Part 9 (1/2)

”I'll not complain to the doctor,” returned Phil. ”But I know what I will do,” he added, quickly, as though struck by a sudden idea.

”What?” came from several.

”Never mind what. But I'll wager he'll give us more time.”

”I guess I know what you think of doing,” said Dave. ”But take my advice and don't, Phil.”

”Humph! I'll see about it, Dave. He isn't going to run such a thing as this up my back without a kick,” grumbled the s.h.i.+powner's son.

”Well, wait first and see if he doesn't change his mind, or if we can't get through in the week,” cautioned Dave.

”What was Phil going to do?” questioned Luke, strumming lowly over the strings of his guitar.

”Oh, don't let's talk about it,” cried Dave, before Roger could speak.

He did not wish the Mrs. Breen affair to become public property.

”Tell us about the wild man, and all the other things that have happened here since we went away.”

”And you tell us all about Cave Island and those stolen jewels,” said Buster.

Thereafter the conversation became general, Dave and his chums telling of their quest of the Carwith diamonds, and the other students relating the particulars of a feast they had had in one of the dormitories, and of various efforts made to catch the so-called wild man.

”I don't believe he is what one would call a wild man,” said Ben Ba.s.swood, Dave's old chum from home, who had just come in from some experiments in the school laboratory. ”He is simple-minded and very shy. He gets excited once in a while, like when he threw those mud-b.a.l.l.s.”

”Well, you ought to know,” remarked Buster. ”Ben is the only fellow here who has talked to the man,” he explained.

”When was that, Ben?” questioned Dave.

”That was when the man first appeared,” answered the Crumville lad. ”I didn't find out until yesterday that he was the wild man, and then it was because of that blue chalk he uses. I met him in the woods when I was out during that last snow, looking for rabbits with my shotgun. I came across him, sitting on a rock, looking at an old newspaper. He had some of the blue chalk in his hand and had marked a circle with a cross on the rock. He asked me where I was going, and told me to look out and not shoot a star, and then he asked me if I used chalk for powder, and said he could supply a superior brand of chalk cheap. I thought at first that he was merely joking, but I didn't like the look in his eyes, and then I made up my mind he was not right in his head, and I left him. When I came back that way, an hour later, he was gone, and I have never seen him since.”

”Where was this, Ben?”

”Up in the woods, where the brook branches off by the two big rocks.”

”I know the spot!” cried Roger. ”Say, maybe he hangs out around there.”

”No, we hunted around there yesterday, but he wasn't to be seen. I don't believe he has any settled place of abode, but just roams through the woods.”

”Poor fellow! Somebody ought to catch him and place him in a sanitarium,” was Dave's comment.

Various matters were talked over until the supper hour, and then the boys filed down to the dining-hall. Here our hero met more of his school chums, including Gus Plum, who had once been his enemy but who was now quite friendly, and little Chip Macklin, who in days gone by had been Plum's toady.

”Very glad to see you back, Dave!” cried Gus. ”And, say, you've certainly made a hero of yourself,” he added, warmly.

”It was great, what you and Roger and Phil did,” added Chip, in deep admiration.

Everybody was glad to see Dave back, and after supper it was all he could do to get away from many of his friends. But he managed it at last, and he, Roger, and Phil went upstairs, to put away their things and get out their schoolbooks.

”We have got to study and that is all there is to it,” said Dave, firmly. ”Fun is one thing and getting ready to graduate is another. We have got to get down to the grind, boys.”

”That's right,” answered the senator's son.