midnight
Big Butch Brewster , enshrouded in melancholy , instinctively gazed up at the windows of the room T. Haviland Hicks , Jr. had reserved on the third floor of Bannister Hall , the Senior dorm. , as if he fully expected to behold the missing youth materialize . There , in lonely grandeur , waited the sunny-souled Senior 's vast aggregation of trunks , crates , and packing boxes , together with Hicks ' baggage brought down from Camp Bannister . The bothersome banjo had disappeared at the same time the youthful Caruso imitated the Arabs , folding his figurative tent , and stealing away . `` It 's a strange paradox , '' boomed Butch Brewster , finding that no Hicks appeared at the window , `` but for three years Bannister has stormed at Hicks for bothering us during study-hour , or at midnight , with his saengerfest , and now I 'd give anything to see him up there , and to hear that banjo , and his songs ! It is just as if the sun does n't shine on the campus , when T. Haviland Hicks , Jr. , is away ! '' Bannister College had been running for three days `` on one cylinder , '' as the Phillyloo Bird quaintly phrased it , on account of the gladsome Hicks ' mysterious absence . Not a word had the Head Coach , Captain Brewster , the football squad , or any of the collegians received from the blithesome youth , since the _ billet-doux _ he left with old Hinky-Dink at Camp Bannister .