t
works. And now I am trying to stifle it! Hear it! Oh, bring me a club!
Bring me something deadly! Bring me a gun, and I will shoot it full of
holes!'

"Then I found that I could hear my clock merrily rattling away under
that heap of clothes. It seemed to be defying Hartwick or laughing at
him.

"I got him off the bed, pawed around till I found the clock between the
mattresses, and then stopped it. Hartwick offered me three times what it
was worth if I'd let him use his baseball bat on it. I told him it
seemed to be a very willing and industrious alarm clock, and it was
mine. I warned him to injure it at his peril. Since then I have learned
how to stop it so it will stay stopped, but it barely commences to
rattle at daybreak when I feel Hartwick's feet strike me in the small of
the back, and I land sprawling on the floor. That explains how I succeed
in getting up at daybreak."

"You started in to tell us what you found this morning," said Punch
Swallows, to Browning, lighting a fresh cigarette.

"So I did, and the alarm clock ran me off the trail. Well, I got up this
morning as usual--when Hartwick kicked me out to stop the clock. I went
out for my walk and crossed the campus. What do you think I found?"

"A diamond ring. We'll all have ale."

"Oh, no, Tad, it wasn't a diamond ring. I noticed something stuck up on
one of the trees. It was a big sheet of paper, and on it was skillfully
lettered these words:

"'Bruce Browning will wear a new set of false teeth to chapel to-morrow
morning.'"

Browning stopped and looked around. He was very proud of his even,
regular, white teeth. They were so perfect that they might be taken for
"store teeth" at first glance, but a second look would show they were
natural.

The sophs laughed, and Bruce looked indignant.

"That caused me to look still further," he went on, "and I soon found
another sheet upon another tree. This is what I read:

"'Conundrum. Why is King Browning a great electrician? Because all his
clothes are charged.'

"By that time I felt like murdering somebody. I did take a morning walk,
but it was in search of more stuff of the same order. I found it
everywhere in the vicinity of the college, and some of the stuff was
simply awful. It made me shudder. I knew who was back of it all.
Merriwell put up the job."

"But you outwitted him by getting around in time to tear down everything
he had put up. You matched him that time."

"By accident. But I must