Alas, the first day of a new term! What a horror it brings to the heart of a boy! Fresh from the green fields, from the blue sky, from the fragrant woods, the babbling brook, the sounding shore, the lofty precipice, the bounding wave,--from all these he enters into the gloom, and darkness, and confinement of the school-room. Can there be any wonder that the fresh, young, boyish heart should quail, and his bounding young life droop, and his uproarious spirits flag on that dreary first day? Where is his life, in which of late he so exulted? Where is that grand face of Mother Nature, so dear to every boy? Where are the odor of the fields, the balsamic air of the forest, the invigorating smell of the salt sea? These are the loved memories that afflict him at his dingy desk. The first day at school for a boy is homesickness in its broadest sense. I don’t think anybody can be so homesick as a boy may be; nor can a boy at any other time be so homesick as at such a time as this. Homesickness, moreover, is not merely a pining for one’s actual home, but it is also a yearning for pleasures that have fled,--some lost grace of life,--some sweet charm which has passed away. Now, none of our boys were at all inclined to what they called “spooniness” but still they could not help feeling the common evil of boy humanity. The school hours passed slowly and heavily, and they tried to cheer themselves with the thought that it would not be so unpleasant in a few days, after they had become used to it. After school was over, the “B. O. W. C.” engaged in an earnest discussion over the situation. One common resolution was in all their minds, and that was, to put an end to the ghost in the garret. But how was it to be done? “We might quietly go and tell the fellows all about it,” said Tom. “Yes,” said Bart, “but that would be too clumsy. What I want is something more artistic; I want a dramatic close, in which there shall be a scene full of effect. If we could only work it so as to let the thing bring itself to a conclusion in some effective way, it would be a great deal more satisfactory to all concerned.” “I should like some way,” said Bruce, “in which Pat would be conscious that he was completely used up; and I think that among us five we might arrange a counterplot against his plot.” “Pat certainly deserves some sort of punishment for the way he has been frightening the small boys. He has been at it all day; I dare say he’s at it now. Of course before dark he’ll sneak up and fasten his string to the tongue of the bell again, so as to get all ready for the night’s operations.” “We can easily find some way, I should think,” said Arthur, “of paying off Pat, without being cruel in any way to him. A smart shock, administered delicately and neatly, would about suit my idea of the case.” “Yes, but how can we get something which will be mild, yet smart,--delicate, yet effective? That’s the point which we don’t seem able to decide.”