ld clapping of hands, joined in
by many who were in Badger's crowd.

"Whoop-ee-e-ee!" squealed Danny, wildly waving his cap. "Who says we
can't shoot?"

They had been shooting at a rise of twenty-five yards. Merriwell stepped
back five yards, thus increasing the distance to thirty. He loaded his
gun and held an extra shell in his left hand. Then he turned his back on
the traps.

"Pull when you want to?" he called.

The manipulators of the traps seemed to desire to test him. There was an
exasperating delay and some questions; then the traps were sprung with
startling suddenness.

Merriwell's quick ear was alert. He wheeled as if on a pivot, killed the
left bird and the right one. Then dropped in another shell with a
slowness that set Bart Hodge wild, and killed the third bird, which had
gone off at a difficult tangent, at a distance of at least sixty yards!

"Come on!" grated Defarge, almost beside himself with anger and
disappointment. "The devil can't beat him! Let's get out of here!"

"Right!" said Pike, also turning wrathfully away. Badger seemed turned
to a statue.

Then again the unexpected happened. A sophomore, who was known to be an
intimate friend of Morton Agnew, by seeming accident fired off a gun
with which he had been monkeying. Agnew, who had, unnoticed, wormed his
way into Merriwell's crowd during the excitement of the
shooting-contest, fell to the ground with a cry, as if shot, knocking
Harry Rattleton over as he did so.

The shells which Harry had been so carefully guarding were scattered on
the ground, and seemed likely to be stepped on and lost in the
excitement that followed.

Agnew flounced and threshed about, crying out that he was shot. He was
anxiously lifted up, and on his face was seen a drop of blood, which had
come from a cut recently made.

"One shot went in right there!" he cried. "I think there are others! Get
me into a carriage quick!"

A half-dozen young fellows ran for the nearest carriage, toward which
Agnew was conducted as rapidly as possible. Harry Rattleton seemed
dazed, and began to look about on the ground as the crowd thinned out
there, Merriwell hurried to him.

"What's the matter?" he anxiously asked.

"The shells were knocked out of my hands!" gasped Rattleton. "And not
half of them seem to be here!"

Merriwell's look became anxious. He stooped down with Harry and began to
gather up the shells.

"A shrewd trick, but it didn't work!" he exclaimed, holding