A MIDNIGHT ESCAPADE
The seven Predatory Marauders went silently and rapidly down the path.
Although only corridor lights showed in the dormitories, there was no
knowing who might be staring out at them from some darkened window.
Once over the crest of The Prospect, as the lawn in front of Oxford is
called, the path fell quickly to the meadow below, and every member
of the little band either expressed relief or experienced it. They
might speak lightly of the risk and make fun of the consequences of
detection, but the fact remained that they were violating two principal
rules of the school, one forbidding students to leave the dormitories
after ten o’clock, the other forbidding absence from the school grounds
after supper-time without permission. To be found guilty of either
offense might well supply cause for probation. But nobody was worrying.
Without the risk, where would have been the fun?
In a few minutes they were climbing the fence into the road near the
Wissining station, Alf and Harry Durfee in advance, Dan and Tom and
Arthur and Chambers and Roeder following. If any one doubts my theory
that the ending of a school term and the beginning of vacation produces
a kind of mental intoxication, let me draw attention to the presence
of Joe Chambers. Tom and Harry Durfee were fellows who might hesitate
long before entering into such a madcap enterprise as that upon which
they were bent, but Joe Chambers, Editor of _The Scholiast_, pink of
Propriety and model of Culture, would no more have undertaken such a
thing while in the full possession of his faculties than he would have
appeared in public without his glasses, printed an advertisement on the
first page of _The Scholiast_, or refused to make a speech! That is how
I know that there is such a thing as End-of-the-Term Insanity, although
that particular form of madness has not yet been recognized by the
medical profession.
Once in the road all fear of discovery was left behind. Alf hummed a
tune, Durfee whistled under his breath, and conversation began. They
grew more quiet as they passed the station, although the platforms
proved to be empty and the agent was doubtless napping in his room. The
village proper lay a block away, and the road and the bridge which
they presently crossed were alike deserted. Beyond the bridge the road
forked, one route leading to Greenburg, and the other curving northward
along the edge of Meeker’s Marsh and eventually leading to Broadwood
Academy. The moon, which had obligingly hidden behind a cloud when they
left the school, now appeared and lighted the road for them.
“It’s a peach of a night,” said Alf, approvingly, “but I hope Mr. Moon
will take a sneak when we get to Broadwood.”
“Oh, the moon shines bright
On my old Kentucky home,”
sang Durfee, and the others joined in softly:
“On my old Kentucky home
So far away!”
They went on, singing, Alf setting a pace that if adhered to would
cover the three miles to Broadwood in short time. Presently the old
Cider Mill came into sight, a tumble-down two-story affair beyond
whose empty casements the moonlight, entering through holes in the
sagging roof, played strange pranks with the imagination. The old mill
was popularly supposed to be haunted, and it quite lived up to its
reputation so far as appearances were concerned. Weeds choked the
doorways, and even grew from the rotting sills. Behind the mill lay the
marsh, and a little stream that had once turned the stones murmured
eerily as it wandered through the sluice.
“Why didn’t you find a more cheerful place to stow the things?” asked
Dan as they drew up in front of the mill. “I’ll bet I saw a ghost in
there then.”
“Bet you it’s full of them,” said Roeder with a shiver. “I wouldn’t go
in there for a thousand dollars.”
“Don’t be an ass,” muttered Alf, crossly. “Nobody asked you to go in. I
left the things just inside the door, and I’ll get them myself.”
“Well, hurry up, then,” said Tom.
Alf started through the waist-high growth of dead weeds, but paused
before he had gone more than a dozen steps.
“I can’t carry them all,” he grumbled. “One of you fellows come and
help me.”
“Oh, go ahead,” laughed Dan, “don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” replied Alf, indignantly. “But one of you chaps might
help lug the stuff out.”
“Don’t all speak at once,” begged Harry Durfee. Joe Chambers responded
to the call and followed Alf to the door. Presently they came back
with two poles about seven feet long, each sharpened at one end, and a
roll of cotton sheeting. Alf also carried a smaller bundle which, when
opened, revealed two dozen sandwiches.
“Refreshments,” he announced. “Who wants a sandwich?”
Everybody did. Alf opened the package and laid it on a rock by the
roadside, and they stood around and munched the sandwiches. Suddenly
Tom said:
“Look up the road, Dan. Don’t you see something near the fence there?”
Dan looked and so did the others, and there was a moment’s silence.
Then,
“Sure,” said Roeder, “there’s something moving up there. Maybe it’s a
fox.”
“It’s a person,” said Tom, “and I vote we get out of sight until he
gets by. Now you can see him.”
“Right-o,” agreed Alf. “Let’s step inside the mill until the prowling
pedestrian passes.”
“Gee, I don’t want to go in there,” objected Durfee.
“Come on,” Dan laughed. “Seven of us are enough to match any ghost that
ever walked.”
“And seven’s a lucky number, too,” added Chambers, as they made
hurriedly for the doorway. They stumbled over the sill and clustered
in the darkened interior. From there they couldn’t see the intruder,
and so they ate their sandwiches and waited impatiently for him to go
by.
“Did any one bring the grub along?” whispered Dan, presently.
No one had. It was out on the rock in plain sight. Dan groaned. “If he
sees it he will stop and eat it up, or take it along with him!”
“Like fun he will!” said Alf. “If he touches it we’ll scare the life
out of him. Say, let’s do it, anyway, fellows! When he gets up here
we’ll make a noise, say ‘O-ooh!’ and see him run!”
“He ought to be here now,” said Tom. “Sneak over there and look through
a crack, Dan.”
“And break my neck! The floor’s all torn up and you can walk right
through into the water in some places. You do it, Tom. You wouldn’t be
missed the way I would.”
“Shut up!” commanded Roeder. “I hear him.”
They lapsed into silence, but no sound reached them.
“You imagined it,” grunted Alf. “Maybe he wasn’t coming this way at
all.”
“Yes, he was,” said Tom. “I saw him.” They waited several minutes
longer. Then,
“I’ll bet he’s found our sandwiches,” grumbled Durfee. “I say we sneak
out and have a look.”
“You do it,” suggested Alf. “You’re small. Don’t let him hear you,
though.” So Durfee scrambled across the sill and crept to the corner of
the building. In a moment he was back and whispering agitatedly.
“It’s a kid, and he’s eating up the sandwiches, fellows! Let’s scare
him.”
“All together, then,” said Alf. “O-o-oh!”
They all joined in the dismal groan, repeated it, and then listened for
results. But there was no sound of frightened footsteps on the road.
“Has he gone?” whispered Tom.
“I don’t believe so.” Alf put a foot over the sill. “I’m going to see.”
“So’m I,” muttered Dan. They crept to the corner and then Dan waved his
hand to the others, and one by one they followed. What they saw filled
them with amazement. On the rock, his back toward them, sat a small
boy. He had apparently taken the parcel of sandwiches into his lap and
was very busy consuming them.
“The cheek of him!” muttered Alf.
“Let’s howl!” said Dan.
“All right. Now, one――two――three!”
It was a fearsome noise they made, but the boy on the stone never
moved. He kept right on eating sandwiches.
[Illustration: “The boy on the stone never moved.”]
“Gee, he must be deaf!” gasped Roeder. “Or――say, you don’t think he’s a
ghost, do you?”
“Not with a Yardley cap on his head,” replied Tom, dryly. He stepped
out of concealment before they could stop him.
“Help yourself, Gerald,” he said, politely.
“Thanks,” answered that youth, his utterance impeded by the process of
eating, “I will. Walking does make you hungry, doesn’t it?”
“Gerald!” yelled Alf.
“Pennimore!” shouted Roeder.
They leaped to the rescue of the sandwiches and wrested them away. Dan
confronted the culprit sternly.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I’m going along with you,” replied Gerald, unruffledly. “I’m an S. P.
M. just as much as you are. I’ve been following you all the way.”
“I didn’t want you to come,” said Dan. “If I had, I’d have let you
know. This isn’t any place for you, Gerald.”
“Guess I can’t go back now,” was the cheerful response.
“You can wait here, then, until we return.”
“Oh, don’t be a granny, Dan,” broke in Alf. “Let him come along if he
wants to. What’s the difference, any way?” The sentiment was indorsed
by the others, and Dan found himself in the minority.
“That’s so, Dan,” said Joe Chambers. “The little beggar has fooled you
finely. He deserves to have some of the fun, I think.”
“All right,” said Dan, “but don’t blame me if you get into trouble,
Gerald. Any more sandwiches, fellows?”
There weren’t, but Durfee shared the one he was eating and presently
the journey began again. They took turns at carrying the three pieces
of baggage, and Durfee was called down by Alf for using one of the
stakes for a vaulting pole.
“I was merely giving an imitation of Mr. Thompson, our clever young
athlete,” replied Harry, soberly. “If I can’t do as I want to with this
stick some one else may carry it.”
“How did you happen to wake up?” asked Dan of Gerald. “I thought I was
as quiet as a mouse.”
“So you were. I wasn’t asleep. I went to bed with my underclothes on
and played fox.”
“The dickens you did! How did you know anything was up?”
“Easy! You all acted like a lot of conspirators in a melodrama, Dan.”
“Still, you couldn’t have known we were going anywhere to-night――unless
you were told. Were you?”
But Gerald refused to answer that. He only laughed.
“Huh, you fellows thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you? I was on
to you all the time.”
“I might have suspected as much,” said Dan, thoughtfully, “when I found
you’d packed your trunk. It isn’t like you to do anything of that sort
until the last moment.”
“Where are we going, Dan?” asked Gerald. “Broadwood?”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to do there? What’s in the bundle that Tom’s
carrying?”
“You wait and see,” was the answer. “We’re going to have some fun with
Broadwood――that’s all.”
“Think you might tell me,” said Gerald, aggrievedly. “I’m an S. P. M.,
ain’t I?”
“You’re a butter-in, that’s what you are,” replied Dan, grimly; “and
you’ll just wait and find out, my son.”
“I’ll ask Arthur; he’ll tell me.”
“So it was Arthur who blabbed, was it? I knew some one had.”
“I didn’t say so!”
“You don’t need to.”
“Well, he didn’t mean to tell, Dan; honest he didn’t. He forgot; and
all I found out from him was that you were going somewhere to-night.
He wouldn’t tell me anything else. You won’t say anything to him, will
you?”
“No. I guess it doesn’t matter. Only thing is, Gerald, that if faculty
gets word of this we’ll all get Hail Columbia. That’s why I didn’t want
you to come along.”
“I know. But I’d rather have the fun, Dan. How much farther is it?”
“About a mile and a half, I guess. Getting tired?”
“Tired!” said Gerald, scornfully. “No, I could walk all night!”
“Well, don’t forget that we’ve got to get home again yet,” replied Dan.
“I guess you’ll have all the walking you want, Gerald.”
To Alf’s relief the moon found another cloud to creep under just before
they reached Broadwood. Even then it was much too light for safety.
The grounds of the Academy are not very extensive, but they face the
road for some distance, and an iron picket fence about eight feet high
bounds them there. There is a carriage gate with a smaller gate beside
it halfway along the line of fence, and just inside, nestled under the
trees, stands a tiny gate-keeper’s lodge. The expedition, however,
didn’t approach that. Instead, it halted at the corner of the Academy
grounds and looked over the situation.
“The gates will be locked,” said Alf, “and even if they weren’t, the
gardener might see us. We’d better shin over here, by this post, and
keep along the shrubbery until we reach the buildings. Then we’ll have
to come out in plain sight; but I guess no one will be up at this time
of night.”
“How about getting back?” asked Tom. “Suppose some one gets after us?”
“Scatter and make for the side fence here,” answered Alf, promptly. “If
we aren’t disturbed we’ll retreat in good order. Now then, give me a
leg-up, Dan.”
One by one they crawled up by the stone corner post and dropped into
the shrubbery beyond. Then, keeping as much as possible in the shadows,
they made their way up the hill. The main buildings, five in number,
form three sides of a square at the summit, with Knowles Hall, the
finest of all, in the center. It was toward Knowles that their steps
were bent, but they didn’t make a straight line for it for the reason
that had they done so they would have been in plain sight for several
hundred yards. Instead they kept along the school boundary on the east
until a dormitory building was near. Then they slipped across to its
protecting walls, went cautiously along the end of it, and halted there
in the angle of a stone porch.
“Now then,” whispered Alf, “hand over the sign.” Chambers laid down the
roll of sheeting and Alf whipped out a knife and slashed the strings.
Then he drew a paper of thumbtacks from his pocket, and for the next
minute or two worked hard. The poles were placed on the ground, and
to each of them an end of the strip of sheeting was secured with the
thumbtacks. When all was ready Alf took one pole and Dan the other, and
with the rest of the expedition following, walked brazenly across the
turf until they were in the center of the space between the buildings,
and directly in front of the recitation hall.
“All right,” Alf whispered.
Down went the sharpened ends of the two poles into the soft sod under
the weight of the boys, and Alf backed off to view the result.
“Thunder!” he muttered. “We’ve got it wrong side to. Pull it up
fellows, and change ends. Quick!”
Up came the poles and down they went again. Then the boys gathered in
front of their handiwork, chuckling and whispering. Behind them frowned
the dark windows of Broadwood Academy. At that moment the moon, eager
perhaps to see what was up, emerged from a cloud and shone down on the
scene. Had any of the occupants of the buildings looked out just then
they would have gasped with surprise, and doubtless rubbed their eyes,
thinking themselves still asleep. For out there in the moonlight stood
a group of eight boys exhibiting unmistakable signs of delight; and
in front of them, facing the main entrance of Knowles Hall, stretched
a ten-foot long strip of white sheeting. And on it, in blue letters a
foot high, was printed:
“FATHER, IS THIS A SCHOOL?”
“NO, MY SON, IT IS BROADWOOD.”
O YOU APRIL FOOLS!