Having discovered Buck Waters as a companionable soul, congenially inclined to the pagan view of life, it was not long before the two discovered the third completing genius in the person of Tom Kelly, who, though a member of the Sheff freshman class, immediately agreed not to let either time, place, or conflicting recitations stand in the way of that superior mental education which must result from the friction of three such active imaginations. The triumvirate was established on a firm foundation on the day after Kelly's ambitious but unsuccessful attempt to hit the moon with a pool-ball, and immediately began a series of practical jokes and larks which threatened to terminate abruptly the partnership or remove it bodily to an unimaginative outer world. McNab, like most gentlemen of determined leisure, worked indefatigably every minute of the day. Having slept through chapel and first recitation, with an occasional interruption to rise and say with great dignity "Not prepared," he would suddenly, about ten o'clock in the morning, awake with a start, and drifting into Stover's room plaster his nose to the window and restlessly ask himself what mischief he could invent for the day. After a moment of dissatisfied introspection, he would say fretfully: "I say, Dink?" "Hello!" "Studying?" "Yes." "Almost finished?" "No." "What are you doing, McCarthy?" "Boning out an infernal problem in spherical geometry." "I gave that up." "Oh, you did!" "Sure, it's too hard--what's the use of wasting time over it, then? What do you say to a game of pool?" "Get out!" "Let's go for a row up on Lake Whitney." "Shut up!" "Come over to Sheffield and get up a game of poker with Tom Kelly." At this juncture, Stover and McCarthy rising in wrath, McNab would beat a hurried retreat, dodging whatever came sailing after him. Much aggrieved, he would go down the hall, trying the different doors, which had been locked against his approach. About this time Buck Waters, moved by similar impulses, would appear and the two would camp down on the top step and practise duets, until a furious uprising in the house would drive them ignominiously on to the street. Left to their own resources, they would wander aimlessly about the city, inventing a hundred methods to accomplish the most difficult of all feats, killing time. On one particular morning in early November, McNab and Buck Waters, being refused admission to three houses on York Street, and the affront being aggravated by jeers and epithets of the coarsest kind, went arm in arm on mischief bent. "I say, what let's do?" said McNab disconsolately. "We must do something new," said Buck Waters. "We certainly must." "Well, let's try the old clothes gag," said McNab; "that always amuses a little." Reaching the thoroughfare of Chapel Street, McNab stationed himself at the corner while Waters proceeded to a point about half-way down the block.