text: CHAPTER III 
  
  TOM'S JOKE 
  
  "What did you do to him?" asked Sam, quickly. 
  
  "Put an advertisement of pills on his back and some other ads. in his text books," answered Tom. "Say, he looks some mad; doesn't he?" 
  
  "I should say yes," came from Stanley. 
  
  William Philander was approaching with long strides. In one hand he held the poster Tom had fastened on his back, and he was shaking his other fist wrathfully. 
  
  "Tom Rover, you've--er--insulted me!" he gasped as he came up. "You've humiliated me before the whole class! I'll--I'll----" The dudish student was so full of wrath he could not speak. 
  
  "Take a cough drop and clear your throat Billy," suggested Tom, coolly. "Don't get so excited, you might drop dead from heart disease." 
  
  "How dare you put that--er--that advertisement of Gumley's Red Pills on my back?" stormed the stylishly-dressed one. 
  
  "'Gumley's Red Pills for Red-Blooded People,'" quoted Spud, from the poster. "Say, they are fine, Willie. Didn't you ever take 'em?" 
  
  "No, and I don't want to. I want Tom Ro----" 
  
  "Say, if you haven't taken any of Gumley's pills you don't know what you've missed," went on Spud, with a wink at the others. "Why, there was a man over in Rottenberg who was flat on his back with half a dozen fatal diseases. The doctors gave him just three days to live,--three days, think of it! His wife nearly cried her eyes out. Then along came this Gumley man with a trunk full of his Red Pills for Red-Blooded People. He didn't exactly know if the dying man was red-blooded or not, but he took a chance and gave the fellow sixteen pills, four after breakfast, four after dinner, four after supper and four on retiring, and the next day, what do you think happened? That man got up and went to work, and he's been at his Job ever since." 