ling lips and
whistled back.

"Hi!" came a cautious voice, and the leafy shadows of Old Top waved
violently. "You're there, are you? Brother Tim around?"

"No," answered Freddy.

"Then I'll swing in for a minute." And, with another shake of Old Top, Dan
bestrode the window ledge,--a most cheery-looking Dan, grinning broadly.

"How--how did you get up?" asked Freddy, thinking of the barbed wire
defences below.

"Dead easy," answered Dan. "Just swung across from the organ-loft windows.
They wouldn't let me come up and see you. Brother Bart, the old softy,
said I'd excite you. What's the matter, anyhow? Is it the tumble--or
typhoid?"

"Neither," said Fred. "I feel fine, but Brother Tim says I've got
temperature."

"What's that?" asked Dan.

"I don't know," replied Freddy. "You better not come too near, or you may
catch it."

"Pooh, no!" said Dan, who was poised easily on his lofty perch. "I never
catch anything. But I'll keep ready for a jump, or Brother Tim will catch
me, and there will be trouble for sure. And as for Brother Bart, I don't
know what he'd do if he thought I had come near you. Jing! but he gave it
to me hot and heavy about letting you get that tumble! He needn't. I felt
bad enough about it already."

"Oh, did you, Dan?" asked Fred, quite overcome by such an admission.

"Rotten!" was the emphatic answer.

"Couldn't eat any dinner, though we had cherry dumpling. And Brother Bart
rubbed it in, saying I had killed you. Then I got the grumps, and when Dud
Fielding gave me some of his sass we had a knock-out fight that brought
Father Rector down on us good and strong. I tell you it's been tough lines
all around. And this is what you call--vacation!" concluded Dan,
sarcastically.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" said Freddy. "The tumble didn't hurt me much. I guess I
was sort of sick anyhow. And to fight Dud Fielding!" The speaker's eyes
sparkled. "Oh, I bet you laid him out, Dan!"

"Didn't I, though! Shut up one eye, and made that Grecian nose of his look
like a turnip. It ain't down yet," answered Dan, with satisfaction. "He
fired me up talking about Aunt Win."

"Oh, did he?" asked Freddy, sympathetically.

"Yes: said I ought to be ditch-digging to keep her out of the poorhouse,
instead of pushing in with respectable boys here. Sometimes I think that
myself," added Dan in another tone. "But it wasn't any of that blamed
plute's business to knock it into me."

"But it isn't true: your aunt isn't in the poo