"Nobody—no freshman in p'ticular—ish going to help me!" exclaimed Mott noisily. "I can walk a chalk line, I can. Keep your eyes on me and you'll see how it's done."

"All right. Get out, then," said Foster hastily.

Mott lurched out of the cab, and the driver, at Foster's word, at once started on and neither of the boys glanced behind to see how it fared with the intoxicated sophomore. They were eager now to dispose of their classmate, and as soon as the taxi halted in front of Leland Hall they tried to arouse the slumbering freshman. At last, by dint of their united efforts, they succeeded in lifting him to the ground, and then they somehow got him up the stairway and soon had him in his bed. When their labors were ended Will exclaimed, "It must be midnight. Surely the people couldn't see who we were except when the cab passed the street lights, but I'm afraid some of them knew then."

"That isn't so bad. I don't care half so much about their seeing as I do about something else."

"What's that?"

"What they saw. Poor fool!" he added bitterly as he turned and glanced at the bed whereon Peter John was lying and noisily sleeping. "I did my best to hold him back, but he would go on with Mott."

"Do you think he lost his money too?"

"Haven't a doubt of it."

"And he didn't have very much to lose."

"It was all he had. It would have been the same if it had been seven thousand instead of just plain seven. He was so set up by the attentions of Mott that he was an easy mark. I never saw anything like it."