Dodging aside as soon as he had crossed the river, he hoped he might be able to reach Mrs. Grant’s and his room without meeting anybody he knew. But at the very last, as he was turning the final corner, he ran into Dick Maxwell and two other members of the Omegs. It was Dick who blocked the way and said: “Just been up to your room to see if you’d been heard from yet. Coach Brock wanted to know where you’d dropped out to. Where’ve you been, and what makes you look as if you’d been pulled backwards through a knot-hole?” Larry steadied himself with a grip on the corner fence post, and in place of answering the double question, asked one of his own. “Where were you at eleven o’clock last night, Dick?” Dick’s reply was prompt. “Up to about that time I was in the house lounge with Cranny and Stillwell here, chewing Physics with them for the test to-day. After that I was hitting the hay for a home run in my little downy. Why?” “Nothing,” said Larry, and he went on to the Man-o’-War gate with a great light beginning to filter through the headache clouds. One thing, at least, was clear: the stubble-faced loafer had told a lie cut out of whole cloth. There had been no Dick Maxwell to be knocked down and dragged out and carried home. In his room Larry found Purdick working over a demonstration drawing, and the small one nearly jumped up and flung his arms around the home-comer when he saw who it was that had opened the door. “Suffering Jehu! I never was so glad to see anybody in my life!” he exclaimed, shoving the drawing-board back on the study table. Then: “They’ve had me fighting mad all day.” “Who had?” said Larry, dropping into a chair to get back to the old trick of holding his head in his hands. “Markley and Dugger, and that bunch. They’ve been telling it all over the campus that they saw you last night in a back room at ‘Pat’s Place’ _dead drunk_! I tried to lick Dugger for saying it, but he carried too big a wallop for me.” “Huh!” said Larry, looking out between his fingers; “that’s where you got that black eye, was it? You’re a mighty loyal little rat, Purdy, and I only wish you’d been fighting for something worth while. I was in ‘Pat’s Place’ last night, and if I wasn’t drunk, there was something else mighty funny the matter with me. I just waked up a little while ago, and my head feels bigger than a barrel, right now. But what were Markley and Dugger doing in Pat’s?”