Charlie forced a sickly smile, which disappeared the instant he ceased to force it. He pulled out the contents of his pockets. "I've got," he answered, counting soberly, "just fifty-four cents in cash. They'll expect me home to-night--they expected me last night," he corrected himself, "I can't go, for I haven't got the price of a ticket. And I've given you fellows my IOU's," he went on, looking up with an attempt to face it out,--a pitiful attempt,--"for--how much, Ned?" "Two hundred for mine," Ned replied, spreading Charlie's poor little notes on the table. "Anybody else got 'em?" He looked around, but the others shook their heads. "It seems to be up to me to lend you, Ladue." Carelessly, he tossed a ten-dollar bill across the table. "Go home on that and see if you can't work the house for three hundred or so and take these up. Don't thank me." Charlie had taken the bill and begun to speak. "I'm doing it for cash, not sentiment. What do you suppose these IOU's are worth if you can't work somebody for the money?" Charlie, reduced to silence, pocketed the bill. "I've a notion," Ned continued, "that I'll go to town and look in at number seven. Luck's with me to-night. May do something there. Who goes with me?" The others professed the intention of going to bed. "You know, don't you," Ned threw out as an inducement, "that some man back in the nineties paid his way through college on number seven? Made an average of three thousand a year." "What's that story?" Charlie asked. "I haven't heard it." Ned enlightened him. "It's nothing much," he said carelessly, "only that some man--it may have been Jones or Smith--in the class of ninety-something, used to go in to number seven regularly, two or three times a week all through his four years here, and he made an average of three thousand a year. Broke the bank twice." Charlie was wide-eyed with amazement. "Why," he began, "if he could do that, I don't see why--" Ned laughed. "They have," he said. "Don't you run away with the idea that number seven hasn't made a profit out of Davis or Jones or whatever his name was. They advertise it all right. That story has brought them in a great deal more than three thousand a year. But this man had a system; a very simple one, and a very good one." "What was it?" Charlie asked. "Can you tell me?" "Certainly I can," Ned answered, smiling. "He had a cool head and he knew when to stop. And there isn't one in three thousand that knows when to stop, if they've got the bug." "I don't see," Charlie remarked loftily, "why anybody wouldn't know when to stop." "Well, they don't, kid," Ned replied sharply. Charlie was silent for a while, digesting the information he had acquired. Ned got up to go. "Will--will you take me, Ned?" Charlie asked hesitatingly.