These and many more questions were heard on every side. The paper bags from which the mice had burst were still in the center of the floor. Some of the first-year boys picked them up. From them dropped slips of paper on which were printed:
COMPLIMENTS OF THE DAREWELL BASEBALL NINE.
"I thought so!" exclaimed Walter Powell, the chairman of the arrangement committee of the dance. "The Darewell Chums had a hand in this. We must find 'em, fellows!"
"Come on!" exclaimed Ned to his companions in the ventilator space. "We'd better skip. They may find us."
They went out as they had come in, and soon were on their way home.
"Talk about getting even," remarked Fenn. "I guess we did it all right!"
"I caught all the mice in our house," said Ned. "Dad says he wishes I'd take the job steady, though he didn't know why I was doing it."
"Alice tried to find out one night what I was going to do with the cheese I got to bait the trap with," Bart remarked. "I guess she knows now."
Meanwhile the boys of the Upside Down Club, much chagrined at the unexpected ending of their entertainment, were trying to induce the girls to go on dancing. They said all the mice had gone, which was probably true, but they couldn't get the young ladies to believe it.
"I'm going home!" declared Jennie Smith, and several other girls decided to go with her.