Instead of making any immediate reply in words, his companions at first gave him looks of incredulity and amazement, and then burst into loud peals of laughter. It was some time before they sobered down. "What?" demanded Shriver. "Boycott Alan Heathcote? Send him to Coventry? Ha! ha! Why, you'd have the heaviest contract on your hands you ever had in your life. It's all nonsense." "There's not a fellow in the whole school who would be fool enough to join you," said Archer, plainly and in disgust. "Why, you might as well try that scheme on Cole or Mr. Nicholson. No, no, my dear boy, that plan of yours won't work. The fellows, as a rule, like Heathcote pretty well. He attends to his own business, stands well in his class, or will when the next exam. takes place, and to add to it all he's as fleet of foot as a deer on the foot-ball field; so you would be the solitary duck in the puddle if you tried to freeze him out." Grant Mackerly listened to these responses of his friends in silence. Then his face assumed a determined look, and without another word to either of them he turned away and walked quickly out of the door to the campus and disappeared among the trees. "Mad as a hornet," observed Archer, carelessly. "He'll cool down by to-morrow," remarked Shriver. And they went into the recitation-room talking it over. CHAPTER XXVI. RIPLEY FALLS INVADES THE TOWN. The story of Grant Mackerly's attempt to place a boycott on Alan soon leaked out among the boys, and great was the merriment it aroused at the Hall. In the ridicule and disgust which the incident produced the prestige of the rich man's son was lost forever. No one pitied him. It was all his own fault, and even his quondam friends deserted him, while his appearance would have been the signal for a universal grin. Strange to say, he had not been seen at the Hall since he had made that proposition to Archer and Shriver, and now a couple of days had passed and no sign of him. He did not respond to his name either in the assembly or recitation-rooms, and Doctor Bostwick began to think something was wrong. He summoned Lewis Archer one day in passing and asked him if he could call at the Mackerly residence and obtain some news of the missing boy. "I am afraid that he is ill," said the good principal, "or something unusual has happened to him. I have never known him to have been absent for so long a time without sending in an excuse or asking for leave." Archer called that very afternoon at the house on the hill, and, after repeated ringings, Mrs. Weldon, Grant's aunt, came to the door. "What's become of Grant?" asked Archer. "Doctor Bostwick sent me up to inquire about his absence. He's been away from the Hall for three days."