th.

"You both give me your word for it?"

"We do."

"If I knew, I would not hesitate to come out openly and accuse the
fellow," said Dismal; "but this is merely a case of suspicion, and I
will tell you who I suspect."

"Go ahead."

"Well, there is a certain fellow who has not been above playing into the
hands of the sophs in the past, and it is natural for me to suspect him.
His name is--"

The door opened, and Roland Ditson came in without knocking.

CHAPTER XIX.

WHO IS THE TRAITOR?

"Hello, fellows!" cried Ditson. "How are yer, Jones! I am surprised to
see you here. Is it possible you have let up cramming long enough to
make a call? Why, I have even heard that you had your eye on some
classical scholarship prize as soon as this. Everybody who knows you
says you're a regular hard-working old dig."

"There are fools who know other people's business a great deal better
than their own," said Dismal stiffly.

"That's right," nodded Ditson, who made a great effort to be rakish in
his appearance, but always appeared rather foxy instead. "But I tell you
this matter of burning the midnight oil and grinding is not what it's
cracked up to be. It makes a man old before his time, and it doesn't
amount to much after he has been all through it. Goodness knows we
freshmen have to cram hard enough to get through! I am tired of it
already. And then we have to live outside the pale, as it were. When we
become sophs we'll be able to give up boarding houses and live in the
dormitories. That's what I am anxious for."

"It strikes me that you are very partial to sophs," said Dismal, giving
Roll a piercing look.

Ditson was not fazed.

"They're a rather clever gang of fellows," he said. "Freshmen are very
new, as a rule. Of course there are exceptions, and--"

"I suppose you consider yourself one?"

"Oh, I can't tell about that. But supposing I am; by the time I become a
soph some of the newness will have worn off."

"I am not particularly impressed with any freshman who seems to think so
much of sophomores. You ought to stay with them all the time."

"Oh, I don't know. They have treated me rather well, and I have found
the most of them easy people."

"They seem to have found some freshman easy fruit. Somebody has been
blowing to them about our crew."

"I know it," was Ditson's surprising confession, "and that's why I
dropped in here. I wanted to tell Merriwell about it."

Jones gasped for breath. He wa