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"Sure thing!" came from Songbird, and he commenced to recite: "Oh, the sophs and the juniors will try To steal from the freshies each tie; But they will not win, For we'll fight them like sin " "And bust 'em right plumb in the eye!" finished Tom. "Oh, say, but will you all sew your neckties fast?" "Sure!" "And we'll tell the rest to do so, too," added another freshman who was present.
Fate seemed bound to make matters worse for the Rover boys. On a clear, cold Saturday afternoon in December the three brothers and Songbird went out to look for nuts in the woods near Ashton. They had heard that the seminary girls occasionally visited the woods for that purpose, and each was secretly hoping to run across Dora and the Lanings.
"Maybe it's a new poem," put in Sam with a grimace at his brothers. "I've got a poem several of them, in fact," answered Songbird, "but I didn't have those in mind when I spoke. Who do you suppose I met yesterday morning, in Ithaca, while I was waiting for the train?" "Dora Stanhope and the Lanings," answered Tom promptly. "No. Tad Sobber." "Tad Sobber!" exclaimed the Rover boys in concert.
"I've heard you make up poetry worth ten times that. Don't you remember that little sonnet you once composed, entitled 'Who Put Ink in Willie's Shoes? It was great, grand, sublime!" "I never wrote such a sonnet!" cried Songbird. "Ink in shoes, indeed! Tom, you don't know real poetry when you see it!" "That's a fact, I don't. But, say, what's on the carpet, as the iceman said to the thrush?"
The college coach was to bring in some of the boys about eleven o'clock, and the Rovers wondered if Songbird Powell would be among them. "You'll like Songbird," said Dick to Stanley Browne. "He's a great chap for manufacturing what he calls poetry, but he isn't one of the dreamy kind he's as bright and chipper as you find 'em."
With strange feelings in their hearts Dick, Sam and Stanley, accompanied by Songbird, left the office. They had been heard, but had not been believed. "We may be dismissed from here, after all," said Sam bitterly. "What a shame!" cried Songbird. "Oh, if you could only find out who did it, and expose them!" The boys went back to their classes with heavy hearts.
"His uncle ought to be in prison this minute." "Have the authorities heard anything of Merrick?" asked Songbird. "Not a thing." "I dink me dot feller has skipped to Europe alretty," vouchsafed Hans Mueller. "He vould peen afraid to stay py der United States in, yah!" And the German boy shook his head wisely.
"Now, children, children'" came sweetly from Sam. "You mustn't quarrel about the dear girls. I know both of you are as much gone as can be. But " "And how about Grace, Sam?" said Tom. "Didn't I hear you making up some poetry about her yesterday, 'Those limpid eyes and pearly ears, and' " "Rats, Tom! I don't make up poetry I leave that to Songbird," interrupted the youngest Rover boy.
For a terrifying instant, pregnant with horror, Bradley fell; then something swooped for him from behind, another pair of talons clutched him beneath the arms, his downward rush was checked, within another hundred feet, and close to the surface of the sea he was again borne upward. As a hawk dives for a songbird on the wing, so this great, human bird dived for Bradley.
Soon it became noised all over the place that the Dartaway had been wrecked, and before they could get a mouthful to eat the three Rovers had to tell the story over and over again. "I'm sorry the biplane was wrecked, but glad you escaped," said Songbird, earnestly. He cherished his old friends as if they were brothers. "Just what I say already," cried Max Spangler, a German-American student.