That was possible. It was also possible that both men had lied. They might have inherited a single bad streak—an irresistible tendency to steal, perhaps. Such things had been known. Jim might have committed the actual robbery and Archie helped him get away with the spoils. So Merriwell tossed about through the long hours of the night, struggling between his innate loyalty and devotion to his friend and the evidence of his eyesight and his common sense. At last, toward morning, he fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed strange, fantastic dreams in which Archie and Jellison and Percy Joblots were mixed up in a vague, shadowy, perfectly idiotic manner with a fountain of silver dollars which spouted out of the stone hearth of the dining room and filled the whole house. He awoke when the first beams of the morning sun streamed through the open window and slanted across the bed. He was on the floor in a twinkling, dragging the blankets off Brad and causing the Texan to awake with a grunt and a shiver. “Come out and take a plunge,” Dick invited him. “It’ll clear the cobwebs out of your brains.” To tell the truth, he felt more need of that process than did his chum; for his cogitating of the night before had brought no satisfactory solution to the problem which was perplexing him, and he was in quite as much of a quandary as ever regarding the stand he sought to take. “B-r-r!” chattered Buckhart. “I reckon I might as well, pard. I couldn’t be much colder than I am now. Come on.” Slipping off his pajamas, he snatched up a blanket, and, wrapping it around him, started downstairs. Dick lingered long enough to arouse the others, and then followed. Together they raced across the grass, silvery with hoar frost, and, without a pause, dashed into the icy water. Both of them let out a yell which raised weird echoes from across the silent lake, and then settled down to a brisk swim. Presently the other three fellows appeared and took the plunge with even more vociferousness, and five minutes later they all trooped back to the house, glowing from head to foot and feeling ready for anything which the day had to offer. Joblots, dragging on his clothes with shivering haste, chattering teeth and fumbling fingers, was horror-stricken when he found out what they had been doing. “My grathiouth thaketh!” he gasped. “How could you do it? I thould have perithed of the cold. My conthtitution would never thtand the thtrain.” Brad slapped him on the back with a powerful hand which caused Percy to wince and step back. “Do you good, kiddo!” he grinned. “We’re warm as toast now, and you’re blue with the cold. Better try it.” “No, thankth,” Joblots returned hastily. “I’ll be all wight ath thoon ath I get my clotheth on.” When the Yale men got downstairs they found him trying to crawl into the chimney, while Jellison had departed to the woodshed for material with which to build up the fire.