New Haven is often called the City of Elms. There were a number of these and other trees growing about, and one of them extended its branches toward the roof of this house in such a way that Frank could grasp it. He took hold of it with the idea of climbing along to the trunk of the tree, and then shinning down, but the branch bent under his weight until his feet were not more than ten feet from the ground. Accordingly Frank let go and came down with nothing more than a bit of a jar. He had landed in the yard beside the house, from which he saw that an alley led between buildings to an adjoining street. His hands and clothes were grimy with soot. "If I should go through High Street this way," he thought, "and should meet Page, he'd have the laugh on me in earnest. I'll just skip out the other way, get into my room and clean up and then give him a surprise party." Accordingly Frank hastened through the alley and so to his room. He met nobody on the way with whom he was acquainted, and as soon as he was in his room he washed his hands and face thoroughly and changed his clothes. "So, then," he thought in the midst of this operation, "Prof. Babbitt wants to make an example of me, does he, and he knows my weak points, eh?" "Luckily, I know my own weak points, too, so far as mathematics is concerned, and in the next three days it strikes me that I can do a bit of grinding that will enable me to give the professor a surprise party. If my guess is right as to the kind of examples that will be put on that paper, I shouldn't wonder if I could give the other fellows a lift, too." Meantime, Harold Page, having made his friend a prisoner in the fireplace, had gone from his room for the purpose of finding some other fellow whom he might bring back to share in the fun of Frank's discomfort. As his room was at some little distance from the campus, he did not expect to find anybody on the street near it, so he started on a run in the direction of the college, for it was not his intention to keep Frank a prisoner more than a few minutes. He had not gone very far before he met a classmate, whose name was Mortimer Ford. Ford was not a very popular fellow, although it could not be said that anybody had anything special against him. He was acquainted with Frank and the particular crowd that chummed with him, and sometimes took part in their doings, but on the whole he was rather outside the circle in which Frank had been a leader from the start. If Page had had his wish, he would have met Rattleton, or Browning, or Diamond, or some of the others more closely associated with Merriwell, for he knew that they would enjoy the trick with better humor than anybody else. When he saw Ford his first impulse was to go and look up somebody else, but Ford called out to him: "Hello, Page, how long have you been back?" "Oh, I came back a week ago," Page answered, "and engaged a room, got it in order, and then went away again. I came back for good this morning."