ds into his notebook. It was
the brightest young dream that was ever busted by a fat loafer in brass
buttons. Then I saw Ole Skjarsen and had my one big inspiration.
"Excuse me," I said, rushing over to Pubby, "but you'll have to mosey
right out of here. There's Ole Skjarsen, and he looks ugly."
"Oh, my word!" said Pubby; he remembered Ole from the night before.
"Right around the building!" yelled Petey, grabbing the cue. Naturally
Ole heard him and saw those whiskers. "Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Kill
him, fallers; he ban a spy!" We dashed around the building, Ole
following us. And then, because the cops had arrived at the front gate,
the whole mob thundered after us.
[Illustration: He may have been fat, but how he could run!
_Page 132_]
Well, sir, you never saw a more successful race in your life. There were
no less than a hundred Siwash students behind us, and, though no one but
Ole Skjarsen had any interest in us, they were all trying to break the
sprint record in our direction, it being the line of least resistance.
And, say! We certainly had misjudged the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He may
have been fat, but how he could run! His work was phenomenal. I think he
must have been on a track team himself at some earlier part of his
career, for the way he steamed away from the gang would have reminded
you of the _Lusitania_ racing the Statue of Liberty. He lost his cap. He
shed his long black coat. He rolled over the fence at the rear of the
campus without even hesitating, and the last we saw of him he was going
down the road out of Jonesville into the west, his legs revolving in a
blue haze. Even if we had wanted to stop him, we couldn't have caught
him. And besides, Ole caught Petey and me just outside of the campus and
we had to do some twenty-nine-story-tall explaining to keep from getting
punched for harboring spies. No one had thought to put him next to the
game.
That all? Goodness, no! We cleaned up for a week and had been so good
that the Faculty had about decided that nothing had happened when the
Reverend Ponsonby Diggs appeared in Jonesville again. He came with a
United States marshal for a bodyguard, too. He had footed it to the next
town, it seems, and had wired the nearest British consul that he had
been attacked by savages at Siwash College and robbed of all his
baggage. They say he demanded battleships or a Hague conference, or
something of the sort, and that the consul's off
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