ointed sophs
resolved to escape with him. They lifted him and made a rush for the
cab. He was bundled in, and away went the cab.

Frank rushed into Billy's and gave the alarm. He was out again in a
very few seconds, with a crowd of excited freshmen at his heels; but
when they came to look for the sophomores and Rattleton they found
nothing.

"Confound it!" exclaimed Frank in dismay. "How could they get him away
so quick? I can't understand it."

The freshmen searched, but they found nothing to reward them. Rattleton
was in the toils of the enemy, and the would-be rescuers were given no
opportunity to rescue him.

Then Merriwell blamed himself for leaving his roommate at all. But
Billy's had been so near and his chance with his many assailants had
seemed so slim that he had done what seemed the right thing to do on the
spur of the moment. He had not fancied that the sophomores would be able
to get Harry away before he could arouse the freshmen and bring them to
the rescue.

"Poor Harry! I wonder what they will do with him?" Frank speculated.

"Oh, they won't do a thing with him!" gurgled Bandy Robinson.

"How did it happen, anyway?" asked Roland Ditson, who had joined the
freshmen after the affair was over.

He tried to appear innocent and filled with wonder and curiosity, but
his unpopularity was apparent from the fact that nobody paid enough
attention to him to answer his question.

Frank, however, found it necessary to tell his companions all about the
assault, and Ditson pretended to listen with interest, as if he had
known nothing of the affair.

The freshmen went back to Billy's and held a council. It was decided to
divide into squads and make an attempt to find out where Harry had been
taken.

This was done, but it proved without result, and not far from midnight
all the freshmen who had been there at the time of the capture, and many
others, were again gathered at Billy's. They were quite excited over the
affair, and it seemed that the beer they had absorbed had gone to the
heads of some of them.

In the midst of an excited discussion the door burst open, and a most
grotesque-looking figure staggered into the room. It was a person who
was stripped to the waist and painted and adorned like a redskin, his
face striped with red and white and yellow, his hair stuck full of
feathers, and his body decorated with what seemed to be tattooing.

"Bive me a gear--I mean give me a beer!" gasped that fantasti