CHAPTER XIX

THE FRESHMEN DANCE

"Here, quit!" cried Sid, making an effort to pull back the coverings on which Tom was yanking. "Let a fellow alone, can't you? Quit fooling! This is no freshman's room!"

"Get out, you old duffer!" yelled Phil. "The place is on fire!"

"Who's on the wire?" asked Sid, thinking some one had called him on the telephone. "I don't care who it is. I'm not going to answer this time of night. I want to sleep. Tell 'em to call up again."

"Fire! Fire! Not wire!" shouted Tom in his ear, and this time Sid heard and was fully awake. He caught a glimpse of the clouds of lurid smoke pouring in from the corridor.

"Jumping Johnnie cake! I should say it was a fire!" he cried. "Come on, fellows, let's get some of our stuff out! I want my football pictures," and with that Sid rushed to the wall and yanked down the only bit of ornamentation he cared for--a lithograph of a Rugby scrimmage. "Come on!" he yelled, grabbing up a pile of his clothes from a chair. "This is all I want. Let the books and other stuff go!"

"But the sofa! The chair!" cried Tom, who had peered out into the hall, only to jump back again, gasping and choking. "We can chuck them out of the window."

"That's right. Can't hurt 'em much," added Phil, who was getting into his trousers.

"Grab hold, then. But wait until I button my vest," ordered Tom, who was fumbling with the garment, the only one he had grabbed up. He had switched on the electric light, and the gleam shone through a cloud of the reddish smoke. "What's the matter with this blamed thing, anyhow?" he cried, as he fumbled in vain for the buttons.

"You've got it on backwards!" cried Sid, who had tossed his clothes out of the window, following them with the picture, and was now ready to help his chums.

"Great Jehosophat!" cried Tom. "So I have!"

He yanked off the garment and tossed it into a corner. Then, clad only in his pajamas, he started to carry the old armchair to the window. It was almost too much for him, and Sid came to his aid.

"Let that go, and get the sofa out first!" cried Phil. "The chair can fall on that. Say, listen to the row!"

Out in the corridor could be heard confused shouts, and the sound of students running to and fro. Every now and then some one would cry "Fire!" and the rush would be renewed.

"The whole place must be going!" cried Sid. "Hurry up, Tom, shove it out! Maybe we can save some other things."

"Better save ourselves first!" exclaimed Phil. "The stairs and halls are all ablaze!" He came back from a look into the corridor choking and gasping. "We've got to jump for it! Shove that chair out, then the sofa, and pile the bedding on top. That will make a place to land on."

"Here she goes!" shouted Tom, and he and Sid shoved their precious old chair from the window. It fell with a great crash to the ground, two stories below.

"Broken to bits!" said Tom with a groan. "Now for the sofa. There'll be nothing left of it."

They had raised it to the window sill, after much effort, and were balancing it there while recovering their breaths. Their room was filled with the heavy fumes of smoke, and the noise in the corridor was increasing.

"Let her go!" cried Phil. "Lively, now, if we want to get out alive!"

But just as the three chums were about to release their hold on the sofa, Mr. Snell, one of the under-janitors of the college, and a sort of scout or spy of the proctor's, ran into the room.

"There's no fire! There's no danger!" he called. "Don't throw anything out."

"No fire?" questioned Tom.

"No. Some of the students burned red fire in the halls, that's all," went on Mr. Snell. "There's no danger. The proctor sent me around to explain. It's only some illuminating red fire."

Tom, Sid and Phil looked at each other, as they stood at the window, holding their precious sofa. The clouds of smoke were rolling away, and the noise was lessening. Tom looked out of the casement, and, in the semi-darkness below, saw the chair they had thrown out. Just then, from below, a crowd of freshmen, who had perpetrated the trick, began singing "Scotland's Burning."

Tom glanced at his chums. Then he uttered one word:

"Stung!"

"Good and proper!" added Phil.

"By a nest of fresh hornets!" commented Sid wrathfully.

The scout withdrew. Phil looked at his trousers, and then he began slowly to take them off. Tom took one more look out of the window.

"They're jumping all over our chair," he said.

"They are? The young imps!" cried Sid. "Come on to the rescue! Get into some togs and capture a few freshmen." Then, as he realized that he had tossed his clothes out of the window, he groaned. "You fellows will have to go," he said. "I haven't any duds."

"They're parading around with your best go-to-meeting suit," observed Phil. Sid groaned again.

"Hurry, fellows, if you love me," he said.

"There's a crowd of sophs after 'em now," added Tom, and so it proved. The freshmen beat a retreat, and some of our friends' classmates formed a guard around the things on the ground.

The three chums were not the only ones who had tossed articles out of their windows in the moments of excitement. Many possessions of the sophomores were on the ground below, and, now that the scare was over, they began collecting them. Tom and Phil managed, with the help of some of their classmates, to get Sid's garments and the chair back to their room. The chair was in sad shape, though, and Sid groaned in anguish as he viewed it.

"Oh, quit!" begged Phil, as he tossed Sid's clothes on the bed. "We can fix it up again."

"It'll never be the same," wailed Sid as he tried it. "There was a place that just fit my back, and now----"

He leaped up with a howl, and held his hand to the fleshy part of his leg.

"What's the matter?" asked Tom.

"A broken spring stuck me," explained Sid, who was too lightly clad to indulge in indiscriminate sitting about. "Oh, those freshies! What can we do to get square with them?"

"That's more like it," said Tom. "We've got to pay them back in some way, and the sooner the better."

It was an hour or more before matters had quieted down in the west dormitory. From various sophomores who came into their room to exchange notes, Tom, Phil and Sid learned that the freshmen had executed a well-organized fire scare by the simple process of burning in each corridor some of the powder extensively used on Fourth of July, or in political parades.

"Well, there's no use talking about what they did to us," said Ed Kerr. "The question is, what can we do to them? They certainly put it all over us."

"Dutch, you ought to be able to suggest something," said Tom. "You're always up to some trick. Give us one to play on the freshies."

"Sure," agreed Dutch. "Let me think."

Sid arose and turned out the light.

"What's that for?" asked Dutch.

"So you can think better. I can, in the dark. Go ahead, now. Let's have something good."

Dutch was silent for a few minutes, and then he proposed a plan which was received with exclamations of delight.

"The very thing!" cried Tom. "I wonder we didn't think of it before. We'll be just in time. Now, maybe we can make them laugh on the other side of their heads."

The next morning there were triumphant looks on the faces of the freshmen. They had played a good joke on their traditional enemies, the sophomores, and felt elated over it. But, in accordance with a plan they had adopted the night after Dutch revealed his plan, the sophomores made no retort to the taunts of their enemies. And there was no lack of railery. Gathered on the walk about Booker Memorial Chapel, whence for many terms freshmen had, by traditional college custom, been barred, the first-year lads made all sorts of jokes concerning the scrabble that had ensued among the sophomores when the cry of fire was raised.

"And we have to stand it!" exclaimed Tom, gritting his teeth.

"For a couple of days," added Sid. "But it strikes me, old chap, that last term you played the rôle of the aforesaid freshies to perfection."

"Oh, that was different. But let them wait. We'll put the kibosh on their fun in a few days. Has Dutch got the stuff?"

"Hush!" exclaimed Phil. "The least hint will spoil the scheme of revenge! Revenge! Revenge!" he hissed, after the manner of a stage villain. "We will have our re-venge-e-e-e-e!"

It was the night of the freshman dance, an annual affair that loomed large in the annals of the first-year students and their girl friends. It was to be held in a hall in Haddonfield, and many were the precautions taken by the committee to prevent any of the hated sophomores from attending, or getting to the place beforehand, lest they might, by some untoward act, "put it on the blink," as Holly Cross used to say.

The hall was tastefully arranged with flowers and a bank of palms, behind which the orchestra was to be hidden. About the balcony were draped the college colors, with the class hues of the freshmen intermingled.

Early on the evening of the dance, Garvey Gerhart, who was chairman of the committee on arrangements, left the college on his way to town to see that all was in readiness.

"Doesn't he look pretty!" exclaimed Phil, who, with a group of sophomores, stood near Booker Chapel.

"I wonder if he has his dress suit on?" asked Tom.

"We ought to see if his hair is parted," put in Sid. "Freshmen don't know how to look after themselves. Have you a clean pocket handkerchief, Algernon?" and he spoke the last in a mocking tone.

"Look out; there may be another fire," retorted Gerhart with a grin, and the sophomores could only grit their teeth. They knew the freshmen still had the laugh on them.

"But not for long?" muttered Phil. "Is Dutch all ready?"

"All ready," answered that worthy for himself. "We'll slip off to town as soon as it's dusk."

"Think you'll have any trouble in getting in?" asked Ed Kerr.

"Not a bit. I bribed one of the doorkeepers. Be on hand outside to listen to the fun."

A little before the first arrivals at the freshman dance had reached the hall, a figure might have been seen moving quickly about the ballroom in the dim illumination from the half-turned-down lights. The figure went about in circles, with curious motions of the hands, and then, after a survey of the place and a silent laugh, withdrew.

The music began a dreamy waltz, following the opening march. Freshmen led their fair partners out on the floor, and began whirling them about. The lights twinkled, there was the sweet smell of flowers, fair faces of the girls looked up into the proud, flushed ones of the youths. Chaperons looked on approvingly. The music became a trifle faster. The dance was in full swing.

Suddenly a girl gave a frightened little cry.

"What's the matter?" asked her partner.

"My shoes! They--they seem to be sticking to the floor. I--I can't dance!"

From all over the room arose similar cries of dismay from the girls and exclamations of disgust from the boys. The dancers went slower and slower. It was an effort to glide about, and some could scarcely lift their feet. The floor seemed to hold them as a magnet does a bit of iron. Garvey Gerhart, releasing his pretty partner, leaned over and touched the floor.

"It's as sticky as molasses!" he cried in dismay.