"I should say not!" ejaculated the Phillyloo Bird, sepulchrally, his
string-bean length draped with extreme decorative effect on the Senior
Fence, "Life at old Bannister without T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., is about as
interesting as 'The Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture!'
Prexy thought he started the college on its Marathon three days ago, but
Bannister will not be officially opened until Hicks stands by his window
some study-hour, twangs that old banjo, and shatters the campus quietude
with a ballad roared in his fog-horn voice!"

Big Butch Brewster, enshrouded in melancholy, instinctively gazed up at the
windows of the room T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. had reserved on the third floor
of Bannister Hall, the Senior dorm., as if he fully expected to behold
the missing youth materialize. There, in lonely grandeur, waited the
sunny-souled Senior's vast aggregation of trunks, crates, and packing
boxes, together with Hicks' baggage brought down from Camp Bannister. The
bothersome banjo had disappeared at the same time the youthful Caruso
imitated the Arabs, folding his figurative tent, and stealing away.

"It's a strange paradox," boomed Butch Brewster, finding that no Hicks
appeared at the window, "but for three years Bannister has stormed at Hicks
for bothering us during study-hour, or at midnight, with his saengerfest,
and now I'd give anything to see him up there, and to hear that banjo, and
his songs! It is just as if the sun doesn't shine on the campus, when T.
Haviland Hicks, Jr., is away!"

Bannister College had been running for three days "on one cylinder," as
the Phillyloo Bird quaintly phrased it, on account of the gladsome Hicks'
mysterious absence. Not a word had the Head Coach, Captain Brewster, the
football squad, or any of the collegians received from the blithesome