found it--out!" he shrieked.

One result of that night's adventure was that the Cla.s.s of 1905 was never thereafter bothered in the slightest degree by the soph.o.m.ores; it appeared to be the generally accepted verdict that the freshmen had established their right to immunity from all molestation. Another result was that Neil became a cla.s.s hero and a college notable. Younger freshmen pointed him out to each other in admiring awe; older and more influential ones went out of their way to claim recognition from him; soph.o.m.ores viewed him with more than pa.s.sing interest, and upper-cla.s.s men predicted for him a brilliant college career. Even the Dean, when he pa.s.sed Neil the following afternoon and returned his bow, allowing himself something almost approaching a grin. Neil, however, bore his honors modestly even while acknowledging to himself the benefit of them.

He learned that his chances of making a certain society, membership in which was one of his highest ambitions, had been more than doubled, and was glad accordingly. (He was duly elected and underwent rigorous initiation proudly and joyfully.)

The kidnaping affair even affected his football standing, for Mills and Devoe and Simson, the trainer, spoke or looked applause, while the head coach thereafter displayed quite a personal interest in him. Several days subsequent to the affair Neil was taking dummy practise with the rest of the second eleven. Mills had appropriated the invention of a Harvard trainer, rigging the dummy with hook and eye-bolt, so that when properly tackled the stuffed canvas effigy of a Robinson player became detached from its cable and fell on to the soft loam much after the manner of a human being. But to bring the dummy from the hook necessitated the fiercest of tackling, and many fellows failed at this.

To-day Neil was one of this number. Twice the dummy, bearing upon its breast the brown R of Robinson, had sped away on its twenty-foot flight, and twice Neil had thrown himself upon it without bringing it down. As he arose after the second attempt and brushed the soil from his trousers Mills "went for him."

"You're very ladylike, Fletcher, but as this isn't crewel-work or crochet you'll oblige me by being so rude as to bring that dummy off.

Now, once more; put some snap into it! Get your hold, find your purchase, and then throw! Just imagine it's a soph.o.m.ore, please."