"Oh, it's the real Star all right," returned Billy. "It's not going out of my pocket until we can find an absolutely safe hiding-place. Twice lost and twice found! Bit of a record, don't you think?"
"Bit of whacking great luck," said Jack.
Billy grinned happily, overjoyed at the recovery of the Star, and the three of them trooped off to their dormitory.
The next morning Septimus Patch listened to a full account of the events of that memorable night, and regretted that he had been absent, "snoring," as he expressed it, "in a manner more worthy of a pig than an investigator."
"What do you make of Billy's find?" Jack asked him, and the inventor wrinkled his brows in perplexity.
"Well, for one thing," he said, "I don't believe that Daw had the Star. It seems incredible that Billy could have walked in his sleep and just collared the thing calmly! Look at it—the idea's piffle, plain piffle. No, the solution is something different, but I'm blessed if I can find—wait a moment!"
He held his head in both hands, and walked rapidly up and down the carpet of the study. Then he turned and looked out on the quadrangle for a few minutes. When he again faced his pals, they observed that his face was alight with what might prove the solution of the mystery.
"I believe I've got it, comrades," he said. "I believe I know what happened. Billy took the Star out of the hollow under the loose board, and hid it elsewhere. Last night he returned in his sleep and got it back again."
"My poor fellow!" exclaimed Jack. "It is so very painful."
"What's painful?"