“Six dollars.”

“Gracious!  You went in pretty deep.’

“Flapp called me a coward when I told him I didn’t want to bet, so I had to take him up,” went on Songbird.  “Had it been anybody else I might have given the money back.  But I won’t give it back to that bully.”

“It’s against the rules to bet, Songbird.”

“But you are not going to tell on me, are you?”

“You know me better than to ask the question.  Just the same, I am sorry you bet,” said Dick.

“I’m going to treat the boys as soon as I get the chance,” went on Powell.  “Six dollars will buy a whole lot of ice cream and cake, not to mention soda and candy and peanuts.”  And then he began to hum to himself: 

“Peanuts and candy and raspberry ice,
Chocolate cake, and all that’s nice,
Ev’ry student can come if he will,
And ev’ry student can eat his fill!”

“I believe you’d sing at a funeral,” said Dick, laughing.

“I wouldn’t sing at my own funeral,” answered Powell, and stalked off, humming as gayly as ever.

The remainder of the day passed quietly enough, although by the whispering in various tents it was easy to see that something unusual was in the air.

“Hazing to-night, as sure as guns,” said Major Larry to one of the officers.

“Shall we arrest the hazers”? asked the officer, with a twinkle in his eye.

“You must obey orders,” answered the youthful major, non-committally, since he had given no orders on the subject.

He could well remember his first year in camp, when he had been dragged from his cot at midnight, almost stripped, and thrown into a brook of icy spring water, and then made to run over a rough road in his bare feet for half a mile, “just to warm up,” as the hazers told him.  It was rough sport, not to be approved, but “boys will be boys,” and it is practically impossible to stop hazing even in the highest of our institutions of learning.

It was poor Hans Mueller who was the first to suffer that night.  In the midst of the darkness, for there was no moon, Hans found himself suddenly aroused from his slumbers by being dragged out of his cot by the feet.

“Shtop!” he began, when a hand was thrust over his mouth.  Then he was raised up by six cadets, shoved out of the back of the tent and carried away to the grove in the rear of the camp.  The party had to pass two sentries, but the sentries were evidently posted, for they appeared to see nothing wrong.

Hans was not allowed to speak until he was out of hearing distance of the camp.  Then he was dumped on the ground with a dull thud.

“Mine cracious! vot does dis mean annahow”? he demanded, as he struggled to his feet.  “Does you vants to kill me alretty, drowing me aroundt like a log of vood, hey”?

There was no answer, and now he looked at the cadets, to discover that each wore a black mask, with a hood from which two black horns protruded.