he jack forced the animal beneath the water, and neither
were seen again.

GRAHAM'S LAST PRACTICAL JOKE.

Graham was a very good sort of chap, and everybody liked him except when
he was playing practical jokes. It is all very well to score off another
fellow occasionally, but when it comes to making him howl in school, and
get sent up for a private interview with the Doctor, it is going a bit
too far.

Three times in one week the master of the Lower Fourth had had to send
some one up, and each time it was Graham's fault. The third time the
Doctor himself happened to be in the room, and I noticed that, though he
actually caned _me_, it was Graham that he looked at most.

Some of us say that the Doctor has eyes in the back of his head, because
he sees so many things that he is not expected to see, and I was sure
that day that he had an eye on Graham.

After the third caning, we had a committee meeting in my study, and
decided that something must be done. Wilson wanted to drop Graham into
the pond, and Rupertson suggested that two chaps should hold him down
while the three who had been caned through his jokes gave him a good
thrashing; but Shepherd, the smallest boy in the Fourth, hit on the best
idea, and that was to pay him back in his own coin.

Shepherd had heard him planning with another boy in his dormitory to
dress up as a ghost that very night, and come into ours, and scare us
into fits, and we determined that the most scared chap should be Graham
himself.

We had all been in bed about a quarter of an hour when there was a
rustling sound at the door, and in glided a figure that might have made
us creep if we had not been prepared for it. It had a great head, with
glaring, fiery eyes, which made one feel a little uncomfortable, even
though we knew it was only a turnip. Its body did not show, but only
great shining bones, which Graham had painted on his pyjamas with
phosphorus, just as Shepherd had told us he meant to do.

We kept dead silence till he got to the middle of the room, and then
Shepherd gave the most horrible groan I ever heard. He imitated a real
one splendidly; it finished with a kind of choke.

That was our signal, and we all sprang up and crowded round his bed.

'You have done it now!' cried Rupertson in a terrified voice.

'He's not bad!' gasped the 'ghost.'

'Yes, he is,' replied Rupertson. 'See how white he looks!'

'Who is it?' groaned Graham.

'Sergeant,' said Rupertson.