r ago, have seemed the last
word in improbabilities. They talked and shivered and bantered and sang
and cheered (just to keep warm) for a solid hour. Mr. Tuttle reappeared
at last.

The boys surged out of the Archway into the Quadrangle to meet him.

"Score! What's the score?"

"Get back, you wild Indians!" cried the studious secretary to some
importunate First Formers who were tugging at his arms. "There is no
news, and I can't get Chancellor's Hill on the telephone."

There were murmurs of bewilderment. The Senior Master, tall, genial, and
conspicuous for his good sense, came out of the Main Building, and
suggested a run for health's sake. He tagged Runt Woods lightly and was
off. With a shout the crowd followed him at a jog-trot past the Music
House, past the Cottage out on to the cinder track. They jogged a
quarter-mile.

As they reached the Cottage on the return trip, they saw Mr. Tuttle
dancing toward them, wildly waving his arms.

The Senior Master halted his band.

"Fifteen to eleven!" shouted Mr. Tuttle ecstatically. "We win!"

The roar that followed was memorable. Eppie, the confectionery man,
picking his teeth in his empty shop at the foot of the hill, threw away
his toothpick and went to the kitchen to tell his wife that The Towers
had won, and business for the rest of the afternoon would be brisk.

Two minutes later the jubilant invasion began. Dick Harrington was not
one of the crowd that rushed, cheering down the hill. He was on
probation, and Eppie's was out of bounds.

He stood in the Archway, lonely and miserable.

_Why hadn't he lied?_

The team was due back at Hainesburg, the railroad station for The
Towers, at eight-thirty. One or two Sixth Formers, flushed and almost
incoherent with excitement, had asked the Senior Master for permission
to organize a torchlight parade.

"Sure enough! Good idea!" exclaimed the Senior Master. "Go to it! Don't
burn yourselves up, don't get lost, don't get in the way of the train
and don't all have apoplectic fits as my friend Andrew here is promising
to do shortly if some one doesn't put an ice compress on his enthusiasm.
But go on. Give 'em a good time."

"Thank you ever so much, sir!" cried Andrew, "and I'll promise to cool
off."

"Go 'way!" cried the Senior Master cheerfully. "You don't know how.
You're a perpetual human Roman candle."

"I'll hold him down, sir," said the other boy.

"Pshaw!" cried the Senior Master. "You're a Whiz-bang yourse