lasses to find his room "stacked"--a word that exactly expresses
its meaning. There is something particularly discouraging in going to
your room late in the evening, your mind made up to a comfortable hour
of reading on a divan covered with cushions made by your best girls,
only to find the divan placed in the middle of the bed, with a bureau
and a bookcase stuck on top of it, a few chairs and a pet bulldog tied
in the middle of the mix-up, and a mirror and a well-filled bowl of
water so fixed on the top of the heap that it is well-nigh impossible
to move any one of the articles without cracking the looking-glass or
dousing yourself with the water. The Lakerimmers tried retaliation for
a time; but the pleasure of stacking another man's room was not half
so great as the misery of unstacking one's own room, and they finally
decided to keep two or three of the men always on guard in the
building.

There was a rage for hazing, too, the first few weeks; and as the
Lakerimmers were all new men in the Academy, they were considered
particularly good candidates for various degrees of torment. Hazing
was strictly against the rules of the Academy, but the teachers could
not be everywhere at once, and had something to do besides prowl
around the dark corners of the campus at all hours of the night. Some
of the men furiously resisted the efforts to haze them; but when they
once learned that their efforts were vain, and had perforce to submit,
none of them were mean enough to peach on their tormentors after the
damage was done. The Lakerimmers, however, decided to resist force
with force, and stuck by each other so closely, and barricaded their
doors so firmly at night, when they must necessarily separate,
that time went on without any of them being subjected to any other
indignities than the guying of the other Kingstonians.

Sawed-Off had so much and such hard work to do after school hours
that the whole Academy respected him too much to attempt to haze him,
though he roomed alone in the old Middle College. Besides, his size
was such that nobody cared to be the first one to lay hand on him.

* * * * *

There was just one blot on the happiness of the Dozen at Kingston.
Tug and Punk and Jumbo had started the whole migration from Lakerim
because they had been invited by the Kingston Athletic Association to
join forces with the Academy. The magnificent game of football these
three men had played in th