"No, of course not."

"It'll be easy enough to send him a note and get him away from the buildings and then we can do just what we like."

"Give him a good scare and take the nonsense out of him."

"And he won't know us, neither, for we'll have masks on and we mustn't say a word."

"That'll be a hard thing for you," laughed Merritt, who could not resist the temptation to have another fling at Herring.

The latter paid no attention to him, however, knowing that one word would only lead to another.

"We'll watch him," he continued; "find out when he goes off by himself and then do the job up brown. If he don't go off alone, we'll fix it so he will, and that's easy."

"What'll you do with him?" asked Holt. "Steal his clothes and make him walk home at night?"

"Black him up with soot and send him back," suggested another, "That stuff is awful hard to get off."

"I'll make a good job, all right," muttered Herring. "Just you leave it to me."

Some of the better sort of boys were seen approaching at that moment, and Herring said in a low tone:

"Come on, let's get out. Go in different directions. Those fellows might get a notion that we were fixing up something."

The boys went off in different directions, and Harry, who was one of the other boys, said to Arthur:

"If Pete Herring and those sneaks are not plotting against the new fellow, I'll miss my guess."

"Well, it may not be against him," replied Arthur, "but it probably has to do with some of the new fellows or with the little ones. Herring and his crowd are always pestering them."

"If they try to make any trouble for Jack, they will get all that's coming to them," laughed Billy Manners.

"Yes, you found out that he could take care of himself, didn't you?"

asked Arthur with a chuckle.

"There were others," replied Billy with a grin.

Herring and his accomplices found a chance to meet again later when there was no chance of being interrupted by any of Jack's friends, and the bully laid his plans before the rest.

"That's all right," said Merritt.

"Couldn't have fixed it up better myself," added Holt.

"That'll do the trick," said another.

Some time later, with still considerable time before supper, Jack happened to be pa.s.sing the rear of the house where Bucephalus was at work on a wagon.

"Dey was a tullyphome message fo' yo', sah," said the man. "Yo' was to call up two-fo'-six as soon as conwenient."

"Where is the booth, Bucephalus?" asked Jack.

"Raght in bahn, sah. Dere am a switch fo' mah conwenience. Yo'll fin' it cluss to de do', sah."

"All right," and Jack went into the barn, where he saw a telephone receiver and transmitter on a little shelf near the door.

He took down the receiver and called up the number which Bucephalus had given him, waiting a moment for an answer.

"h.e.l.lo, who is this?" he presently heard over the wire.

"John Sheldon. I was told to call you up. Who is this and what do you want of me?"

"This is Jones, down at the station. There is an express package for you here that has to be signed for. Better come after it."

"Can't you send it?" asked Jack, who thought that the voice sounded rather too near to come from the station below.

Furthermore, it seemed to him that it sounded suspiciously like that of Peter Herring, the leading bully of the Academy.

He had not had much conversation with the fellow, but what he had had was sufficient to make him remember the voice, and he had a good memory for all voices.

"No, I can't send it now. Haven't got any one to send. You can take a short cut through the woods as you leave the Academy and get here in a few minutes. It's shorter than by the road. Take the turn on the right after you get out of sight."

"Is there any hurry?"

"Yes, I gotter go to supper, but I'll wait for you. Hurry up!" and Jack heard the sound of the receiver being hung up on the other end.

He hung up his receiver and went out, finding Bucephalus still at work on the wagon.

"Did yo' catch him, sah?" asked the man. "Werry conwenient little instrament, dat tullyphome, ain't it? Werry myster'ous, too. Just think o' hearin' a man talkin' a mile or two away, an' yo' unnerstan' him as plain like he was right cluss up."

"Yes, there is a bit of mystery about it, Buck," laughed Jack, who had ideas of his own which he did not care to tell to any one else at the moment.

"There is a switch that those fellows have got on," he said to himself, "and I was not talking to the station any more than I was talking to the President of the United States. Well, there'll be a little fun in this, and I don't mind taking the risk."

Jack had gotten the idea that Herring was on another branch of the Academy telephone, and that the story of the express package was a fiction, meant to mislead him.

He knew enough of such characters as Herring's to satisfy himself that the bully would not rest at one attempt to make trouble, but would try again as soon as convenient.

"If that was not Herring on the wire, I never heard him speak," he said to himself as he ran off toward the house and then to the dormitories.

He was not upstairs more than a minute and then he appeared at the front of the Academy and set off down the road at a good pace.

When he had gone far enough to be out of sight of the building, he took a cut through the woods as directed by the supposed Jones at the little station below.

He walked with both hands in his side jacket pockets, and seemed absolutely carefree and happy, but he had his wits about him, nevertheless.

He suspected an ambush and was ready for it.

He had prepared himself for a hazing on his first night at Hilltop, and he now suspected that another was under way and was prepared for that as well.