“Come on down and play some pool,” suggested Hal.
But Allan shook his head. He liked pool, but with a condition in mathematics to work off it behooved him to do some studying.
“I’ll play some other night,” he said. And then: “Say, Hal,” he asked, “do you know a chap in our class named Burley?”
“Pete Burley? Yes; what about him?”
“Oh, nothing. What’s he like?”
“Like an elephant,” answered Hal, disgustedly. “A big brute of a chap from Texas or Montana or somewhere out that way.” Hal’s ideas of the West were rather vague. “Met him the other day; struck me as a big idiot. Well, see you to-morrow.”
Hal swung off down Main Street and Allan turned toward his room, feeling quite virtuous for that he had resisted temptation in the shape of pool and was going home to toil. When he opened his door a sheet of paper torn from a blue-book fluttered to the floor. There was a pin in it and it had evidently been impaled on the door. Allan held it to the light and saw in big round, boyish characters the inscription:
“Pete Burley.”