a leap. And as Pike, looking back and gasping
with fright, crawled straight on toward them, the cat that was farthest
out on the end of the limb launched itself through the air in a
desperate leap for the ground.

There was no cleared space in which it could alight, and it struck Bink
Stubbs on the top of the head, jamming his hat down over his eyes and
hurling him backward.

"Dog my cuc-cuc-cuc-cats!" stuttered Joe Gamp, looking up in
open-mouthed wonder.

"The sky is raining cats!" whooped Danny.

"Somebody amputate its tail!" yelled a student.

"Cut off its shirt-tab!" shouted another.

Bink and Danny, Gamp and all the others of Merriwell's friends who
chanced to be grouped there, had already suffered the amputation of
their shirt-tabs, and having no further fear on that point, were
hilariously anxious that not a shirt-tab should be worn by a Yale man
that night. The "fruit" on the tree at Durfee was increasing in quantity
and variety at a prodigious rate.

"A dollar apiece for its ears!" some one else screeched.

But the cat was too agile for the hands that were reached out to stop
its flight. It whisked under the legs of the students and was out and
away like a shot.

"Been up there watching the performance!" some one sung out.

"Gug-gug-goshfry! There's a man up there!" Joe Gamp howled, as his eyes
fell on Donald Pike. "It will be raining mum-mum-men, as well as
cuc-cuc-cuc-cats, next thing! Ahaw! ahaw! ahaw!"

As his lips flew open to their widest extent to emit this roar, the
other cat sailed downward out of the tree and struck him squarely in the
mouth. He tumbled backward with a roar, which, however, was not at all
hilarious, and began to dig sputteringly at his tongue and lips, which
were liberally coated with cat hair.

"More cats!" said Dismal. "I'd as soon have the frogs of Egypt, as to
have the trees showering down cats."

"How do you like cat diet, Gamp?" screeched Bink, who did not relish the
way he had been laughed at.

"I'll die-it, if one of 'em hits me!" Dismal solemnly asserted.

"Look out!" a student warningly yelled. "The man is coming, too!"

Everybody beneath the limb fell back out of the way, pushing against
those behind, many being hurled down and trodden on. Then Donald Pike,
sprawled out like one of the cats, came sailing down out of the tree.
His teeth were fairly chattering. He believed that Badger was right at
his heels, with hands reached out to seize him. Fortunate