* * *

Events now moved rapidly. The following morning, despite the draft which
entered through three windows and swept out the door, the Roman stopped
the morning recitation after five minutes of indignant commotion in the
class and, making a detailed investigation, dispensed with the presence
of Mr. Snorky Green, Mr. Skippy Bedelle and Mr. Greaser Tunxton (the
last with incredulous chagrin) with a request to produce each individual
bath record for the week.

At eight o'clock that night Snorky Green deserted the communal
laboratory, bag and baggage, announcing that he was through once and for
all, and sought asylum of Dennis de Brian de Boru. Finnegan, after the
first whiff, barricaded the door and seized a baseball bat to repel any
aggression via the transom.

At eight-thirty, the inhabitants of the second floor held an indignation
meeting on the steps.

"Holy Moses! What is it?" said the Triumphant Egghead, smelling in the
direction of the offending room.

"It's a dead cat."

"Smells like ripe sauerkraut and garlic!"

"No, it smells like asafoetida."

"The deuce you say! Asafoetida is a maiden's perfume to this!"

"Well, some one's dead."

"It's the Greaser, then."

"My Lord! This is awful!"

"Skippy's found a pet skunk."

"How in blazes are we going to stand it?"

"We won't."

When the odor had finally rolled down the stairs a house meeting was
called and the offenders were summoned to appear. Skippy Bedelle and
Greaser Tunxton responded and the house adjourned through the windows.
Now it happened that the Roman was dining in Princeton that night and
the conduct of discipline was in the hands of a young assistant master,
lately transferred from the wilds of the Dickinson, Mr. Lorenzo
Blackstone Tapping.

Tabby, as he was more affectionately known, was apt to be somewhat
confused, as is natural, before an extraordinary crisis, and had made
one or two lamentable blunders. In the present case, after immediately
sending in a hurry call for the plumber, he departed in a panic for
Foundation House, holding before him on a pair of tongs a pair of
reeking football stockings which he had seized in the wash basin, while
Skippy Bedelle, under strict orders, remained twenty paces to the rear
and out of the wind.

Arrived before the dark and awesome, ivy-hidden portals of the Head
Master's dread abode, Mr. Tapping carefully deposited the unspeakable
mess against the stone steps, statione