a path through the ring by merely brandishing their
incandescent pokers, and had disappeared into the dark of the woods.

There was dire confusion among the Crows, and some of them ran every
which way and lost the crowd entirely as History and Tug vanished into
the thick night.

The glowing pokers, however, that were their only weapons of defense,
were also their chiefest danger, and a pack of about a dozen Crows
soon discovered that they could follow the runaways by the gleam of
the rods. Tug realized this, too, very shortly, and he and History
threw the pokers away.

Tug and History, however, had come pretty well to the edge of the
wood, and were just rushing down a little glade that would lead them
into the open, when the first Crow yelled for some of his men to take
a short cut and head them off.

The Lakerimmers, then, their breath all spent and their hearts
burning with the flight, which Tug would not let History give up, saw
themselves headed off and escape no longer possible. Tug knew that
History would be useless in a scrimmage, so, in a low tone, he bade
him drop under a deep bush they were just passing. History was too
exhausted to object even to being left alone, and managed to sink into
the friendly cover of the bush without being observed. And Tug went
right into a mob of them, crying with a fine defiance the old yell of
the Athletic Club:

"L`"iy-krim! L`"iy-krim! L`"iy-krim! Hoo-ray!"

VII

The nine Lakerimmers who had set forth to the rescue of Tug and
History had no more clue as to the whereabouts of the kidnapped twain
than some broken furniture and an open door; and even one who was so
well versed in detective stories as B.J., had to admit that this was
very little for what he called a "slouch-hound" to begin work on.
There had been no snow, and the frost had hardened the ground, so that
there were no footprints to tell the way the crowd of hazers had gone.

As Jumbo said:

"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack after dark; and it
wouldn't do you any good to sit down in this haystack, either."

The only thing to do, then, was to scour the campus in all its nooks
and crannies, pausing now and then to look and listen hard for any
sign or sound of the captives. But each man heard nothing except the
pounding of his own heart and the wheezing of his own lungs. Then they
must up and away again into the dark.

They had scurried hither and yon, and yonder and thither, until they