“Just wait!” snarled Jerry Koswell as he at last managed to pull himself out of the sticky mud.  “Just wait, that’s all!” His patent-leather shoes were a sight to behold.

“Not so much fun when you are hazed yourself, is it?” asked Sam coolly.

“We’ll give it to ’em yet,” put in Bart Larkspur.  “Lots of time between now and the closing of the term.”  And then he and Koswell ran off to join Dudd Flockley.  The three went to their rooms and cleaned up as best they could, and then took a walk down the road in the direction of Rushville.

“It was that Dick Rover who led the attack,” said Dudd Flockley.  “Do you know what I think?  I think he is going to try to make himself leader of the freshies.”

“Just what I thought, too,” answered Larkspur.  “And if that’s the fact we ought to do all we can to pull him down.”

“Tom Rover is the fellow I am going to get after,” came from Jerry Koswell.  He had not forgotten how Tom and Sam had sent him to the floor in the presence of Minnie Sanderson.

The three students walked a distance of half a mile when they saw approaching them a trampish-looking man carrying what looked to be a new dress-suit case.  They looked at the fellow rather sharply and he halted as he came up to them.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, “but did any of you gents lose this case?”

“Why, it must be Rover’s case!” cried Flockley.  Nearly every one in the college had heard about the missing baggage.

“I found it in the bushes alongside the road,” went on the tramp.  “Thought it might belong to some of the college gents.”

“Let me look at it,” said Koswell, and turned the case around.  “Yes, it’s Rover’s,” he added, seeing the initials and the address.

“Better take it up to the college,” put in Larkspur.

“Wait, I’ll take it up,” said Jerry Koswell suddenly.  “This belongs to a poor chap,” he added to the tramp.  “He won’t be able to reward you, but I will.  Here’s a quarter for you.”  And he passed over the silver piece.

“Much obliged,” said the tramp.  “Want me to carry it up to the buildings?”

“No, I’ll do that,” said Koswell, and then he winked at his cronies.  The tramp went on and the three watched him disappear in the distance.

“What did you do that for, Jerry?” asked Flockley with interest.  He surmised that something new was afoot.

“Oh, I did it for the fun of the thing,” answered Koswell coolly.  “But maybe I can work it in somehow against that Rover bunch.  Anyway, I’ll try.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE COLORS CONTEST

The next morning Tom was much surprised to find his missing dress-suit case standing in front of his room door.

“Hello!  How did this get here?” he cried as he picked up the baggage.

“What’s that?” asked Sam, who was just getting up.