The girls looked at one another smilingly. Such exciting rumors did not often come their way. It was fun to speculate on the fate of such a student caught in the toils of the police. Ah!
Arden, as the echoes of this choice gossip went around the table, maintained a discreet silence. She had not yet told her roommates of her trip to town that morning, but she could readily understand, now, that when they were back in 513 she would have some explaining to do. But, for the time being, she decided to try to change the subject. So she remarked casually:
“It was probably nothing. Lots of people in this town look like college students. See how the natives try to copy our clothes.”
“Always belittlin’, Arden,” remarked Terry. “Can’t you let us enjoy the scandal? Heaven knows things have been pretty quiet around here of late.”
“If you ask me, more likely it had something to do with a minor traffic violation,” Arden continued. “You’re all very silly. Please pass the bread, Terry!”
Terry reached for the bread plate but, at the same time, shot Arden a quick appraising look. Arden took a slice and innocently asked for further plans of the night raid.
“We’ll call for you girls in 513 about half-past ten—after lights are out,” Jane said.
The others nodded assent. The dishes continued their barrage of sound, successfully concealing the plans from those not included in them.
As Sim had foretold, at the close of the meal large bowls of “library paste” made their appearance. Arden’s particular group decided to forego it and make something else, later, take its place. Forbidden sweets were always more tasty.
When the meal was at an end, the dean, suddenly and somewhat out of the ordinary, signaled for silence by tapping a bell kept for that occasional use at her right hand at the faculty table.
Immediately a hush descended over the noisy room. Miss Anklon arose and stood teeteringly and frostily in her place, having pushed back her chair to make room.
“A story has come to my ears,” she began, “to the effect that a student of Cedar Ridge was seen at police headquarters here in town today. It seems incredible to me. However, I wish the girl who has allowed herself to cause such a horrid rumor to circulate to come to me before twenty-four hours pass and explain herself.”
She gave the bell another “ding,” and the conversational flood was at once loosed again, but with new import.
So the dean had also heard the rumor. Worse and more of it!
Terry herded Arden and Sim through groups of chattering and surprised girls, at the same time whispering:
“Arden Blake, you know something about this! Come upstairs!”
Arden nodded silently. Sim objected to Terry’s bustling about and tried to hold back. But Terry, well versed in the art of telling her friends something without being overheard by others near by, soon had Sim tractable and under control.
Safe in the sanctuary of their room, Terry started in.
“Well, Arden, what did you do this time?”
“Oh, don’t be so smart, Terry! I didn’t do anything.”
But her face flushed.
“What do you know about the college student seen coming out of police headquarters?” demanded Sim. “Come on—come clean, as the detectives say—at least, in books.”
“I know all about it!” calmly replied Arden. “I am that girl!” she announced in her best stage manner. “I’ll tell you all about it,” and she did.
“Are you going to Tiddy?” Sim wanted to know.
“I think not—little one,” drawled Arden, still calmly but with firm decision, as her friends could tell by the look in her eyes. When Arden made up her mind, it was made up. “It would be useless to explain,” she continued. “Besides, I really didn’t do anything.”
“Well, if you’re found out, it might just as well be murder—we’ll all be sent home,” Terry decided.
“You’re right, Terry,” Sim agreed. “We ought all to leave for home before we suffer the ignominy of being sent.”
“Not tonight, at least,” Arden temporized. “I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. I say let’s wait until something really happens. Besides, I think it will be lots of fun to raid the kitchen.”
“Do you think Tiddy has any real evidence?” asked Sim.
“Let’s try to guess what we shall find to eat in the raid,” said Arden demurely.
“My dear roommate,” laughed Terry, “you are, without doubt, a peer in the art of changing subjects. But I do agree with you about the raid. We must all wear tennis shoes and carry flashlights.”
“Let’s get our work done quickly, then,” proposed Sim, “and wait, with what patience we may, for Jane,” and she swept her chums a bow in her latest amateur dramatic rôle.
With unusual willingness, the three girls began to open their books, look for pencils and paper, and soon the room was in silence as they labored at their lessons for next day.
The three freshmen in 513 worked diligently and with a minimum of conversation. Now and then Arden inquired about the spelling of a word, or Terry put a question as to the correct ending of a Latin verb, but on the whole their time was well occupied.
At about nine o’clock the lights all over the dormitory building were dimmed for a moment, a warning that in five minutes more they would be extinguished in every room. Arden announced happily that she had finished her assignments.
“I have, too!” cried Terry. But Sim sighed deeply as she said:
“I just made it. But I think my math is all wrong.”
“Never mind,” soothed Arden. “Perhaps you’re a genius. Lots of them can’t do math for a cent.”
The lights went out suddenly, and the girls threw themselves on their beds to await Jane Randall’s knock, summoning them to the pantry raid.
Arden and her chums must have fallen asleep, for they were startled when, some time later, Jane, afraid of knocking too loudly on their door pushed it open and tiptoed in. She groped her way to Terry’s bed, shook her and hissed:
“Wake up! It’s time to go!”
“Oh!” gasped the startled Terry, the other two echoing her surprise with their own. They had no idea that they had slumbered.
Silently they took their flashlights and crept down the darkened corridor. The kitchen was far below on the same floor with the dining room. The kitchen was bright enough by day, for there were windows on three sides, but it was as dark as a cave at night. A large long table-bench ran the length of one side of the room. On this the plates were served to be carried into the dining hall by waitresses. Above the bench were racks for holding dishes. Gleaming pots, pans, and kettles hung on the wall near the huge stove, its fire now banked for the night. Shining copper tanks for hot water to make tea and boil the coffee caught and reflected the beams from flashlights carried by the marauders.
Unaccustomed to the strange place, the girls all stood still for a few moments to get their bearings. Arden gave a sudden frightened squeal as a startled mouse ran across her foot.
“Oh,” she gasped. “The place is overrun with the little beasts!”
“Hush!” cautioned Jane Randall. “That watchman may hear us. He comes in here on his rounds.”
“Where’s the food, Jane?” whispered Terry, advancing farther into the room which, somehow, had a spooky atmosphere.
“It ought to be around here some place,” Jane replied cautiously.
“Ah-a-a-ah! Pies!” suddenly exclaimed Terry as she opened the door of a large cupboard.
“Let’s take a few. They are for tomorrow, I suppose, and must have been baked late this afternoon. What do they smell like, Terry?” asked Sim.
“They all smell pretty much alike to me. I’ll take four, one off each shelf. We ought to get a variety that way,” suggested Terry.
The other girls were silently exploring, by means of their electric torches, the dark corners of the kitchen. They decided against taking bread or rolls as being too unromantic for a midnight feast. Jane convinced them that milk would do nicely to wash down the food, and it was when Arden opened the door of the immense refrigerator that she made the prize discovery of the evening.
“Look what I’ve found!” she exclaimed. “Two roasted chickens!”
“Lovely!” breathed Sim. “Come over here, kids! Arden has struck a gold mine!”
Temporarily leaving their own investigations, the other girls crowded around the ice box and focused their lights on the innocent browned birds.
“The sight of them makes my mouth water!” announced Sim. “But we must have enough food, now, with these as a background. Milk, pie and roast chickens! Lovely! Let’s take them and go quickly before we are caught.”
Arden reached in and lifted out one of the doomed chickens. She turned half around to hand it to Sim, who was waiting to take it, when the whole party of girls was suddenly frozen into immobility with terror.
For through the silence of the night sounded mournfully:
Dong! Ding-dong! Dong! Dong!
It was the old alarm bell again sonorously clanging at the mystic hour of twelve—the hour when “witches, warlocks an’ lang-nebbied things” are free to roam.
“Heavens! What’s that?” gasped Jane Randall, though well she and the others knew.
“It’s that bell again,” said Arden unnecessarily. She stood holding firmly to a leg of the chicken while Sim dug her fingers into the soft browned flesh beneath a wing. They laughed over it later, of course. But just now terror gripped them.
Terry was holding the pies so tightly in her fright that her fingers punctured the crust and went messily into the fruit beneath. They all stood like children who had been playing “statues”; in just the positions they had assumed when that ghostly bell began to toll.
It stopped for a moment and then began to peal again, if anything more loudly than at first. Then the girls came back to life, and while it was still clanging the second time, Arden had presence of mind enough to close the refrigerator door, to stave off discovery as long as possible if the authorities entered the kitchen. Then, with the other girls, who were also holding to the food they had captured, Arden ran to the low windows on the north side of the kitchen. They all crowded close to the glass casement and peered out into the night. The bell sounded more clearly from this vantage point.
“Who can be ringing it?” murmured Jane. “I hate bells or whistles in the night. It always seems so—ghostly!”
“Stop it!” someone implored.
“I’d like to run around outside and find out about it,” declared Terry. “Of course, it must besomeonepulling the rope. Bells don’t ring of themselves.”
“Maybe the wind,” suggested Mary Todd.
“The wind couldn’t ring that old bell,” declared Arden. “It’s too heavy to be swayed by what little breeze there is tonight. And it’s high up on the wall, under a sort of canopy. No, someone pulled that rope.”
“But the rope is high up, out of reach from the ground,” said Sim who had noticed that fact.
Puzzled, alarmed, and in momentary fear of being discovered in the midnight raid, the girls stood at the window. It was in a sort of extension of the building and faced the north, so that from it a view could be had of the rear college grounds leading down to the orchard.
It was at this scene the girls were now gazing, some illumination being furnished by a pale and watery moon now and then hidden by scudding clouds.
Suddenly Ethel Anderson clutched Arden by the arm, so violently as almost to cause the dropping of the chicken, and Ethel exclaimed:
“What’s that dark thing on the lawn near the orchard?”
“Where?” asked several, crowding closer.
“There!” Ethel pointed at a moment when the moon came out of the clouds.
“Looks like a black dog, to me,” Terry said. “Or perhaps——”
Terry’s sentence was never finished, for Arden broke in with:
“It’s a man! A man crawling on his hands and knees! It is! Look!”
The last wisp of cloud was wiped from the face of the moon. The form of the crawling man was seen plainly.
“Oh, heavens!”
“We must tell someone!”
“What’ll we do?”
“We must wake Tiddy!”
“Oh, let’s get out of here!”
“Who is it?”
Questions, exclamations, fearsome gasps and excited advice all tripped pell-mell from the girls.
Then, quickly, Arden took control of the situation.
“Hush, girls!” she calmly advised. “All of you keep quiet. Now, just a moment, please.”
Her calm voice had its effect, and they all grew quiet, though there was not one whose breathing came naturally. Arden managed to raise the lower sash a little way.
And then, through this opening, as the girls watched the black, crawling figure, came a voice feebly calling:
“Help! Help! Help!”
“It’s Henny!” exclaimed Terry as she and the others recognized the squeaky voice of the aged chaplain. “Dr. Bordmust; and he’s hurt!”
The mysteriously tolled bell had ceased ringing now. Fascinated, the girls remained at the window looking at the prone black figure of Rev. Dr. Bordmust lying on the edge of the sinister orchard. That the orchard was sinister at least Arden, Sim, and Terry were ready to testify.
The last cry for help from the aged chaplain and the final echo of the tolling bell came together.
“What shall we do, Arden?” murmured Terry.
“We must do something!” insisted Jane.
“Yes, it’s sort of up to us, since we’re here on the scene,” agreed Sim.
“The dean will have to know about this,” suggested Terry.
“But there’s something else to do first,” spoke Arden.
“What?” chorused her chums.
“That poor man is hurt,” went on Arden. “He needs help, and we must hurry to get it. I’ll tell you what. We three,” she motioned to herself and her roommates, “are already campused. Whatever happens can’t make much difference to us, even if we’re caught now. We’ll go out and see what we can do to help poor Henny, and you others go tell Tiddy.”
“A good idea!” assented Sim. “Jane, you and the others can take the food with you when you go to tell Tiddy. It’s a wonder she or some of the others haven’t been aroused already by the bell. But when you go to her, hide the food, somehow. No use wasting it after all the trouble we had getting it.”
“No, indeed,” said Ethel Anderson.
Quickly the two groups separated. Arden, Sim, and Terry hurried out of a rear door, which they unlocked, while Jane and the others, stuffing the pies, chickens, and bottles of milk under their big sweaters, hastened to take word to the dean.
Arden, Sim, and Terry ran with all the frightened speed they could summon across the damp grass of the rear campus toward the edge of the orchard. By another gleam of moonlight they had a glimpse of the chaplain resuming his painful crawling after a period of rest following his cries for help.
When he saw the girls running toward him, Dr. Bordmust, as if giving up the fight, now that assistance was at hand, collapsed on the leaf-strewn ground.
Terry was the first to reach him.
“Are you hurt, Dr. Bordmust?” she asked. “What happened?”
“Do tell us! Tell us how we can help you,” appealed Sim.
“Are you badly injured?” faltered Arden.
“My leg—I think my right leg is broken,” he faltered. “It is very painful. I cannot bear my weight on it. That is why I had to crawl along.”
“Did you fall?” asked Arden.
“Not exactly. I was struck by something—something attacked me as I was walking through the orchard. It was some great, black, rushing shape that threw itself upon me. I went down heavily—I could feel the bones of my leg snap. I—I must have lost consciousness—for a time, at least. When I came to, I found myself lying beneath a tree. I managed to get this far, and then the pain——”
“We heard you call for help,” said Sim.
“You heard me—up in your room?” His voice was querulous.
The girls did not care to go into particulars.
“We have sent someone to bring help,” said Arden, kneeling down beside the aged chaplain. “But can we do anything to ease you until help comes?”
“Rest yourself, Dr. Bordmust,” Sim begged. She sat down in the wet grass and lifted the tired white head into her lap.
“You—you are very kind, young ladies,” the chaplain murmured. “I shall see that——”
“What’s the matter?” suddenly cried Arden as she saw his head sag queerly to one side.
“He’s fainted, I guess,” answered Sim.
“Oh, dear!” wailed Terry. “The poor man! But here come the girls and the dean, I think, and two men. Now we’ll be all right.”
“At least he will, though as for us——” Arden did not finish.
An excited throng of students and others hurried toward the three alarmed freshmen surrounding the chaplain. The dean, rather neatly dressed in spite of the hurry under which she had donned her garments, was in the lead.
Behind her was Miss Lucant, the college infirmarian. Then came Jane and her chums with the gardener, Anson Yaeger, and his helper, Tom Scott, bringing up in the rear.
“You certainly got a lot of help in a short time, Jane,” whispered Arden as the girls mingled.
“Oh, the dean was quick enough once she was awake. She sent me for Miss Lucant and had one of the girls telephone to the gardener’s house to rouse him. Tiddy certainly got organized quickly!”
Miss Anklon, who even had the forethought to bring a flashlight with her, focused it on the pale face of the chaplain, who still was stretched on the ground, his head in Sim’s lap.
“Take him to the infirmary at once!” the dean ordered. “Anson—Tom—you’ll have to get some sort of a stretcher to carry him. That leg, to me, looks to be broken.”
“It is,” said Arden.
The dean flashed a look and a gleam of light on her but said nothing, nor did she ask how Arden knew.
“I’ll have to run back and get a board—or something,” said Anson. “A stretcher is what we need, but——”
“We can pull a door off the old tool-shed!” suggested Tom Scott.
“Do that,” advised the dean. “Lose no time.”
Tom Scott hurried off in the darkness, before Anson could make up his mind what to do, and soon came back with a light door. On this Dr. Bordmust was carefully rolled, Sim pulling off her sweater to make a pillow for his head, and then the gardener and his assistant started on the melancholy journey to the college hospital.
Having seen this procession on its way, the dean spoke sharply to the nervous girls.
“Go at once to your rooms,” she ordered. “We shall have something to say about this in the morning.”
Realizing that they could do nothing more, and feeling that they must have excited the dean’s curiosity by all being dressed at that hour of the night, Arden and the others hurried into the dormitory and dispersed to their various rooms.
Meanwhile Dr. Bordmust, who had recovered consciousness, was taken to the infirmary, where Anson and Tom carefully undressed him and put him in bed, with an elderly teacher, who was also a nurse, to look after him. A physician was hurriedly summoned from town and set the broken leg. This much the girls guessed from observation and rumors that floated along the corridor’s grapevine route. For none of those engaged in the raid felt like going to bed at once.
And as the food had escaped the watchful eyes of the dean, it having been successfully hidden under sweaters, it was available for the post-midnight feast which was soon under way. Nor was the usual caution necessary, with the excitement over the chaplain’s strange adventure still seething.
As the girls ate they talked, naturally, each of the two groups telling the other their parts in the affair. They all admitted it was a queer mystery.
“Do you think the bell had anything to do with it?” Sim wanted to know.
“It might have been rung to draw our attention away from the orchard,” suggested Arden.
“But no one was paying the least bit of attention to the orchard in the first place,” objected Terry.
“But why was Henny there in the orchard at midnight?” Jane Randall propounded. “He had no business there.”
“No more than we had in the kitchen,” suggested Arden.
“But hewasthere,” declared Mary Todd.
“And something attacked him,” said Sim.
“And if you ask me,” said Arden positively, “I think that whatever it was that came at us, the night we had to get apples for the sophs, attacked our chaplain.”
“Well, what was that?” demanded Ethel.
“I don’t know,” Arden had to admit.
The girls were silent a moment, and then Sim asked:
“Did you have much trouble rousing Tiddy?”
“Yes,” Jane answered, “she sleeps like a horse. We couldn’t make her understand for the longest time. She never even noticed how we all bulged with food, and I think she didn’t hear the bell at all.”
So they talked until there was nothing left to eat though there was still much to wonder at. Arden hid the milk bottles in a closet. Jane Randall opened the door and was followed out by the other visitors to 513, who stole silently down the dark corridors and to their own rooms.
In spite of all the excitement, Arden and her roommates were soon sound asleep.
The next day the very walls of Cedar Ridge must have vibrated, so great was the talk. Rumors of the wildest sort were passed from girl to girl. Arden and her friends were a little afraid to tell of their part in the night’s adventure and so listened to the various stories and volunteered nothing.
At lunch, when the whole college was assembled, Tiddy rang her little bell, and immediately a deep hush followed the talk, laughter, and clatter of dishes.
“Young ladies,” began the dean, “so ridiculous are the rumors that are rife here today that I feel I must do a little explaining. Rev. Dr. Bordmust, while strolling through our orchard last night, was attacked by a huge black ram which knocked him down, and in the fall our chaplain’s right leg was broken below the knee. The ram, which it is learned is a savage beast, broke loose from a near-by farm.”
There were uneasy twistings and turnings on the part of the girls, and many whispered comments, despite the frowning warnings of various teachers scattered about the room.
“But you need have no further fears,” the dean went on. “The beast has been caught and penned up securely. It will be kept under restraint from this time on. So no one need have any fears of going into our orchard—if she has occasion to go there.”
“So this is what the taxi-man must have been hinting at,” thought Arden. “Though why he didn’t dare speak of it I can’t imagine. And I suppose it was the ram that knocked me down. I was lucky!”
“This is the explanation of the greater part of the night’s alarm, young ladies,” continued the dean. “It is all very simple. It is unfortunate that Dr. Bordmust was injured, but he is now resting comfortably, and another clergyman has been temporarily engaged, so there will be chapel service—as usual.” The dean smiled with dry humor, having noted flashes of joy on the faces of several students at the idea of escaping from morning devotions.
“Dr. Bordmust has asked me, as a favor to him,” stated the dean, “not to punish the girls who were out of their rooms against rules after hours. They kindly went to his assistance and summoned much-needed help. I am happy to accede to our chaplain’s request, for I know the whole undergraduate body is extremely fond of him. I will ask no questions of those girls. In fact, I hereby publicly thank them for their great presence of mind. There is only one thing I must insist on.”
There was a portentous pause, and the dean ended the silence by saying:
“If the ringing of the alarm bell was done as a joke—please don’t repeat it.” She smiled benignly. “Now you may go on with your lunch.”
Silence—a somewhat stunned and portentous silence—followed the dean’s explanation and remarks. Then a buzz of talk began. It spread all through the room, for the orchard mystery had grown to greater proportions than the faculty of Cedar Ridge had believed.
Arden secured the attention of Sim, who was excitedly talking to Terry, and propounded this:
“Do you seriously think that what Tiddy said just now is true? Or, at least, do you think it is a logical explanation? It sounds fishy to me. If it was a ram that hurt Tom Scott and the chaplain, the beast planned his attacks with almost human cleverness.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sim answered. “I suppose it’s possible——”
“But not probable,” Arden interrupted.
“Oh, let’s forget about it,” suggested Sim.
“I wonder,” thought Arden as they finished lunch and walked from the dining room to the sun-flooded campus, “I wonder if Sim is going to do anything about the pool? She didn’t seem much interested in the way the dean solved the mystery.”
“What do you think?” inquired Terry. “Aren’t you satisfied, Arden, with the dean’s statement?”
“It satisfies me, Arden, m’sweet!” drawled Sim. “I find this sun very satisfying, too,” she went on as she stretched her arms high above her head and ran her fingers through her thick hair.
“You, also, Terry?” inquired Arden.
“Yes,” Terry answered. “You’ll have to look further for doubters of the dean.” She threw herself down on the warm grass and opened her Latin grammar for a last look before class.
Arden stood over her chums in uncertainty, for now Sim had joined Terry on the grass. The sun was bright, the sky unclouded and of a deep blue. Arden pulled her bright red sweater down lower over her tweed skirt and adjusted a small scarf about her neck. Cedar Ridge was not a particularly “dressy” college, nor did it have a reputation for displaying on its campus carelessly dressed students. Rather a happy medium was struck. High heels were out of place. One could not make a swift last-minute dash up the boardwalk to Bordmust Hall in open pumps, as several girls had found out to their sorrow.
Arden and her chums dressed in sports clothes, topped, usually, by the inevitable mortar-boards. Now that hazing was over, the college settled down to a peaceful routine, with not so much stress on the poor freshmen.
“Well,” Arden finally remarked, “I must say you girls show very little of the stuff which made our country the great place it is today. You have no curiosity. That’s your trouble!”
“My trouble is not enough sleep,” murmured Sim drowsily.
“Latin will be the death of me,” declared Terry.
“Then I’ll leave you to yourselves,” announced Arden, turning away. “I’m off to see what I can see.”
“Not mad, are you?” questioned Sim.
“No, just curious.” Arden was soon beyond talking distance.
She was a little surprised, though she would not let Sim or Terry know it, that they took the dean’s explanation so calmly and believingly.
“For my part,” reasoned Arden to herself, “I’m going to find out if an old black ram really caused all the scares and trouble.”
Once her mind was made up, Arden acted quickly. Her next class was an hour away. There was time enough, she knew, as she swung off in the direction of the orchard. She went in through the hedge entrance. It was dark and gloomy there, even with the sun shining, and for a moment the girl hesitated. But she kept on, and was soon in the grove of gnarled and fantastic trees. The sun was shining down through their twisted branches and glinting on the vari-hued apples. Arden drew in a deep breath of a tangy perfume.
She picked up a red and yellow apple, wiped it off on her skirt, and bit into it. Distinctly it was good. She walked on farther. All was serene. There was no ram, no sign of a ram, though Arden did not really expect to find one roaming about. But she did think she might see the marks of the beast’s feet. But she saw none.
“And there’s no one lying here unconscious and injured by any black beast,” said Arden smiling a little at her conceit. She walked over to a corner where stood a shed in which were kept barrels and ladders for the harvesting of the apples. It was nearly time for the harvest now.
The door, that had been taken off for use as a stretcher the night the chaplain had been attacked, had been replaced. The door swung open, and Arden had a glimpse inside the shed of various farm implements.
“Ho, hum!” she yawned. “I guess the girls and the dean were right. There’s no use trying to find anything different. I shall have to admit I was wrong, and I don’t want to, for really I don’t believe in that ram story. If I could only find something else to bear out my theory.”
She was looking around the orchard, gazing toward distant corners for something she could investigate when she was startled by a rustle of dried leaves caused by some feet pattering rapidly among them. There were a whistling snort and a loud sniff.
Arden wheeled about and screamed in terror.
Rushing straight at her, with lowering head and menacing horns curved in the typical design of such creatures, was an immense black ram. The animal must have been hiding behind a tree. Attracted by Arden’s presence in the orchard, and perhaps incensed by her red sweater, it had come to give battle.
Snorting in rage, like a miniature bull, and scattering the leaves with his pounding feet, the ram was coming on, Arden thought, like an express train. For one wild moment she felt resentful against the dean who had said the beast was now securely penned. Then Arden turned and made a jump for the tool shed.
She got inside just in time, pulling the door after her. And a moment later the whole structure was shaken as the ram butted his horns against the thin portal.
“Oh, my gosh!” gasped Arden. And as there followed a moment of silence and inaction on the part of the creature, she saw a hook on the inside of the door and slipped it into the staple.
Then came another butting attack on the door.
“He’ll break it in!” cried Arden, her heart beating fast. “It isn’t very strong. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
The ram was snorting, puffing, and blowing outside the shed. Arden could hear him pawing in the dried leaves. Then for the third time he rushed with those heavy curved horns at the barrier which kept him from the human he wanted to attack.
“No wonder Tom Scott and the chaplain were hurt with such a creature as that rushing at them!” gasped Arden. “Oh, dear! I wish I’d taken the dean’s word. It’s a ram all right. A terrible ram!”
She wondered if a human voice in command would have any effect on the creature. She would try.
“Go away! Get out of here!” she ordered through a crack in the door. She waited. She heard nothing. Perhaps the beast had gone. She loosed the hook a little, making a crack wide enough out of which she could look. The ram hadn’t gone. He was balefully eyeing the shed from a little distance, and when he saw the door move again he lowered his head and butted it harder than before.
“Oh, this is awful!” groaned Arden. “I guess I’ll have to stay in here until he goes away or falls asleep. I suppose rams do sleep, sometimes. This is what I get for doubting Tiddy. I wonder if there is a back door that I could sneak out of while he’s butting the front one?”
But there was no rear exit, as Arden discovered when she peered through the jumble of ladders, barrels, and tools. Sheds aren’t usually built with two doors.
There was nothing to be done but to wait for a rescue or until the ram should get weary of the siege and raise it.
“When the girls find out about this they’ll have the laugh on me all right!” Arden ruefully mused.
The ram was quiet again, but Arden thought it useless again to give any orders or to tantalize the brute by partly opening the door. Time was passing. It was getting late. She would soon be due at her class. If she did not appear, her chums might think something had happened to her and start a search.
“But I didn’t tell them where I was going,” Arden reflected. “They don’t know where to start looking, and they’ll never imagine I came to the orchard after all that’s happened.
“‘Oh, to be in England, now that Spring is there’—or any old place but in this shed,” the imprisoned girl murmured. She was getting panicky. Almost without knowing what she was doing, Arden found herself shouting:
“Go away, ram! Go away!”
She paused and caught her breath suddenly. She heard voices outside; men talking. The sounds came nearer. Someone said:
“That certainly was a mighty poor job you did on that pen, Anson. The ram got out without half trying. There he is now, down by the tool shed. And by Jove, Anson, I believe he’s got someone penned in there! He wouldn’t act that way unless there was someone in the shed. Look, there he goes, butting the door!”
It was Tom Scott. Arden recognized the voice. And Anson Yaeger, the grim farmer, answered:
“I did as good a job as I could with the wood I had. I’d like to see you or anybody else——”
“Never mind that now!” interrupted Tom. “The thing to do now is to catch that ram again! He’s dangerous. Come on!”
Arden could hear footsteps running now, and though the ram once more butted the door, nearly cracking some of the boards, she knew that rescue was on the way.
There was silence outside the shed for a moment, and then Tom Scott said:
“You slip around back, Anson, and sort of hold his attention by peering out at him around the corner. While you’re doing that, I can slip up behind him and get this rope around him. I’ll lasso him, and we’ll hog-tie him, cowboy fashion.”
“Very well,” agreed the farmer.
Arden could not see what they did, but she was told, later. Tom, who had provided himself with a noosed rope when he and Anson started out in search of the escaped ram, skillfully tossed it over the beast’s head from the rear. The noose fell in a choking loop around the ram’s neck, and Tom pulled tight.
The surprised animal turned to charge Tom, but by this time Anson attacked him with a heavy timber, knocked him down, and both men threw themselves upon the creature. He struggled and bleated, but was soon well tied so he could not move.
“Good work, Anson!” complimented Tom.
“Hum!” was the grunted answer. The farmer was winded.
Arden was debating with herself whether to come out and show who the ram had imprisoned or to wait until the men had taken the beast away. But she had no choice, for Tom said:
“Now we’ll see what unfortunate this ram was after.”
“I’m going out,” Arden told herself and unhooked the door.
Tom Scott and Anson fairly jumped with surprise as they saw her.
“He chased me in here,” she volunteered. “I got in just in time, but I didn’t dare come out again.”
“No, it’s wise you didn’t,” said Tom, smiling at her. “This is a dangerous beast. I thought he was after someone, the way he stood near this shed. Your red sweater must have attracted him. Not hurt, are you?”
“No, only frightened. At least I was. I’m so glad you came.”
“Well, he can’t hurt you now,” chuckled Tom, looking at the bound ram. Anson said nothing. “He’s a tricky beast. Worked his way out of the pen we shut him up in temporarily until his owner can dispose of him. I believe the dean has threatened to make a complaint unless the ram is removed from around here.”
“I hope he goes,” said Arden. “The orchard will be safer without him and less—less mysterious.”
“Mysterious?” questioned Tom, somewhat wonderingly.
“Yes. But I must be going. I’ll be late for my class. Thank you for rescuing me.”
“It was a pleasure,” Tom said, bowing and smiling. “Also a pleasure to choke the beast that gave me such a whack.”
Still Anson Yaeger did not speak. He seemed to be glaring at Arden with his little beady eyes almost hidden under shaggy brows. But Arden was looking only at Tom Scott. She could not seem to help it. And he was looking at her. Arden began to feel embarrassed. It was as if, she said later, she had met the good-looking gardener at some previous time but could not remember where. She was puzzled and annoyed.
“Well, I really must go!” she announced, and this time she did, hurrying past the bound and recumbent ram that seemed to eye her with much malevolence. But he was helpless now.
Arden hurried up through the orchard, turning for a final look at the scene of her latest adventure. She saw Anson bringing a wheelbarrow out of the shed to be used in taking the ram to a new prison. Then she ran to Bordmust and reached it just in time for English lit.
Terry and Sim were in other rooms, so Arden did not see her chums until after the last class of the day. Then she met them on the steps of Bordmust, where they usually waited for one another.
If ever Arden astonished Terry and Sim, it was on this occasion, when she related her startling adventure with the ram.
“No, never!” gasped Terry in disbelief.
“Yes,” asserted Arden.
“Oh, my aunt’s cat!” shouted Sim, and then she and Terry went into spasms of laughter. Though they realized Arden had been in some danger, the funny side of it was now uppermost in their minds.
“Let’s go over to the orchard and look around,” suggested Terry as their mirth subsided.
“There won’t be anything to look at, now that Arden is out,” said Sim.
“I know,” answered Terry, “but I’d like to see what the place looks like now that the danger is removed and the mystery solved.”