"We're a bright lot of lads," thought the scrub pitcher, "to be taken in after this fashion. We should have stuck together and then we could have fought off the sophs. But it's too late now. I wonder if Sid was caught?" He listened and could hear the retreating steps of his captors. That all had not gone and that some were left on guard was indicated by the low talk that went on outside and by the tramping about the shack of several lads. "Can he get out?" Tom heard some one ask. "No. The place is nailed up tight." "Maybe I can't and maybe I can," mused Tom. "Anyhow I'm going to have a look. Wait until I strike a match." Holding his hat as a protection, so that no gleams would penetrate possible cracks in the door, Tom struck a light and examined the walls of his prison. The shack consisted of only one room and was cluttered up with chairs, tables, benches, counters and other things. Tom at once eliminated from his plan of escape the front, as there he knew the sophomores would remain on guard. He must try either the sides or the back. The sides, he saw, were out of the question, as they contained only small windows, hardly big enough for him to get through. In addition the casements were closed by heavy wooden shutters, nailed fast. "No use trying them," thought Tom. "The back is the only place." This he examined with care, and to his delight he saw what he thought would enable him to get out. This was an opening near the top, and it was closed by a thin wooden shutter swinging on a hinge. "It's nailed fast," Tom remarked when, by dint of lighting many matches inside his hat, he had examined the shutter. "But I can reach it by standing on two chairs, and if I can get it open, I can crawl out and drop to the ground. But how am I going to pull out those big nails?" Indeed it did seem impossible, but Tom was ingenious. His fingers, when he had thrust his hands into his pockets, had touched his keen-bladed knife, the one that had gotten him into trouble about the wire and which had been returned to him by the proctor. "I can cut away the wood around the nails," he thought, and at once he put his plan into operation. He managed to get two chairs, one on top of the other, and mounting upon this perch, he attacked the shutter. Fortunately the wood was soft, and working in the darkness by means of feeling with his fingers around the nails, Tom soon had one spike cut free of the shutter. Then he began on the others, and in half an hour he could raise the solid piece of wood. A breath of the fresh night air came to him. "No glass in it," he exclaimed softly. "That's good. Now to get away and show up at the dinner. I hope they didn't get any other fellows. They haven't brought any more here, that's sure." He listened at the door a moment. "I wish some of our fellows would come back," he heard one of the guards saying. "Yes, it's lonesome here. I wonder if Parsons is still there?" "Sure he is. How could he get away?"