terribly afraid so,” admitted Patricia. “Still I think I had better go back to the dorm right after we finish dinner—”
“Oh,” began Jack in protest.
“I really think it’s wiser,” said Patricia, looking at him with a worried expression.
The telephone rang sharply a second time.
“Don’t tell me it’s that pest again!” cried Patricia, as Ted took off the receiver.
“Yes. Oh, hello, Anne. Well, spill it. You heard what? The deuce he did! Of all the rot I ever—To be sure it will. Thanks a lot for telling me. I’ll see what can be done right away. Goodbye.”
“Well, what’s happened now?” demanded Patricia.
“No use in my trying to break the news gently. Anne says there is a rumor around college tonight that Jack was offered a big bribe to stay out of the Greystone game; that he took it, and has disappeared. Can you beat that?”
Patricia, speechless with distress, simply twisted her napkin into a mere rope.
“The curs! The contemptible curs!” exploded Jack. “I might have known they’d get even with me some way!”
“Don’t tell me there’s a foundation for that rumor!” cried Ted sharply.
“There is,” replied Jack shortly. “I didn’t mean to tell this; but listen.” Rapidly, yet omitting no important detail, he related the story of the afternoon previous to his imprisonment in the belfry. “And the worst of it is, I haven’t a single witness. They can say pretty nearly what they choose, and go unchallenged.”
“Tut’s responsible for the rumor, of course,” decided Ted; “if we could only corner him some way.”
“We will!” declared Patricia, with vehemence.
“And make him eat crow!” concluded her cousin.
“But how?” asked Jack, with a short laugh. “Tut’s pretty hard-boiled, and who—”
“I shall,” announced Mrs. Carter firmly, getting up from the table.
“Aunt Betsy!”
“Mother!”
“Mrs. Carter!”
“No use objecting. I’m going to find him right now, and I’ll promise you to be back with his scalp before the evening’s over. I won’t give any of you away. He doesn’t know me from Adam.”
“Eve, you mean, Mother,” laughed her son.
“And, now where will I be most likely to find him?” she asked, slipping on her coat and perching a hat on the back of her head.
Jack looked at the clock. “Probably in his room at No. 9 Craig Street. It’s on the second floor, a single, right opposite the stairs; but at least let one of us take you as far as the house.”
“I won’t. You stay quietly here until I come back, all of you.” With a slam of the door, she was gone.
The three young people looked at one another in speechless astonishment. Finally, Ted laughed.
“I feel kind of sorry for old Tut, much as I dislike him. Mother will have the truth out of him if she has to stand him on his head. He’ll do what she says, or she’ll know why.”
The tension was broken, and they all laughed.
When the table was cleared, Ted announced that he was going to do the dishes.
“We’ll help,” said Patricia.
“No, you won’t. You two sit in the living room and chatter.”
Patricia shrugged her shoulders, and led the way into the next room; extinguished all but one of the lamps, turned on the gas log, and sat down before the fire. Jack threw himself on the hearth rug and propped his back against the big chair in which Patricia was sitting.
“Will—will this do you much harm, do you suppose?” she asked, after a moment’s silence.
“Hard to tell. Of course if I can’t be cleared, it will mean my finish as far as sports are concerned—that’s all Tut thinks of, naturally. But, as I told you once before, I think, there is a special reason why I must make good here; and if my reputation comes into question, well—”
Jack broke off abruptly, and frowned at the fire. In a moment he continued:
“I haven’t told anyone else about this, but I’d like you to know; and I’m sure it won’t go any farther.”
“Of course not.”
“On the tenth of last August, I received a special delivery letter,” began Jack slowly, gazing steadily at the fire.
Patricia leaned forward, breathless with surprise.
“In that letter,” continued the boy, “was a cashier’s check for One Thousand Dollars; and on a slip of paper, the words, ‘For John Dunn, to be spent on a year at Granard College.’ We tried in every way to find out where it came from, but when all of our efforts were fruitless we decided that the only thing to do was to use the money as requested. So you see why I feel under such heavy obligations to make good.”
“Jack,” whispered Patricia, with a little excited catch in her throat. “I’ve never told anybody, either—not even my aunt or cousin; but that’s exactly what happened to me.”
“You mean,” cried the boy, twisting around to look up into her face, “that you got money that same way—to come here?”
Patricia nodded.
“How very, very queer!”
The strangeness of the situation silenced them completely for a time. Then Jack murmured: “This should make us better friends than ever, shouldn’t it?”
Patricia smiled, but she did not withdraw the hand that Jack imprisoned in both of his.
“Doesn’t it seem sometimes as if you just must find out who sent the check?” asked Jack, a moment later.
“Yes; and sometimes I feel really nervous over it, as if somebody whom I couldn’t see were watching me all the time, to make sure that I behaved properly.”
The door flew open at that moment, and Aunt Betsy darted into the room just as Ted came in from the kitchen.
“Well,” she exclaimed, sinking down in a big chair and throwing off her coat, “I’ve settled his hash! He’s going around now contradicting the rumor he started, and he’ll never bother you again.”
“Hurrah for you, Mother!” cried Ted. “But tell us the whole story. How did you ever—”
“I knew that young man’s father; used to go to school with him. Got him out of an awful scrape once, and he promised he’d do anything I asked him
