"Save your wind, you insect!" growled Butch Brewster, with sinister significance that escaped the heedless Hicks, as the behemoth Butch, a two-miler, swung into the lead. "You'll _need_ it, you fish, before we get back to the campus! Not _too_ fast, you flock of human tortoises. You'll be crawling on hands and knees, if you keep that pace up long!" A mile and a half passed. Butch, at an easy jog, had led his squad over green pastures, up gentle slopes, and across a plowed field, by way of variety. At length, he left the road on which the pachydermic aggregation had lumbered for some distance, and turned up a long lane, leading to a farm-house. Back of it they periscoped an orchard, with cherry-trees, laden with red and white fruit, predominating. Also, floating toward the collegians on the balmy May air came an ominous sound: "Woof! Woof! Woof! Bow-wow-wow! Woof!" "Come on, fellows!" urged Butch Brewster. "We'll jog across old Bildad's orchard and seize some cherries--the old pirate can't catch us, for we are attired for sprinting. Don't they look good?" "Nothing stirring!" declared Hicks, slangily, but vehemently, as he stopped short in his stride. "Old Bildad has got a bulldog what am as big as the New York City Hall. He had it on the campus last month, you know! Not for mine! I don't go near that house, or swipe no cherries from his trees. If you wish to shuffle off this mortal coil, drive right ahead, but _I_ will await your return here." T, Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, dread of dogs, of all sizes, shapes, pedigrees, and breeds, was well known to old Bannister; hence, the Heavy-weights now jeered him unmercifully. Old "Bildad," as the taciturn recluse was called, who lived like a hermit and owned a rich farm, did own a massive bulldog, and a sight of his cruel jaws was a "No Trespass" sign. With great forethought, when cherries began to ripen, the farmer had brought Caesar Napoleon to the campus, exhibited him to the awed youths, and said, "My cherries be for _sale_, not to be _stole_!" which object lesson, brief as it was, to date, had seemed to have the desired effect. Yet--here was Butch proposing that they literally thrust their heads, or other portions of their anatomies, into the jaws of death! "Well," said Bunch Bingham at last, "I tell you what; we'll jog up to the house and ask old Bildad to _sell_ us some cherries; we can pay him when he comes to the campus with eggs to sell, Come along. Hicks, I'll beard the bulldog in his kennel." So, dragged along by the bulky hammer-throwers and shot-putters, the protesting T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., in mortal terror of Caesar Napoleon, and the other canine guardians of old Bildad's property, progressed up the lane toward the house.