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CHAPTER IV
HOLIDAY FUN

“Jolly times to-night, fellows!” exclaimed Jack Fitch as he, with Tom and the other chums, walked along the snowy road on their way back to Elmwood Hall. “No boning to do, and we can slip away with some eats on the side and have a grub-fest.”

“That’s right,” chimed in Bert Wilson. “Maybe you’d better put off telling us about the hunting trip, Tom, until we all get together. Suppose we meet in my room – it’s bigger.”

“All right,” agreed Tom. “Anything suits me as long as you fellows don’t grab all the crackers and cheese before I get there.”

“We’ll save you a share,” promised Morse Denton.

“I’ve got part of a box of oranges my folks sent me,” volunteered George Abbot.

“Bring ’em along,” advised Jack. “They’ll come in handy to throw at the fellows if any of ’em try to break in on us.”

“What! Throw my oranges!” cried George. “Say, they’re the finest Indian Rivers, and – ”

“All right. If they’re rivers, we’ll let ’em swim instead of throwing ’em,” conceded Bert. “Anything to be agreeable.”

“Oh, say now!” protested George, who did not always know how, or when, to take a joke.

“It’s all right, don’t let ’em fuss you,” advised Tom in a low voice. “But, fellows, we’d better hustle if we’re going to have doings to-night.”

“That’s right!” chorused the others, and they set off at a rapid pace toward Elmwood Hall, which could be seen in the distance, the red setting sun of the December day lighting up its tower and belfry. The skates of the students jangled and clanked as they hurried on, making a musical sound in the frosty air, for it was getting colder with the approach of night.

“Seasonable weather,” murmured Jack. “It’ll be a lot colder than this up in the Adirondacks, when we start hunting deer and bear.”

“What’s all this?” asked Morse, with a sudden show of interest.

“Some of Tom’s schemes,” answered Jack. “We’re going on a hunting trip.”

Morse looked to Tom for confirmation.

“That’s the idea,” Tom said, briefly sketching his plan. “Bert, Jack and George are going with me. Like to have you come along.”

“I’d like to, first rate, old man,” was the answer, given with a shake of the head, “but the governor has planned a trip to Palm Beach for the whole family, over Christmas, and I have to go along to keep order.”

“I’m sorry,” voiced Tom, but his words were lost in a gale of laughter from his chums as they sensed the final words of Morse.

“You keep order! You’re a fine one for that!”

“The fellow who tied the cow to Merry’s back stoop!”

“Yes, and the lad who put the smoke bomb in the furnace room! A fine chap to keep things straight!”

“Oh, well, you don’t have to believe me!” said Morse, with an air of injured innocence that ill became him.

“They evidently don’t,” commented Tom dryly.

“Say, what was the row about just before I came back with that horse?” asked Morse, as though he wanted to change the subject.

“Snowball and old Skeel,” explained Tom briefly. “It was sort of a case of a perfectly irresistible force coming in contact with a perfectly immovable body – but not quite,” and he went more into the details of the accident on the ice.

“Humph! He must have been pretty mad,” commented Morse.

“He was. Threatened arrest and all that. But Tom calmed him down,” said Jack with a chuckle. “I guess Skeel didn’t want to see the police very badly.”

“What gets me, though,” spoke George, in his perpetually questioning voice, “was what Skeel was doing around here.”

“I’d like to know that myself,” voiced Tom. But he was not to know until later, and then to his sorrow.

As the group of lads progressed, they were joined, from time to time, by other students from Elmwood, who had been out enjoying the day either by skating, coasting or sledding, and it was a merry party that approached the gate, or main entrance to the grounds, passing through the quadrangle of main buildings, and scattering to their various dormitories.

The holiday spirit was abroad. It was in the air – everywhere – the glorious spirit of Christmas, the day of which was not far distant. The boys seemed to know that the school discipline would be somewhat relaxed, though they did not take too much advantage of it.

Various engagements were made for surreptitious parties to meet here and there, to enjoy forbidden, and, therefore, all the more delightful, midnight lunches. The lads had been saving part of their allowances for some time, just for this occasion, and some had even arranged to bring away with them, from the refectory, some of their supper that night.

In due time a merry little party had gathered in the room of Bert Wilson in one of the larger and newer dormitories. The boys slid in, one by one, taking reasonable care not to meet with any prowling professor or monitor. But they knew that unless the rules were flagrantly violated, little punishment would be meted out. Each lad who came brought with him a more or less bulky package, until Bert’s room looked like the headquarters of some war, earthquake or flood-relief society, as Tom said.

“And are these the oranges George boasted of?” asked Jack, taking up one and sampling it.

“Aren’t they dandies?” demanded George.

“Whew! Oh, my! Who put orange skins on these lemons?” demanded Jack, making a wry face.

“Lemons?” faltered George, a look of alarm spreading over his expressive countenance.

“Lemons?” cried Tom. “Let me taste. Whew! I should say so,” he added. “They’re as sour as citric acid.”

“And he said they came from Indian River,” mocked Morse.

“Let’s throw ’em out the window,” proposed Joe Rooney.

“And him after them!” added Lew Bentfield.

“No, let’s save them to fire at Merry in chapel in the morning,” was another suggestion.

“I say, you fellows,” began the badgered one, “those oranges – ”

“They’re all right – the boys are only stringing you,” whispered Tom. “Don’t get on your ear.”

The advice came in good time. The arrival of other revelers turned the topic of conversation.

“Oh, here’s Hen Watson. What you got, Hen?”

“A cocoanut cake!” cried someone who looked in the box Hen carried. “Where’d you get that?”

“Bought it – where’d you s’pose?” asked Hen. “Here, keep your fingers out of that!” he cried, as Jack took a sample “punch” out of the top of the pastry.

“I wanted to see if it was real,” was the justifying answer.

“Oh, it’s real all right.”

“Here’s Sam Black. What you got, Sam?”

“Why, he’s all swelled up as though he had the mumps.”

Sam did indeed bulge on every side. He did not speak, but, entering the room, began to unload himself of bottled soda and root beer. From every pocket he took a bottle – two from some – and others from various nooks and corners of his clothes, until the bed was half covered with bottled delight.

“Say, that’s goin’ some!” murmured Jack enviously.

“It sure is,” agreed Tom. “We won’t die of thirst from my olives now,” for Tom had brought a generous supply of those among other things.

Someone leaned against the bed, and the bottles rolled together with many a clatter and clash.

“Easy there!” cautioned Bert. “Do you want to bring the whole building up here? Remember this isn’t the dining-hall. Go easy!”

“I didn’t mean to,” spoke George, the offending one.

Gradually the room filled, until it was a task to move about in it, but this was no detriment at all to the lads. Then in the dim light of a few shaded candles, for they did not want the glimmer of the electrics to disclose the affair to some watching monitor, the feast began.

It was eminently successful, and the viands disappeared as if by magic. The empty bottles were set aside so their accidental fall would not make too much noise.

Gradually jaws began to move more slowly up and down in the process of mastication, and tongues began to wag more freely, though in guarded tones.

“This sure is one great, little Christmas feed!” commented Jack.

“All to the horse-radish,” agreed Tom. “But it’s nothing to what we’ll have when we get up in the Adirondack camp, fellows. I wish you were all coming.”

“So do we!” chorused those who were not going, for various reasons.

“Hark! What’s that?” suddenly cried George. Instantly there was silence.

“Nothing but the wind,” said Tom. “Say, fellows,” he went on, “I have an idea.”

“Chain it!” advised Jack. “They’re rare birds these days.”

“Let’s hear what it is,” suggested Bert. “If it’s any good, we’ll do it.”

CHAPTER V
OFF TO CAMP

Tom Fairfield disposed himself comfortably on the bed before replying. There was room there, now, for the food and drink had been disposed of. Tom stretched out, finished a half-consumed sardine sandwich, and went on.

“You know old Efficiency, don’t you?” began Tom, with tantalizing slowness.

“I should say we did!” came in a whispered chorus.

“The prof who’s always lecturing on improving your opportunities, isn’t he?” asked a student who had not been at Elmwood very long.

“That’s the one,” resumed Tom. “You know he claims we all eat and drink too much. He holds that a person should find the minimum amount of food on which he can live, and take no more than that.”

“I’ve had more than my share to-night, all right,” comfortably murmured Jack.

“And Efficiency, as we call him,” went on Tom, “is a hater of feasting of any sort, unless it be a feast of reason. I think he lives on half a cracker and a gill of milk a day, or something like that.”

“Well, what’s the idea?” asked Bert, impatiently.

“This,” answered Tom, calmly. “We will take the remains of our herewith feast, the broken victuals, the things in which they were contained, the empty tins, the depleted bottles, and deposit them on the doorstep of the domicile of Professor Hazeltine, otherwise known as Old Efficiency. When they are seen there it will show to the world that he does not practice what he preaches.”

There was silence for a moment following Tom’s announcement, and then came chuckles and smothered laughter.

“Say, that’s a good one all right!”

“It sure is!”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! It takes Tom Fairfield to think ’em out!”

“Easy there!” Bert cautioned them. “You’ll give the whole snap away, if you’re not careful.”

“Well, shall we do it?” asked Tom.

“I should say we will!” declared Jack.

“Then gather up the stuff and come along, a few at a time,” advised the ringleader. “We don’t want to make too much noise.”

A little later dark and silent figures might have been observed stealing across the school campus, carrying various objects. The front stoop of the professor, who was such a stickler for efficiency and the maximum of effect with the minimum of effort, was in the shadow, and soon it was piled high with many things.

Emptied sardine tins, olive bottles which contained only the appetizing odor, pasteboard cartons of crackers or other cakes, ginger-ale bottles with only a few drops of the beverage in the bottom, papers and paper bags, the pasteboard circlets from Charlotte russes – these and many more things from the forbidden midnight feast were piled on the steps. Then the conspirators stole away, one by one, as they had come.

Tom Fairfield lingered last to make a more artistic arrangement of the empty bottles; then he, too, joined his chums.

“I rather guess that’ll make ’em lie down and close their eyes,” he said, in distinction to the process of “sitting up and taking notice.”

“It sure will,” agreed Jack, with a chuckle.

There were whispered good-nights, pre-holiday greetings and then the students sought their rooms, for there was a limit beyond which they did not want to stretch matters.

In the morning they were sufficiently rewarded for their efforts – if rewarded be the proper word.

Professor Hazeltine, going to his front door to get his early morning paper, saw the array of bottles and debris. At first he could not believe the evidence of his eyesight, but a second look convinced him that he could not be mistaken.

“The shame of it!” he murmured. “The shame of that disgraceful gorging of food. They must be made an example of – no matter who they are. The shame of it! I shall report them! Oh, the waste here represented! The shameful waste of food! I suppose all that is here represented was consumed in a single night. It might have lasted a month. I shall see that they are punished, not only for their disgraceful action in thus littering my stoop, but for gorging themselves like beasts!”

But the professor forgot one thing, namely, that to punish a culprit one must first know who he is, and how to catch him. It was the old application of first get your rabbit, though doubtless the professor would have changed the proverb to some milder form of food.

However, he took up his paper, ordered the servant to remove the debris, and then proceeded to his simple breakfast of a certain bran-like food mingled with milk, a bit of dry toast and a cup of corn-coffee. After which, bristling with as much indignation as he could summon on such cold and clammy food, he went to Dr. Meredith and complained.

The Head smiled tolerantly.

“You must remember that it is the holiday season,” he said. “Boys will be boys.”

“But, Doctor, I do not so much object to the disgraceful exhibition they made of me. I can stand that. No one who knows me, or my principles, would think for a moment that I could consume the amount of food represented there.”

“No, I think you would be held guiltless of that,” agreed the President.

“But it is the fact that the young men – our students – could so demean themselves like beasts as to partake of so much gross food,” went on Professor Hazeltine. “After all my talks, showing the amount of work that can be done, mental and physical, on a simple preparation of whole wheat, to think of them having eaten sardines, smoked beef, canned tongue, potted ham, canned chicken – for I found tins representing all those things on my steps, Dr. Meredith. It was awful!”

“Yes, the boys must have had a bountiful feast,” agreed the President with a sigh.

Was it a sigh of regret that his days for enjoying such forbidden midnight “feeds” were over? For he was human.

“I want those boys punished, not so much for what they did to me as for their own sakes,” demanded Professor Hazeltine. “They must learn that the brain works best on lighter foods, and that to clog the body with gross meat is but to stop the delicate machinery of the – ”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Dr. Meredith, a bit wearily. He had heard all that before. “Well, I suppose the boys did do wrong, and if you will bring me their names, I will speak to them. Bring me their names, Professor Hazeltine.”

But that was easier said than done. Not that “Efficiency” did not make the effort, but it was a hopeless task. Of course none of the boys would “peach,” and no one else knew who had been involved.

Professor Hazeltine came in for some fun, mildly poked at him by other members of the faculty.

“I understand you had quite a banquet over at your house last night,” remarked Professor Wirt.

“It was – disgraceful!” exploded the aggrieved one, and he went on to point out how the human body could live for weeks on a purely cereal diet, with cold water only for drinking purposes.

So the boys had their fun; at least, it was fun for them, and no great harm was done. Nor did Professor Hazeltine discover who were the culprits.

The school was about to close for the long holiday vacation. Already some of the students, living at a distance, had departed. There were the final days, when discipline was more than ever relaxed. Few lectures were given, and fewer attended.

Then came the last day, when farewells echoed over the campus.

“Good-bye! Good-bye!”

“Merry Christmas!”

“Happy New Year!”

“See you after the holidays!”

“Get together now, fellows, a last cheer for old Elmwood Hall! We won’t see her again until next year!”

Tom Fairfield led in the cheering, and then, gathering his particular chums about him, gave a farewell song. Then followed cheers for Dr. Meredith, and someone called:

“Three cheers for Professor Hazeltine! May his digestion never grow worse!”

The cheers were given with a will, ending with a burst of laughter, for the professor in question was observed to be shaking his fist at the students out of his window. He had not forgiven the midnight feast and its ending.

“Well, we’ll soon be on our way,” said Tom to Bert, Jack and George, as they sat together in the railroad train, for they all lived in the same part of New Jersey, and were on their way home.

“What’s the plan?” asked George.

“We’ll all meet at my house,” proposed Tom, “and go to New York City from there. Then we can take the express for the Adirondacks. We go to a small station called Hemlock Junction, and travel the rest of the distance in a sleigh. We’ll go to No. 1 Camp first, and see how we like it. If we can’t get enough game there, we’ll go on to the other camps. As I told you, we’ll have the use of all three. None of the members of the club will be up there this season.”

“But will whoever is in charge let us in?” asked Jack.

“Yes, all arrangements have been made,” Tom said. “There is grub up there, bedclothes, and everything. All we’ll take is our clothes, guns and cameras.”

“Yes, don’t forget the cameras,” urged Bert. “I expect to get some fine snapshots up there.”

“And I hope we get some good gun-shots,” put in Tom. “We’re going on a hunting trip, please remember.”

The time of preparation passed quickly, and a few days later, and shortly after Christmas, the boys found themselves in the Grand Central Station, New York, ready to take the train for camp.

They piled their belongings about them in the parlor car, and then proceeded to talk of the delights ahead of them, delights in which their fellow passengers shared, for they listened with evident pleasure to the conversation of our friends.

CHAPTER VI
DISQUIETING NEWS

Three men sat in the back room of the road-house, talking in whispers, a much-stained table forming the nucleus of the group. Two of the men were of evil faces, one not so much, perhaps, as the other, while the third man’s countenance showed some little refinement, though it was overlaid with grossness, and the light in the eyes was baleful.

The men were the same three who foregathered as Tom Fairfield and his chums left the scene of the snowball accident, and it was the same day as that occurrence. It must not be supposed that the men had been there during all the time I have taken to describe the holiday scenes at Elmwood Hall.

But I left the three men there, plotting, and now it is time to return to them, since Tom and his chums are well on their way to the winter camps in the Adirondacks.

“Well, what do you think of that plan?” asked Professor Skeel, for he was one of the three men in the back room.

“It sounds all right,” half-growled, rather than spoke, the man called Murker.

“If it can be done,” added the other – Whalen.

“Why can’t it be done?” demanded the former instructor. “You did your part, didn’t you? You found out where they were going, and all that?”

“Oh, yes, I attended to that,” was the answer. “But I don’t want to get into trouble over this thing, and it sounds to me like trouble. It’s a serious business to take – ”

“Never mind. You needn’t go into details,” said Professor Skeel, quickly, stopping his henchman with a warning look, as he glanced toward the door through which the landlord had made his egress.

“But I don’t want to be arrested on a charge of – ” the other insisted.

“There’ll be no danger at all!” broke in the rascally teacher. “I’ll do the actual work myself. I’ll take all the blame. All I want is your help. I had to have someone get the information for me, and you did that very well, Whalen. No one else could have done it.”

“Yes, I guess I pumped him dry enough,” was the chuckling comment.

“It’s a pity you had to go and get yourself discharged, though,” went on Mr. Skeel. “You would be much more useful to me at Elmwood Hall than out of it. But it can’t be helped, I suppose.”

“I didn’t go and get myself discharged!” whined he who was called Whalen. “It was that whelp, Tom Fairfield, who was to blame.”

The man did not seem to count his own disgraceful conduct at all.

“Well, if Tom Fairfield was to blame, so much the better. We can kill two birds with one stone in his case,” chuckled the professor. “Now I think we understand each other. We needn’t meet again until we are up – well, we’ll say up North. That’s indefinite enough in case anyone hears us talking, and I don’t altogether like the looks of this landlord here.”

“No, he’s too nosey,” agreed Murker. “Well, if that’s settled, I guess we’re ready for the next move,” and he looked significantly at Mr. Skeel.

“Eh? What’s that?” came the query.

“We could use a little money,” suggested the evil-faced man.

“Money. Oh, yes. I did promise to bring you some. Well, here it is,” and the former instructor divided some bills between his followers and fellow plotters.

“Now I’ll leave here alone,” he went on. “I don’t want to be seen in your company outside.”

“Not good enough for you, I reckon,” sneered Whalen.

“Well, it might lead to – er – complications,” was the retort. “So give me half an hour’s start. I’m going to drive back where I hired this cutter, and then take a train. You follow me in two days and I rather guess Tom Fairfield will wish he’d kept his fingers out of my pie!” cried Mr. Skeel, with a burst of anger.

The three whispered together a few minutes longer, and then the former instructor came out of the road-house alone and drove off.

“What do you think of him?” asked Murker of Whalen.

“Not an awful lot,” was the answer. “But he’ll pay us well, and it will give me a chance to get square with that Fairfield pup. I owe him something.”

“Well, I don’t care anything about him, one way or the other,” was the rejoinder. “I went into this thing because you asked me to, and to make a bit of money. If I do that, I’m satisfied. Now let’s get cigars and slide out of here at once.”

And thus the plotters separated.

Meanwhile, Tom and his friends were a merry party. They talked, laughed and joked, now and then casting glances at their pile of baggage, which included gun cases and cameras. For they were to do both kinds of hunting in the mountain camps, and they were particularly interested in camera work, since they were taking up something of nature study in their school course.

The railroad trip was without incident of moment, if we except one little matter. It was when George Abbot mentioned casually the name of Whalen, one of the men employed at Elmwood Hall.

“I wonder why he left so suddenly?” George said, as they were speaking of some happening at school.

“I guess I was to blame for that,” Tom explained, as he related the incident of the cruel treatment on the part of Whalen.

“I thought he looked rather sour,” went on George.

“Why, were you talking to him lately?” asked Tom, a sudden look of interest on his face.

“Yes, the day before we left the Hall. He met me in town and borrowed a quarter from me. Said he wanted to send a telegram to friends who would give him work. Then he and I got talking, and I happened to mention that we fellows were going camping.”

“You did!” exclaimed Tom.

“This Whalen was quite interested,” resumed George. “He asked me a lot of questions about the location of the camps, and what route we were going to take.”

“Did you tell him?” demanded Tom.

“Why, yes, I told him some things. Any harm?”

“No, I don’t know that there was,” spoke Tom more slowly and thoughtfully. “But did Whalen say why he wanted to know all that?”

“No, not definitely. He did mention, though, that he might look for a job somewhere up North, and I suppose that was why he asked so many questions.”

“Maybe,” said Tom, in a low voice. Then he did some hard thinking.

In due time Hemlock Junction was reached. This was the end of the train journey, and the boys piled out with their baggage, their guns and cameras. It was cold and snowing.

“I guess that’s our man over there,” remarked Tom, indicating a person in a big overcoat with a fur cap and a red scarf around his neck. “Does he look as though his name was Sam Wilson?” asked our hero of his chums.

“Why Sam Wilson?” asked Jack.

“Because that’s the name of the man who was to meet us and drive us over to camp,” Tom said.

The man, with a smile illuminating his red face, approached.

“Looks to be plenty of room in the pung,” remarked Tom.

“What’s a pung?” asked George.

“That big sled, sort of two bobs made into one, with only a single set of runners,” explained Tom, indicating the sled to which were hitched four horses, whose every movement jingled a chime of musical bells.

“Be you the Fairfield crowd?” asked the man.

“That’s us,” Tom said. “Are you Sam Wilson?”

“Yes.”

“Then, we are discovered, as the Indians said to Columbus,” Jack murmured, in a low voice.

“Pile in,” invited Sam Wilson, indicating the pung. “I’ll get your traps. Ain’t this fine weather, though?”

“It’s a bit cold,” Bert remarked.

“That’s what a party said that I drove over to your camp the other day,” spoke Sam. “He was from down Jersey way, too. You fellers must be sort of cold-blooded down thar! This chap complained of the cold. But pshaw! This is mild to what we have sometimes. Yes, this feller I drove over kept rubbin’ his ears all the while. One ear was terrible red, and it wasn’t all from the cold either. It had some sort of a scar on it, like it had been chawed by some wild critter. It sure was a funny ear!”

Tom looked at his chums with startled gaze. This was disquieting news indeed.