“Bates?” echoed Sid. “Bates! Where have I--Ah! I remember.” He sank back against the cushions again, closing his eyes as though in deep thought. Dick determined to be modest, but it was flattering to find that someone here had heard of him. He waited for Crocker to proceed, and so did Stanley, but instead Sid wriggled off the window-seat. “Just excuse me a minute, will you?” He crossed to a chiffonier, opened a drawer and fumbled within. “Just remembered something. Fellow downstairs wanted me to lend him--er----” Whatever it was the fellow downstairs required they didn’t learn, for Sid removed something from drawer to pocket and made for the corridor. “While I’m about it,” he added from the doorway, “I’ll find Blash and fetch him back.” Dick got the impression that he was seeking to convey to Stanley more than his words expressed, for he stared very hard at that youth as he spoke and continued to stare for an instant longer before he disappeared. “Rather a jolly old room,” said Stanley, when they were alone. “These old places fix up nicely, I think.” Dick agreed. Personally he didn’t care for the idea of sleeping and living in the same room, but the low studding, and the deep window embrasure and the scarred, dark-painted woodwork were somehow very homelike. The walls held dozens of pictures of all sorts: photographs, posters, engravings, etchings, a veritable hodge-podge. Amongst them were strange trophies, too: part of a wooden board bearing the strange legend “TE WAY S PASSING” in two lines, evidently half of a sign that had been sawed in two; a fencing mask; a canoe paddle with a weird landscape painted on the broad end; a cluster of spoons and forks tied together with a brown-and-white ribbon; several tennis rackets; a lacrosse stick; a battered baseball adorned with letters and figures and tacked to the moulding by its torn covering; several faded or tattered pennants, one bearing a big blue K which Dick presumed stood for the rival school of Kenwood. Between the two narrow beds was a good-sized study table littered with books and clothing and odds and ends awaiting Blashington’s return. Two chiffoniers and three chairs about completed the furnishings. The beds held bags, partly unpacked, and two steamer trunks blocked the passages between beds and table. “Blash has had this room four years,” mused Stanley. “Says he would be homesick if he went anywhere else. The joke about Sid’s shot putting, by the way, is that he tried it last fall and Blash got a cannonball that weighed about thirty pounds, and worked it off on him. Sid almost killed himself trying to putt it more than twelve feet. Then he noticed that Blash and the others were using another shot, and got onto the joke. Here they come.”