A little later History poked his head in at the door.  He also had left the crowd seated on the fence, and had started for his room to study.  He saw Tug fast asleep, and let him lie undisturbed, though he was tempted to wake him up and say that Tug reminded him of the Sleeping Beauty before taking the magic kiss; but he thought it might not be safe, and went on up to his room whistling, very much off the key.

Tug slept on as soundly as the mummy of Rameses.  But suddenly he woke with a start.  He had a confused idea that he had heard some one fumbling at his window.  His sleepy eyes seemed to make out a face just disappearing from sight outside.  He dismissed his suspicions as the manufactures of sleep, and was about to fall back again on the comfortable divan when he heard footsteps outside, and the creak of his door-knob.  He rose quickly to his feet.

A masked face was thrust in at the door, and the lips smiled maliciously under the black mask, and a pair of blacker eyes gleamed through it.

Tug made a leap for the door to shut the intruder out, realizing in a flash that the hazers had truly caught him napping.

But he was too late.  The masked face was followed swiftly into the room by the body that belonged to it, and by other faces and other bodies—­all the faces masked, and all the bodies hidden in long black robes.

Tug fell back a step, and said, with all the calmness he could muster: 

“I guess you fellows are in the wrong room.”

“Nope; we’ve come for you,” was the answer of the first masker, who spoke in a disguised voice.

Tug looked as resolutely as he could into the eyes behind the mask, and asked rather nervously a question whose answer he could have as easily given himself: 

“Well, now that you’re here, what do you want?”

Again the disguised voice came deeply from the somber-robed leader: 

“Oh, we just want to have a little fun with you.”

“Well, I don’t want to have any fun with you,” parleyed Tug, trying to gain time.

“Oh, it doesn’t make any difference whether you want to come or not; this isn’t your picnic—­it’s ours,” was the cheery response of the first ghost; and the other black Crows fairly cawed with delight.

Still Tug argued:  “What right have you men got to come into my room without being invited?”

“It’s just a little surprise-party we’ve planned.”

“Well, I’m not feeling like entertaining any surprise-party to-night.”

“Oh, that doesn’t make any difference to us.”  Again the black flock flapped its wings and cawed.

And now Tug, as usual, lost his temper when he saw they were making a guy of him, and he blurted fiercely: 

“Get out of here, all of you!”

Then the crowd laughed uproariously at him.