railroad
accident?"

"Yes," replied Neil, "I guess they never found out what her name was.
That seems pretty horrible, but the Holbrooks, who adopted Teeny-bits,
are mighty fine people. Daniel Holbrook is the station agent at
Hamilton."

The mining engineer settled back in his chair, sighed rather heavily and
gazed once more into the embers of the fire. "Well, Teeny-bits is a fine
chap," he said finally, "and I don't wonder that the fellows fell for
him."

"He nearly caused me nervous prostration," said Neil, "when he didn't
show up at the game until the last minute, and the story about what
happened to him and how the Chinese who had kidnaped him acted when they
saw the knife mark on his shoulder is one of the strangest things I ever
heard."

Wolcott Norris got out of his chair so quickly that Neil looked up in
surprise. "What happened about these Chinese?" asked the mining
engineer. "When did they come into it and _how_ did they act?"

"That's another bit of mystery," said Neil. "There were a couple of
fellows at school who didn't like Teeny-bits for one reason or
another--jealousy, I guess--and according to general belief they patched
up some kind of ridiculous plot to get Teeny-bits away from the school
while the big game was being played. One of them was Teeny-bits'
substitute and would have played if Teeny-bits hadn't been there. Maybe
you read in the papers about the accident in which a fellow named
Bassett was killed and another named Campbell got pretty badly hurt.
Those were the two fellows--they wrecked a big machine running away
after Teeny-bits showed up at the game. At least every one supposed they
were trying to make a get-away. All Teeny-bits knows about the thing is
that some one sent him a fake telephone message that his father--that
is, old Daniel Holbrook--had been hurt, and when Teeny-bits was on the
way home some men pounced on him and carried him over to Greensboro and
shut him up in some sort of Chinese place. They had him all tied up and
fixed so that he couldn't get away, they thought; but Teeny-bits
squirmed around and tore his sweater half off and finally got almost
loose, when back came two of these Chinamen and were tying him up again
when they saw this mark on his back and they began to act as if they'd
been mesmerized or something. They jabbered away and pointed at the
thing, and while they were going through these tantrums Teeny-bits just
walked out of the place and came home."