grinning at his comrades. "Say, fellows, you know how Hicks dreads a cold
shower-bath; well, some of you rage at him from the other side of the rock,
while I climb up the rope-ladder and close with him! Then some of you
prehistoric pachyderms ascend, and we'll chuck that pestersome insect into
the cold, cold lake--"

"Done!" chuckled Butch Brewster, delightedly. So, while he, Beef
McNaughton, Hefty Hollingsworth, and others beguiled the jeering Hicks,
expressing in dynamic, red-hot sentences their exact opinions of his
perfidy, the athletic Monty imitated a mountain-scaling Italian soldier.
He climbed stealthily up the swaying rope-ladder; nearer and nearer to the
unsuspecting youth he crept, while the cherubic Hicks, to tantalize the
group below, again burst forth:

"Whoop-eee! I'm a bold, bad man (bang-bang)! I got ten notches on my
ole six-gun--I'm a killer. I wings a man before breakfast every day! I
got a private burying-ground, where I plants my victims (bang-bang)!
Yip-yip-yip-yee! Oh, I'm a--Ouch, Monty--leggo me--Oh, I'll be
good--why didn't I pull that rope-ladder up here? Don't bust my banjo
--don't let Butch get me--"

Monty Merriweather, reaching the flat top of the rock, had courageously
flung himself, without regard for the Bad Man's desperate record, on the
startled Hicks, whose first thought was for his beloved banjo. While he
held the blithesome tormentor helpless, Butch, Beef, and Roddy Perkins
climbed the rope-ladder, and the grinning youth was soon in their clutches,
while the collegians below, like a Roman, mob aroused by the oratory of Mr.
Mark Antony, howled for revenge:

"Bust the old banjo over his head, Butch!"--"Sing to him, Beef--that's