The lads were still some distance from the college grounds when they heard the sounds of horns and rattles.  Then they beheld a glimmer of light down by the river bank.  Soon the light brightened until it covered a goodly portion of the sky.

“Some bonfires and some noise!” was Sam’s comment.

“Well, we don’t defeat Roxley every day in the year,” returned Tom, gaily.  “Say, this suits me right down to the ground!  Songbird, you ought to get up a poem in honor of the occasion.”

“Perhaps I will,” answered the would-be poet of the college, and then he began to murmur to himself.  Evidently the poem was already beginning to shape itself in his fertile mind.

“I say, you Rovers!” came a call as the car swung into the roadway lining one side of the campus.  “What’s the matter with giving us a joy ride?” and one of the students came running forward, followed by several others.  Two of them carried torches made of old brooms dipped in tar.

“Nothing doing to-night,” returned Sam quickly, and added in a whisper to Tom:  “Those fellows would wreck the car completely.”

“I know it,” answered the older Rover, and then he said aloud:  “We have had all the run we want this evening.  We are going to celebrate with the rest of the crowd down at the river.”  And without stopping to argue the matter, Tom ran the automobile to its garage.

“Back, safe an’ sound, eh?” questioned Abner Filbury, as he came forward to take charge of the machine.

“Ab, you look out that some of the fellows don’t take this car to-night,” warned Tom.

“There ain’t no cars goin’ out less’n I’ve the correct orders for ‘em,” replied Abner.  “This is the last machine in, an’ I’m goin’ to lock up an’ stay on guard.  If anybody tries to break in here against orders, they’ll git a dose of buckshot in ’em.”  And Abner pointed grimly at a shotgun that hung on one of the walls.

“Oh, Ab, don’t go in for shooting anybody!” exclaimed Sam, in alarm.  “Turn the hose on them, that will be enough.”

“All right, jest as you say.  But they ain’t goin’ to git in here at these machines without permission.”

Tom and Sam made a hasty visit to their room, and then hurried downstairs again and off to the waterfront.  Here, several bonfires had been lit.  They were composed of boxes and barrels with a large quantity of brushwood added, and one bonfire was nearly twenty feet in height.

“Here they come!” called out a student.

“Hurrah for our pitcher!”

“And the best fly catcher Brill ever saw!”

“Say, this is certainly some bonfire!” exclaimed Sam, looking at the big blaze.

“It sure is!” returned his brother.  “If the wind should shift, it might prove dangerous,” he added, as he watched a great mass of sparks floating across the stream and over the woods beyond.

“Oh, it’s perfectly safe,” came from Paul Orben, who was one of the students who had helped to pile up the combustibles.