"Work!" chuckled the man Jem. "Why, you'd win over the president of the college himself."
Bang!
"What was that?" demanded Brady sharply.
Frank was in dismay. In his sleep Bob Upton had groaned, then moved.
Probably, in some nightmare, dreaming he was back among his old tyrant masters on the farm, he had kicked out his foot, landing heavily on the floor of the loft.
"Oh, I guess it was the wind rattling some loose timber about the old ruin of a place," observed Jem.
Frank crept cautiously to the side of his sleeping comrade.
Bob was muttering restlessly in his sleep, and Frank feared another outbreak. He placed his hand over Bob's mouth.
"Wake up--quietly, now--there is somebody below," he whispered.
"What's the row?" droned Bob.
"S--st! Follow me. Get out of this. It's stopped raining."
Frank managed to get himself and his friend out of the place without disturbing the three men in the hut or apprising them of their presence.
The rain had nearly stopped. Bob rubbed his eyes sleepily.
"Some tramps came into the cabin yonder after you went to sleep," explained Frank. "They are hard characters, and it is best to steer clear of them."
It took the two boys an hour to find their way to Bellwood School. Bob was tired out and sleepy, and Frank was by no means in a mood for chatting. He was absorbed in thinking out his strange discoveries of the night.
"I've got a clue to that diamond bracelet of Mace's," he reflected. "Mace don't deserve any favors from me after the outrageous way he's acted, but if I can do anything toward getting it back for him, all right. I wonder, though, what it means--that man, Brady, being here, and what trick he is up to with the high hat and the dress coat? His friend spoke of the president of the college and some 'kid.' Are they up to some thieving trick? If so, I want to be alert to balk them."
When the two boys reached the academy, they had some difficulty in locating a loose window, and they had to use caution in getting to their room. The bed felt so good after the rough experiences of the night that Frank soon joined his snoring companion in the land of dreams, leaving action as to the crowd at the cabin for the morrow.
They met their friendly persecutors of the evening before good-naturedly at breakfast. It was easy for Frank to see that Ritchie and his associates were ready to accept them as gritty comrades who could take a joke as a matter of course.
"You've paid your initiation fee in pluck and endurance, Jordan," said Mark Prescott, the able lieutenant of Dean Ritchie in his rounds of mischief.
"You and Upton can consider yourselves full-fledged members of the Twilight Club."
"Good!" laughed Frank as he started for the campus. Before he was out of the building, however, Frank got thinking of his adventures of the evening before. And instead of immediately joining his fellows he strolled around to the side of the academy.
There was a walk, not much used by the students, leading past the kitchen and laundry quarters of the school. As Frank got nearly to the end of this a baseball whizzed by him and he saw Banbury and a crony named Durkin making for it.
Just at that moment, too, Frank noticed a boy wearing a long apron sitting on a stone step just outside the kitchen door.
He was peeling potatoes, and he was peeling them right, fully engrossed in his labors, as though it were some artistic and agreeable occupation.
"Well! well! well!" irresistibly ejaculated Frank. "If it isn't Ned Foreman!"
CHAPTER XIV
THE ROW ON THE CAMPUS
"Shake!" cried Frank, rushing forward and extending a warm hand.
The boy peeling potatoes looked up in some surprise. For a minute he was puzzled. Then his face broke into a genial smile.
"It's the fellow I met at Tipton----" he began.
"That's who--Frank Jordan."
"Who saved me from getting robbed."
"Put it that way, if you like," answered Frank. "How did you ever come here?"
"Walked, coaxed freight hands, and got some passenger lifts," explained Ned. "You know I told you I was going out of the scissors grinding and into school?"
"I know you did."
"Well, I've landed. I've saved up twenty dollars. That don't go far in tuition, so I'm working my way through school."
"Good for you," cheered Frank. "You're the kind that makes a mark in the world. Say, come up to my room. I want to have a real chummy chat with you."
"I couldn't do that just now," demurred Ned. "You see, I help in the kitchen here from six to eight in the morning, eleven to one at noon and five to seven in the evening."
"I haven't seen you in any of the classes."
"No; one of the professors is coaching me. You see, I need training to get into even the lowest class. As I said, I can't leave my work here now, but I may meet you occasionally after dark."
"Come at four this afternoon."
"Think I'd better?" inquired Ned dubiously.
"Why not?"
"Well, to be candid," answered Ned manfully, "my clothes aren't very good, as you see, and some of the fellows here have pretty well snubbed me, and maybe it would be wiser for me to keep my place."
"Your place?" fired up Frank. "Except among the stuck-up cads, your place is to be welcome to all the privileges of any well-behaved student, and I'll see to it that you get them, too."
"Hi, Jordan; on the domestic list?" broke in Banbury just then. He had regained the baseball and with his companion stood staring at Frank and Ned.
"Hum! I should say so," sniggered Durkin with a chuckle. "Pah! How it smells of onions and dishwater!"
"Take your friend and introduce him to Ritchie," sneered Banbury. "He needs a new catcher for his measly team that we're going to wallop to-morrow."
"Say," spoke Frank steadily, though with a flashing eye, "I'll bet you that my friend here--understand, my friend, Ned Foreman--would prove as good a catcher as he has to my knowledge run a business where he was trusted and did his duty well. I'll make another bet--you'll be the second-rate scholar you are now two years further on, when my friend is the boss of some surveying camp, where the smartest fellow is the one who has learned the cooking and science both--not a smattering--but from the ground up."
"Yah!" yawped Banbury, but he saw something in Frank's eye that warned him to sheer off promptly.