The Hilltop Boys Part 23

"That's all right, he didn't see it and I did tear it out."

"Burn it up?"

"I guess so. Anyhow, no one won't find it and if they do so long as it ain't in the book--what the mischief!"

Herring suddenly found a book placed in front of his nose and, turning his head quickly, saw Jack Sheldon standing behind him.

"They will know that it belongs to this particular book now, won't they, when the edges match so perfectly, Herring?" asked Jack. "You were very clumsy in putting a Caesar in my desk when I am not studying it and more so in having your name in it."

Herring turned crimson and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the book out of Jack's hand.

"You can have it now, for I no longer have any use for it," said the boy, slapping Herring's face with the book, "and now I am going to give you the thras.h.i.+ng you have so long deserved."

"You are, eh?" snarled Herring, backing away.

"Yes. It is the only thing you understand."

"You see fair play, Ern," bl.u.s.tered the bully.

Jack only smiled and then without further notice attacked his enemy and administered what he had promised, a sound thras.h.i.+ng.

In a very few minutes he forced Herring to cry for a respite and to acknowledge that he was beaten.

"I could make you apologize before the doctor and the whole school,"

said Jack, as he heard the bell ring to call the boys back to their duties, "but there is no shaming a fellow who is without shame and the way I have taken is much more efficacious and you will remember it."

Then Jack left the barn and went back to the building, meeting Percival and Billy Manners at the door.

"Where have you been, Jack?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Wrestling with a pa.s.sage from Caesar," said Jack, with a laugh.

"Did you get the best of it?"

"I think I did."

"Yes, but you are not studying Caesar. What do you mean?"

"I'll tell you later if you don't guess," and Jack pa.s.sed on and into the room and took his accustomed seat.

Merritt came in rather late and some of the boys noticed that he looked excited over something.

It was nearly ten minutes before Herring took his seat and then it was seen that his face was wet and evidently lately washed and that there was a discoloration around his nose and another under one of his eyes.

"h.e.l.lo! I guess he has been wrestling with something, too," thought Percival. "I wonder if it had anything to do with Caesar?"

"You are very late, Herring," said the doctor. "What is the reason?"

"Fell down and bruised my face," muttered Herring. "Had to wash up before I came in. My nose bled."

"See that it does not occur again," said Dr. Wise, using the customary phrase which had become a habit with him.

"It will if he fools with Jack Sheldon," chuckled Percival. "I'll bet anything that he was the one who put the Caesar in Jack's desk and got paid up for it."

Neither Percival nor any of the other boys had a chance to speak to Jack about the matter until dinner when a knot of them interviewed him at the door of the dining hall.

"Were you the cause of Herring's being late to cla.s.s after recess, Jack?" asked Percival.

"Did you find out anything?" put in Harry. "I had a bet that it was Pete who tried to undermine you in his generally clumsy fas.h.i.+on."

"The affair is settled, boys," said Jack, quietly. "We need not think any more about it."

And that was all he would say, for all their coaxing.

CHAPTER XVIII

AN EXPLORING TRIP THROUGH THE WOODS

After school was over that day Percival came to Jack and said:

"We are going off into the woods, some of us, to explore things generally. Won't you come along, Jack?"

"Of course he will," put in Billy Manners, who came along at that moment with Harry and Arthur. "He will want to make some more discoveries to add to those he has already made. The place is new to us where we are going and, consequently, will be new to him."

"We are going into a part of the woods beyond here that is new to us, and you will enjoy it as well as the rest," said Percival.

"I shall be glad to go with you, d.i.c.k," said Jack. "Are you going to take your lunch, Billy? Shall we be away as long as that?"

The other boys now noticed that Billy carried a black box under his arm, but until Jack had spoken of it they had not observed it.

"That is not a lunch box," laughed Billy, "but you have eyes all the same. No one else noticed it."

"What is it, anyhow?" asked Kenneth Blaisdell, one of the new boys at the Academy. "Box for botanic specimens?"

"No, it is not and I am not going to satisfy your curiosity by telling you what it is just now," chuckled Billy. "Come on, d.i.c.k, we have a large enough party now."

There were Percival, Jack, Harry, Arthur, Billy Manners, Blaisdell and Jasper Sawyer, the boy whose initials were the same as Jack's, seven in all, and each of the party well liked by all the rest.

They set off without delay, and pa.s.sing through the woods back of the Academy, and avoiding the ravine down which Jack had fallen, kept on down the hill on the side away from the station at the foot, and then up another and through a very rough, extremely wild section, where travel at times was most difficult.

"There is not much wonder that we have not been here before," laughed Billy Manners, as he sat on a rock and puffed for breath after they had gone some distance through the thicket, and stopped in an opening where the travel was better.

"Yes, we should have brought axes with us," said Percival. "I had no idea the country through here was so rough."