The king of the sophomores mopped his face with his handkerchief.  He seemed on the verge of utter collapse.

The listening lads could not entirely restrain their laughter.  The picture Browning presented and the incident he was relating were altogether too ludicrous.

“Talk about rackets!” he wearily continued; “we had one then and there.  The cats yowled and the dogs howled.  The women fell over each other and screamed blue murder.  The men chased the dogs and roared blue blazes.  And the wind blew hard!

“One of the cats alighted on an old lady’s head.  The cat’s mistress grabbed her and took her away.  The cat had socked her claws into the old lady’s wig, and it came off, leaving her almost as bare as a billiard ball.  Oh, marmer!

“Two of the cats fell to tearing the fur out of each other.  Some of them walked on the ceiling, like flies, in their endeavors to get away from the dogs.  One of them pounced on a dog’s back and rode him around the room, as if she were a circus performer.  The other dog chased a cat under the bed, and they were having it there.  Oh, they didn’t do a thing—­not a thing!

“After a while one of the men captured one of the dogs and dragged him toward the door.  The other man saw him and made a rush for him.  ’Drop that dawg!’ he yelled.  ‘It’s my dawg!’ the other man yelled back.  And then the other man howled, ‘You’re another.  It’s my dawg!’

“Right away after that there was trouble between the owners of the dogs.  They tried to hurt each other, and they succeeded very well.  One of them had both eyes blacked, while the other lost two teeth, had his lips split and his nose knocked out of plumb.  But they smashed the stuffing out of the furniture while they were doing it.

“I climbed up on something in one corner and did my best to cheer them on.  I sincerely hoped both would be killed.  The dogs seemed to feel it their duty to enter into the spirit of the occasion, and they chewed each other more or less.

“Then the police came in.  I came near landing in the station house, along with the two men who were fighting, but they concluded not to pinch me.  The women departed after having once more expressed their opinion all around concerning me.

“When they were gone Hartwick came out of the clothespress.  We sat down amid the ruins and said over some words that will not bear repetition.

“That’s the whole of the cat-and-dog story.  I’ve never been able to prove that Merriwell put the advertisement into the paper, but it is all settled in my mind.  It was directly after this that I went into training.”

Some of the sophs laughed and some showed indignation.

“It was a very nawsty thing to do,” declared Paulding.

“I can’t help laughing over it.” chuckled Tad Horner.  “But of course you ought to get back at Merriwell.”

“Well, I shall do my best.”

“I don’t think you need to train to do that trick,” said Punch Swallows.  “A man who can knock out Kid Lajoie ought to polish off a freshman in a minute.”