t a score of hands outstretched to grasp him, and he, too, went down,
screeching lustily. Another knife flashed and another shirt-tag was
neatly severed.

Lew Veazie, who had been with Rupert and Gene, started to run, deeming
discretion the better part of valor. But he took only a step when he,
too, went down. And again an amputating knife did its work. As soon as a
shirt-tag was cut off, the amputator, flourishing it on the blade of his
knife, like an Indian flaunting a scalp-lock, made a dash for the elm,
where it was pinned up as a trophy.

Then it was found that a "taste" for shirt-tags had been created by this
exciting bit of experience, and other men, who had been loudly laughing
and cheering over the discomfiture of Chickering and his inane friends,
found themselves suddenly on the ground, with wicked-looking knives
flashing before their eyes, and their shirts being mutilated by the
pressure of keen knife-blades.

In the midst of this "fun," Buck Badger arrived on the campus from his
stolen interview with Winnie Lee. Though his face wore a perplexed
expression, it had lost its gloom. There might be trouble for him in the
future, but Winnie's words had for the present driven the blackest of
the shadows out of his heart. The desire uppermost in his mind just then
was to meet and whip Donald Pike. He had sworn to himself that he would
do that the first thing, and he meant to keep the oath.

Nevertheless, reaching the elms of the campus at this exciting moment,
he was willing to cease temporarily his search for Pike and view the
fruit-gathering. It would be rare sport, provided, of course, that his
own shirt was not forced to yield "fruit."

To prevent this, and that he might see better, he grasped a low-hanging
limb and swung up into one of the elms.

"Fruit!" was being shouted everywhere, and the indications were that
scores of trophies would adorn the old elm the next morning, if some
stop was not put to the thing by the college authorities, which was not
likely. "Society week" is expected to be noisy, and things are winked at
which on ordinary occasions would bring reprimands.

Another person had invaded the branches of the elm but a minute before
the ascent of the Westerner. That other person was Donald Pike, who
looked down now on the man he felt instinctively to be his mortal foe
with a little shiver of dread. More than once Pike had regretted making
that revelation to Fairfax Lee, for the chances that