“I had rather be a cad than a ruffian, sir!”

“If you were a gentleman you would take your medicine like a gentleman.  You’d never squeal.”

“You fellows are the ones who are squealing now, for you see you have been imposing on the wrong man.”

“Man!” shot back the little fellow, contemptuously.  “There’s not much man about a chap that blows when he is hazed a little.”

“A little! a little!  Is this what you call a little?”

“Oh, this is nothing.  Think of what the poor freshies used to go through in the old days of Delta Kappa and Signa Epsilon.  Why, sometimes a fellow would be roasted so his skin would smell like burned steak for a week.”

“That was when he was burned at the stake,” said a chap in the background, and there was a universal dismal groan.

“This is some of the Delta Kappa machinery here,” the little fellow explained.  “Sometimes some of the fellows come here to have a cold bot and hot lob.  You freshies walked right in on us to-night, and we gave you a pleasant reception.  Now, if you blow I’ll guarantee you’ll never become a soph.  The fellows will do you, and do you dirty, before your first year is up.”

“Such threats do not frighten me,” haughtily flung back the lad from Virginia.  “I know this was a put-up job, and Bruce Browning was in it.  He got us to come here.  Frank Merriwell knew something about it, or he’d never been so ready to come.  And I know you, too, Tad Horner.”

The little fellow fell back a step, and then, with a sudden angry impulse, he tore off his mask, showing a flushed, chubby, boyish face, from which a pair of great blue eyes flashed at Diamond.

“Well, I am Tad Horner!” he cried, “and I’m not ashamed of it!  If you want to throw me down, go ahead.  It will be a low, dirty trick, and will show the kind of big stuff you are!”

The masked lads were surprised, for Tad had never exhibited such spirit before.  He had always seemed like a mild, shy, mother-boy sort of chap.  He had been hazed and had cried; but he wouldn’t beg and he never squealed.  After that Browning had taken him under his wing, had fought his battles, and had stood by him through the freshman year.  Anybody who was looking for trouble could find it by imposing on Horner; and Browning, for all of his laziness, could fight like a tiger when he was aroused.

Some of the students clapped their hands in approbation of Tad’s plain words, and there was a general stir.  One fellow proposed that everybody unmask, so that all would be on a level with Horner, but the little fellow quickly cried: 

“Don’t do it!  You’d all be spotted, and the faculty would know who to investigate if anything should happen to Diamond.  If I’m fired, I want you fellows to settle with him for me.”

“We’ll do it—­we’ll do it, Tad!” cried more than twenty voices.

Diamond showed his white, even teeth and laughed shortly.