Jack Sheldon had been to school before and knew the ways of boys, being one himself, although not of the sort that think it funny to play foolish tricks on others.

He knew many of these, however, and had remedies for nearly all of them, having put more than one hazing party to route by his thorough command of resources.

Although he hurried in through the woods in an apparently careless fashion and seemed to pay no attention to anything, he noticed everything, heard everything, and was ready for instant action.

He was well in the woods, which were quite thick as he went on, although there was a path through them, when his quick ear caught the sound of a sudden rustling in a clump of thick shrub oaks just in front of him, but he went on as if he had heard nothing, turning a little to one side as he reached the clump.

In a moment three or four masked figures suddenly sprang out upon him from two sides of the clump.

Then Jack took his hands out of his pockets.

CHAPTER V

THE HAZERS ARE HAZED

What Jack had in one pocket of his coat was an ammonia gun used by wheelmen to keep off the attacks of troublesome dogs who attempt to bar their progress on the road often at the risk of giving them an upset.

This, as most boys know, is shaped like a pistol and has a bulb at one end.

A slight pressure upon this bulb causes a stream of ammonia, or hot water, or whatever else one chooses to squirt in the faces of the annoying dogs and to put them to flight.

When Jack had gone up to the dormitories, after receiving the message which he had every reason to believe to be spurious, he had taken the little gun from his suitcase, where he had placed it, in antic.i.p.ation of needing it in some such emergency as the present.

As the masked figures came rushing toward him from two sides, he quickly took account of stock, as one might say, and decided which one of the maskers was Herring.

Then he aimed his little gun at the fellow's face and gave the bulb a good squeeze.

There was a howl and a gasp and the boy in the mask and the old clothes suddenly sat down with more force than elegance.

Jack then turned his gun on one of the intruders from the other side of the clump.

"Ouch, stop that!" yelled the fellow, dropping a stout stick he held in his hand and beating a hasty retreat, half stifled by the fumes of the ammonia.

Jack then turned his attention to the other members of the party of hazers and discharged another gun at them, holding it in his left hand.

This was worse than the first, for it contained a.s.safoetida instead of ammonia.

The stench was something dreadful, and two of the hazers got full doses of the stuff directly in their faces.

Jack was on the windward side of it or he could not have endured the horrible smell.

The victims simply fell on the ground and began to vomit in spite of themselves.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm poisoned!" wailed Holt, who was one of the fellows dosed. "Oh! get me some water. Oh, dear! I shall die, I know I shall!"

"You need a good cleaning out," laughed Jack, who had no sympathy whatever for the sneak. "You are dirty enough inside and out to make it necessary. Turn yourself inside out. You need it."

The other victim was retching and gasping and groaning by turns and all at once, but Jack only laughed.

If one had been in pain and needed his help, no one could have been more sympathetic, but in this case the victim was simply getting his deserts, and the boy wasted no sympathy upon him.

"Oh! I am poisoned, I know I am!" howled Holt. "Go send for a doctor. I know I am going to die!"

"No danger of it, Holt," laughed Jack. "That's nothing but a cleaning out medicine that will be good for you. Take off that mask of yours and you will breathe better. If it had not been for that, you would have got a bigger dose, but it will do, I guess."

Jack had easily recognized Holt, but the other hazer was unknown to him, as he did not yet know all the boys at the Academy.

Holt retched, and coughed, and choked, and gasped, and was in a very uncomfortable state, but there was no danger of his dying and Jack knew it perfectly well.

"I know you, Holt," he said. "I don't know the other fellow, but he will know me after this, I guess. I haven't got through with you fellows yet, but first I want to see how Herring and Merritt are coming on. He is a pickled Herring now, I warrant," and Jack laughed heartily at the recollection of the bully's sudden retreat.

He hurried back the way he had come, and shortly found Herring bending over a spring and trying to wash the ammonia from his face and eyes.

He had laid aside his mask and the stick he had carried, and was totally unprepared for Jack's coming.

"What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the herring," laughed Jack as he came up behind the bully and suddenly sent him plunging headfirst into the spring.

Herring sputtered and gasped, and Jack gave him another ducking, and without the slightest compunction.

"I don't believe in taking a mean advantage of a fellow, as a rule," he laughed, "but that is the only thing that a fellow like you will understand. This is the two-four-six degree, Herring."

Then he gave the bully another ducking and finally left him to look for Merritt, who also deserved something more than he had received.

"I am going to give you a reward of Merritt, Ernest," he laughed, as he finally came upon the sneak sitting on a stone at the edge of the woods, looking very miserable.

"Get out of here, I haven't done nothing," snarled Merritt, too weak to get up. "It wasn't me, it was Pete Herring."

"What is that mask doing on the ground, Merritt?" asked Jack. "And you have your old clothes on also. How does that happen, if you were not in this plot the same as Herring?"

"I was going blackberrying and wore my old clothes so's they wouldn't get hurt. You gotter wear something over your face, too, to keep it from getting scratched."

"Well, here's something else," laughed Jack as he plunged his hand into a mudhole close by and brought it up fairly reeking with black ooze.

Then he gave a generous plaster of the stuff to the bully's face, and chuckled as he went away:

"They say that mud is a sure cure for a lot of things, Merritt, and maybe it will cure you of trying to haze a fellow unawares. Think it over. Thinking won't hurt you, anyhow. You don't do enough to injure you."

Herring had taken himself off by the time Jack went back to the spring, evidently fearing that he would get another dose, which in his weak state he had no desire for and the boy did not find him.

"Well, he has had enough to last him for a time, at any rate," he said with a grin, "and I am not resentful enough to further add to his troubles. I wonder how those others are doing?"

He found Holt sitting on the ground looking very wretched and said, wiping his muddy hand on the fellow's face:

"There's a plaster for you, Holt. You don't look very pretty, but it may do you good."