hey take the
whole package? One slip would have done as well as fifty. Then, too,
they might know that if the whole package were taken, you would simply
call the examination off, as soon as you had missed them, and make out a
new set of questions. Then they'd have had all their trouble and risk
for nothing."

"It is curious," answered Raymond. "If the idea was simply to get
advance information to help some boy through with the test, the only way
to do it was to take one copy and leave the rest of the slips there,
trusting me not to notice that the package had been tampered with.

"My theory is that he meant to do this, but perhaps was frightened away
by some sound, and didn't have time to do it. In that case, he may take
out one of the slips and try to put the package back to-night. The
examination doesn't take place till day after to-morrow, and he may
figure that I haven't missed them. As a matter of fact, it was only by
the merest chance that I did miss them to-day."

"Well, let us hope that he will try it," said Doctor Rally. "We'll have
Sluper stay in your office all night and nab him if he comes."

Sluper came back from his trip to town and reported that Kelly knew
nothing of the matter. Nor had he heard of anything among the boys that
might throw light on the mystery.

He kept a careful watch that night in Professor Raymond's office, but
without result.

The next day there was something in the atmosphere of Rally Hall that
made every one feel that a storm was brewing. The air was electric with
signs of trouble. Nothing had been allowed to leak out, but any one
could see that something was the matter, though without the slightest
idea of what it was.

Doctor Rally was more snappy and gruff than they had ever seen him, and
Professor Raymond went about his work in a brooding and absent-minded
way, that, with him, was most unusual.

"What's come over Raymond to-day?" asked Fred. "He looks as though he
were going to the electric chair."

"He certainly does have plenty of the gloom stuff," agreed Billy.

"Off his feed, perhaps," suggested Slim, to whom nothing seemed more
tragic than a loss of appetite.

"Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days be dark and dreary,"

quoted Tom.

Fred laughed and made a pass at him, little thinking how soon the lines
would apply to himself.

In his mail that afternoon, the professor received a letter. There was
nothing about it to identify the writer. In