“Well, don’t forget that we’ve got to get home again yet,” replied Dan. “I guess you’ll have all the walking you want, Gerald.”
To Alf’s relief the moon found another cloud to creep under just before they reached Broadwood. Even then it was much too light for safety. The grounds of the Academy are not very extensive, but they face the road for some distance, and an iron picket fence about eight feet high bounds them there. There is a carriage gate with a smaller gate beside it halfway along the line of fence, and just inside, nestled under the trees, stands a tiny gate-keeper’s lodge. The expedition, however, didn’t approach that. Instead, it halted at the corner of the Academy grounds and looked over the situation.
“The gates will be locked,” said Alf, “and even if they weren’t, the gardener might see us. We’d better shin over here, by this post, and keep along the shrubbery until we reach the buildings. Then we’ll have to come out in plain sight; but I guess no one will be up at this time of night.”
“How about getting back?” asked Tom. “Suppose some one gets after us?”
“Scatter and make for the side fence here,” answered Alf, promptly. “If we aren’t disturbed we’ll retreat in good order. Now then, give me a leg-up, Dan.”
One by one they crawled up by the stone corner post and dropped into the shrubbery beyond. Then, keeping as much as possible in the shadows, they made their way up the hill. The main buildings, five in number, form three sides of a square at the summit, with Knowles Hall, the finest of all, in the center. It was toward Knowles that their steps were bent, but they didn’t make a straight line for it for the reason that had they done so they would have been in plain sight for several hundred yards. Instead they kept along the school boundary on the east until a dormitory building was near. Then they slipped across to its protecting walls, went cautiously along the end of it, and halted there in the angle of a stone porch.
“Now then,” whispered Alf, “hand over the sign.” Chambers laid down the roll of sheeting and Alf whipped out a knife and slashed the strings. Then he drew a paper of thumbtacks from his pocket, and for the next minute or two worked hard. The poles were placed on the ground, and to each of them an end of the strip of sheeting was secured with the thumbtacks. When all was ready Alf took one pole and Dan the other, and with the rest of the expedition following, walked brazenly across the turf until they were in the center of the space between the buildings, and directly in front of the recitation hall.