with the sophomore class,"
uttered Ted Butler, disgustedly. "Your class, Ripley, will be
sore enough, anyway, over losing the paper chase for the first
time that any of us can remember. Now, for a soph to be thrashed,
in three rounds, by a little freshman-----"

Butler didn't finish, but, turning on his heel, walked over to
join the rest.

There were two sophomores there who had come over at the end of
the paper chase, but neither went to the assistance of his defeated
classman. Ripley, alone, got his sweater back over his head.
The crowd was around Dick Prescott, who felt almost ashamed of
the fight, unavoidable as he knew it to have been.

When he had finished getting his clothes on, Ripley stalked moodily
past the main group.

"You mucker," he hissed, "I suppose you feel swelled up over having
had a chance to fight gentleman. You-----"

"Oh, Ripley, dry up---do!" interjected Ted Butler. "You call
yourself a gentleman, but you talk and act more like well, more
like a pup with the mange!"

"A pup with the mange! Great!" came the gleeful chorus from a
half score of freshmen.

"I'm not through with you, yet, Prescott!" Fred Ripley called
back over his shoulder. "I'll settle my score with you at my
convenience!"

Then, as he put more distance between himself and the other Gridley
High School boys, Ripley added to himself:

"That settlement shall stop at nothing to put Dick Prescott in
the dust---where he belongs."

"Oh, freshie, but you've coolness and judgment," cried Thompson,
approvingly. "And you've broken one cad's heart today."

"I'm sorry if I have," declared Dick, frankly, generously. "I
wouldn't have had any heart in the fight if he hadn't started
in to humiliate me. I wouldn't have cared so much for that, either.
But he started to say something nasty about my parents, and I
have as good parents as ever a boy had. Then I felt I simply
_had_ to fit a plug between Ripley's teeth."

Fred Ripley had pain in his eyes to help keep him awake that
night. Yet he would have been awake, anyway, for his wicked
brain was seething with plans for the way to "get even" with
Dick Prescott.

CHAPTER VI

FRED OFFERS TO SOLVE THE LOCKER MYSTERY

For a week Gridley High School managed to get along without the
presence of Fred Ripley. That haughty young man was at home,
nursing a pair of black eyes and his wrath.

Yet, in a whole week, a mean fellow who is rather clever can hatch
a whole