Then the captives were bound to the stakes and a lot of brush was brought and piled about their feet.

Some of the sophs actually looked scared, but Browning kept up a continual fire of sarcastic remarks.

“Ugh!” grunted Hole-in-his-Face.  “This paleface talks heap much.  Remove his outer garments, so the fire may reach his flesh without delay.”

Then Browning was held and his clothes were stripped off till he stood in his under garments, barefooted, bareheaded, and still defiant.

“Oh, say!” he muttered, “won’t there be an awful hour of reckoning!  Merriwell will regret the day he came to Yale!”

At this Hole-in-his-Face laughed heartily, and Browning cried: 

“Oh, I know you, Merriwell!  You can’t fool me, though you have got the best makeup of them all.”

When everything was ready, one of the savages actually touched a match to the various piles of brush about the feet of the unfortunate sophomores.

As the tiny flames leaped up the painted band joined in a wild war dance about the stakes, flourishing their weapons and whooping as if they were real Indians.  Some of their postures and steps were exact imitations of the poses and steps taken by savages in a war dance.

“Say, confound you fool freshmen!” howled one of the captives.  “This fire is getting hot!  Do you really mean to roast us?”

“Yah! yah! yah!  Hough! hough! hough!”

Round and round the stake circled the disguised freshmen, and the fire kept getting higher and higher.

Puss Parker fell to coughing violently, having sucked down a large quantity of smoke.  Some of the others raved and some begged.  But still the wild dance went on.

“Merciful cats!” gasped Tad Horner.  “I believe they actually mean to roast us!”

“Sure as fate!” agreed another.  “They won’t think to put out the fires till we are well cooked, if they do then!”

“This is awful!” gurgled Parker.  “Browning, can’t you do something?”

“Well, I hardly think so,” confessed the king of the sophomores.  “But I will do something if I ever get out of this alive!  You hear me murmur!”

“Say!” cried Tad Horner.  “I can’t stand this much longer.  The fire is beginning to roast me.”

“It’s getting warm,” confessed Parker.  “But it seems to keep burning around the outside edge.”

“Keep cool,” advised Browning.

“What’s that?” yelled Horner.  “Who said ‘keep cool?’ Oh, say!  That’s too much!”

“Just look at the wood,” directed the king of the sophomores.  “You will notice that all the wood about our feet is water soaked, and there’s only a little dry wood out around the edges.  That’s all that is burning.”

This they soon saw was true, and it gave them great relief, for it had begun to seem that the crazy freshmen actually meant to roast them.

At the very moment when the uproar was at its height there came a sudden loud cry, like a signal, and out of the darkness rushed at least twenty lads.