s.

Although he hurried in through the woods in an apparently careless
fashion and seemed to pay no attention to anything, he noticed
everything, heard everything, and was ready for instant action.

He was well in the woods, which were quite thick as he went on, although
there was a path through them, when his quick ear caught the sound of a
sudden rustling in a clump of thick shrub oaks just in front of him, but
he went on as if he had heard nothing, turning a little to one side as
he reached the clump.

In a moment three or four masked figures suddenly sprang out upon him
from two sides of the clump.

Then Jack took his hands out of his pockets.

CHAPTER V

THE HAZERS ARE HAZED

What Jack had in one pocket of his coat was an ammonia gun used by
wheelmen to keep off the attacks of troublesome dogs who attempt to bar
their progress on the road often at the risk of giving them an upset.

This, as most boys know, is shaped like a pistol and has a bulb at one
end.

A slight pressure upon this bulb causes a stream of ammonia, or hot
water, or whatever else one chooses to squirt in the faces of the
annoying dogs and to put them to flight.

When Jack had gone up to the dormitories, after receiving the message
which he had every reason to believe to be spurious, he had taken the
little gun from his suitcase, where he had placed it, in anticipation of
needing it in some such emergency as the present.

As the masked figures came rushing toward him from two sides, he quickly
took account of stock, as one might say, and decided which one of the
maskers was Herring.

Then he aimed his little gun at the fellow's face and gave the bulb a
good squeeze.

There was a howl and a gasp and the boy in the mask and the old clothes
suddenly sat down with more force than elegance.

Jack then turned his gun on one of the intruders from the other side of
the clump.

"Ouch, stop that!" yelled the fellow, dropping a stout stick he held in
his hand and beating a hasty retreat, half stifled by the fumes of the
ammonia.

Jack then turned his attention to the other members of the party of
hazers and discharged another gun at them, holding it in his left hand.

This was worse than the first, for it contained assafoetida instead of
ammonia.

The stench was something dreadful, and two of the hazers got full doses
of the stuff directly in their faces.

Jack was on the windward side of it or he could not have endured the