So it looked, indeed, but poor Bar had paid dearly enough for that useless bit of an accomplishment, and he would gladly have traded it with Val for a few of the things the latter probably valued very lightly. After the billiards, Val suggested a visit to the gymnasium, not a great many blocks away, but there he was even more astonished than he had been in the billiard-room. “If you only knew a little algebra and geometry!” he exclaimed, enthusiastically, “you’d be a treasure to the Academy. Won’t we have fun!” “How’s that?” asked Bar. “Why, of course you don’t know,” said Val. “Wait till we get there, though. I just want some of those country fellows to try on their games again. I was almost alone last term, and they were too much for me. Got awfully thrashed twice, and I’m just dying to try ’em on again. Been training for it all vacation. But you’re worth three of me.” “I’ll back you,” shouted Bar. “But then,” he added, “I thought we were going to the Academy to study?” “So we are,” said Val, “and I wouldn’t disappoint my mother for anything, nor my father, either, but you can’t study all the while, and there’s any quantity of fun in the country.” They were coming down the stairs from the gymnasium into the street, while they were talking, and just then, as they reached the sidewalk, Bar grasped his friend’s arm with: “Val--Val--let’s hurry. There’s a man I don’t want to have see me.” Val moved quickly enough, but he should not have looked at the same time, for he thereby attracted the attention of a large, showily-dressed man, seemingly some sort of a gentleman whose eyes they might otherwise have avoided. “Aha! my young fellow! Have I found you? What have you done with my valise? Come right along with me, now. I’ve been hunting you for a week. Come along, Mr. Jack Chills.” Bar’s cheeks had turned a trifle pale at first, but they were blazing red now. It seemed to him as if all his “new time” were suddenly in peril, and he determined not to lose it without an effort. “You are mistaken in the man,” he firmly replied. “My name is not Chills, but Vernon--Barnaby Vernon. If you annoy me I shall call the police at once. Take away your hand, sir.” “Police, indeed? Do you mean to say I’m not your guardian, Major Montague? And do you mean to say you’re not my nephew, and that you did not run away with my valise and all my valuable papers? Come right along. I shan’t give you up, now I’ve got you.” “Police!” shouted Bar, stoutly, and: “Police! police!” echoed Val, with a boyish resolve to stand by his friend. It was not a quarter of the city in which the police are most plentiful, or it may be Major Montague would have hesitated, anxious as he was, for reasons of his own, to amend the errors of his fit of maudlin penitence, but, just for that once, the shout of the two boys fell on the right pair of ears, and the Major was actually brought face to face with a “very intelligent-looking cop,” as Val afterwards described him.