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As Dick had predicted, they were a little late; when they reached the streets they found them deserted. But they knew the location of the bridge, a mile back of the campus; and the mile was covered at a dog-trot.

Though they had been tardy for the assembling, they were in time for everything else. While the night was dark, the battlefield was luridly illuminated by flaring gasoline torches. The bridge was a modern concrete structure of a single long span over the small river; broad, and with footways at the sides protected by parapets breast-high. At either end was an ornamental portal arch, and it was upon this that the winning class was permitted to paint its year numerals.

When Larry and Dick arrived upon the scene, the Sophomores had taken possession of the bridge, and the Freshmen were massed in the road. Upperclassmen—Seniors for the Sophomores and Juniors for the Freshmen—were “frisking” the combatants for weapons. No fellow with good red blood in him would go into such a conflict armed; but in a bunch of six or eight hundred undergraduates there are always a few “yellows,” and they had to be searched.