"I hadn't given the matter any thought until a few moments ago, when Prof. Babbitt met me and remarked that he was in great trouble because a student had somehow entered his room and stolen a paper. "I then told him what I had seen and he asked me to come here and tell the same thing to you. I think that this thing occurred on Tuesday." "Are you quite sure?" asked Frank. Mr. Harding took some envelopes from his pocket and looked them over. "Yes," he said, "I had an important letter come a few minutes after that, and I see by the postmark here that it was delivered on Tuesday. I am certain that it was Tuesday." "I only wish to say," said Frank, turning to the dean, "that it was on Tuesday that Prof. Babbitt took his question paper to the printer. The printed examination papers could not have been delivered before Wednesday at the earliest." CHAPTER VII. A FORCED CONFESSION. There was a sarcastic smile on the dean's face as he turned to Prof. Babbitt and asked: "That doesn't seem to justify your charge, does it?" "Why--why----" stammered the professor. "At first blush perhaps it doesn't, but, don't you see, it shows that he had found the way to my room, and the fact that he was idling away his time in Page's room beneath ever since, is proof enough that he was waiting his chance to go up again. "I'm sure he got the paper, for I have taken a glance at the answers given by him and his particular crew of friends, and I find that every one of them passed perfect papers, and, without cheating, not more than one of them could have answered more than one problem." "You see, Merriwell," said the dean, "the circumstances point very unhappily----" "I know they do, sir," said Frank, "and I feel miserable about it, but there's an explanation of how I and my friends have passed perfect papers, that I'm perfectly willing to state." "Do so, then." Frank thereupon related Page's joke just as it happened. He told all about the conversation he had overheard between Babbitt and Instructor Frost, and then described how he had got his friends together and led them in studying up the subject. "It may be that you call that cheating," he concluded, "but you must understand that none of us knew what problems the professor was to put upon the paper. "We only knew the general subject which he had chosen for the examination, and we set to work to make ourselves solid on that subject, and it seems that we did so." "Why, yes," responded the dean, with a queer smile. "I must say that if your story is correct, the professor has nothing to complain of. He wanted to compel you to work up on points that you were weak on, and it seems you did so. "Of course it was a very unusual thing for you to get the warning as to what the subject of the examination was to be, but if the professor himself gave the warning----" "Who would have dreamed," exclaimed Babbitt, "that a rascally student was listening in the chimney!"