t here in a
few minutes. It's shorter than by the road. Take the turn on the right
after you get out of sight."

"Is there any hurry?"

"Yes, I gotter go to supper, but I'll wait for you. Hurry up!" and Jack
heard the sound of the receiver being hung up on the other end.

He hung up his receiver and went out, finding Bucephalus still at work
on the wagon.

"Did yo' catch him, sah?" asked the man. "Werry conwenient little
instrament, dat tullyphome, ain't it? Werry myster'ous, too. Just think
o' hearin' a man talkin' a mile or two away, an' yo' unnerstan' him as
plain like he was right cluss up."

"Yes, there is a bit of mystery about it, Buck," laughed Jack, who had
ideas of his own which he did not care to tell to any one else at the
moment.

"There is a switch that those fellows have got on," he said to himself,
"and I was not talking to the station any more than I was talking to the
President of the United States. Well, there'll be a little fun in this,
and I don't mind taking the risk."

Jack had gotten the idea that Herring was on another branch of the
Academy telephone, and that the story of the express package was a
fiction, meant to mislead him.

He knew enough of such characters as Herring's to satisfy himself that
the bully would not rest at one attempt to make trouble, but would try
again as soon as convenient.

"If that was not Herring on the wire, I never heard him speak," he said
to himself as he ran off toward the house and then to the dormitories.

He was not upstairs more than a minute and then he appeared at the front
of the Academy and set off down the road at a good pace.

When he had gone far enough to be out of sight of the building, he took
a cut through the woods as directed by the supposed Jones at the little
station below.

He walked with both hands in his side jacket pockets, and seemed
absolutely carefree and happy, but he had his wits about him,
nevertheless.

He suspected an ambush and was ready for it.

He had prepared himself for a hazing on his first night at Hilltop, and
he now suspected that another was under way and was prepared for that as
well.

Jack Sheldon had been to school before and knew the ways of boys, being
one himself, although not of the sort that think it funny to play
foolish tricks on others.

He knew many of these, however, and had remedies for nearly all of them,
having put more than one hazing party to route by his thorough command
of resource