"It takes a college crack to pile them up," Lindsay observed. "Poole has been in Dickinson's room at Harvard, and he says Dickinson has a velvet shield two feet square, just thatched with medals, to say nothing of the cups all around. Just imagine what it must be to go to a great meet like the intercollegiate, and know in advance you're going to beat every one of the hundred men in your event! That's what Dickinson's been doing for the last two years." Rob tried his imagination, but it would not serve. It was like seeking to conceive stellar distances! "I must be getting back to work," he said. "I suppose I may as well go in for the relay, even if I don't accomplish anything." He said good-by, and returned to his desk for another attack on the original. Salter's notes proved an Ariadne's thread for the labyrinth; in ten minutes he was writing Q.E.D. at the foot of his sheet of paper with a satisfaction dimmed only by the fact that the demonstration was not wholly of his own making. A rattle at the door now announced that he in turn was to be visited. He knew the rattle, for it always heralded the coming of a Peck; but to-day he fancied it lacking in assurance, and he looked up at the door in a momentary thrill of curiosity. There were two Pecks this time, both unusually grave in aspect. One carried in his hand a covered pasteboard box. "More eels?" asked Owen, giving way frankly to the snicker which would come. The bearer of the box, whom Rob had provisionally fixed upon as Duncan, grinned sheepishly and answered: "No; guinea pigs this time." "Guinea pigs! Where?" "In the desk drawer, two of 'em," went on Duncan, trying hard to be jocose. "They are really quite--quite sweet. Want to see 'em?" Duncan raised the lid of the box a finger's width and Rob peeped in. "Pretty, aren't they!" observed the grinning Owen. "What are you going to do with them? I thought animals weren't allowed in the dormitories." "That's just where the chump's meanness comes in!" burst out Donald. "We couldn't throw the things out alive, of course, and we couldn't kill 'em. Lady Jane" (the matron) "came in on us while we had 'em on the table,--caught us with the goods on us, she thought,--and jawed us like a stepmother for defying the school rules. When we said some one put 'em in the desk drawer, she thought we were lying and threatened to have us fired for breaking the rules and not showing her proper respect. I call it a low-down trick!" "Here's what we found with them," interrupted Duncan. "What does it mean?" Rob took the slip of paper on which was written in print: "The Second Plague." "I suppose it means what it says," he remarked. "And there are more plagues to follow?" "Yes." "How many?" "How many do you suppose!" exclaimed Rob, derisively. "How many plagues of Egypt were there?" "That's the question," replied Duncan. "I say there were three, and Don says there were seven. Which is it now?"