ached. There were seminars on everything, even on the best way to
prepare cribs. Certain students with low grades and less honor would
somehow gravitate together and discuss plans for "foxing the profs."
Opinions differed. One man usually insisted that notes in the palm of
the left hand were safe from detection, only to be met by the objection
that they had to be written in ink, and if one's hand perspired, "and it
was sure as hell to," nothing was left but an inky smear. Another held
that a fellow could fasten a rubber band on his forearm and attach the
notes to those, pulling them down when needed and then letting them snap
back out of sight into safety. "But," one of the conspirators was sure
to object, "what th' hell are you going to do if the band breaks?" Some
of them insisted that notes placed in the inside of one's goloshes--all
the students wore them but took them off in the examination-room--could
be easily read. "Yeah, but the proctors are wise to that stunt." And so
_ad infinitum_. Eventually all the "stunts" were used and many more. Not
that all the students cheated. Everything considered, the percentage of
cheaters was not great, but those who did cheat usually spent enough
time evolving ingenious methods of preparing cribs and in preparing them
to have learned their lessons honestly and well.

The night before the first examinations the campus was utterly quiet.
Suddenly bedlam broke loose. Somehow every dormitory that contained
freshmen became a madhouse at the same time. Hugh and Carl were in
Surrey 19 earnestly studying. Freddy Dickson flung the door open and
shouted hysterically, "The general science exam's out!"

Hugh and Carl whirled around in their desk-chairs.

"What?" They shouted together.

"Yeah! One of the fellows saw it. A girl that works at the press copied
down the exam and gave it to him."

"What fellow? Where's the exam?"

"I don't know who the guy is, but Hubert Manning saw the exam."

Hugh and Carl were out of their chairs in an instant, and the three boys
rushed out of Surrey in search of Manning. They found him in his room
telling a mob of excited classmates that he hadn't seen the exam but
that Harry Smithson had. Away went the crowd in search of Smithson, Carl
and Hugh and Freddy in the midst of the excited, chattering lads.
Smithson hadn't seen the exam, but he had heard that Puddy McCumber had
a copy.... Freshmen were running up and down stairs in the dormitories,
shouting,