between
the two boys, as to some way out of the apparent difficulty. Jack,
however, merely placed the glass in the extended hand, and received it
back without the exchange of a syllable. Not only that, he returned to
the back of the hall, and instead of resuming his seat at the front,
mounted to a window ledge at the rear.

"Well, I am ready," announced the professor. "And I make ze suggestion
that Mr. Peters himself write ze first."

The latter was speedily at the board. As he wrote, a silence fell.
Previously the professor had called off each letter as written. This time
there was no response. With a smile that gradually broadened to a laugh
Peters finished an odd Indian name, and asked, "The thought-waves haven't
gone astray already, have they, Mr. Professor? Haven't been frightened
off by a mere handkerchief, surely?"

"I was wondering how to pronounce it," came the quiet response. "I'll
spell it instead. It is,

"'M U S Q U O D O B O I T.'"

Peters stared blankly. Not more blankly than the majority of the
audience, however, including Kate herself. She turned toward Jack. He
appeared as surprised as Peters. Indeed, if there was anything
suspicious, it was that Jack appeared a trifle over-astonished.

As the burst of applause which followed the first surprise was succeeded
by a wave of laughter, Kate turned back to discover Peters, very red in
the face, drawing on the board a picture. As she looked a grotesquely
ugly face took shape. The face completed, there was a renewed burst of
merriment when Peters topped it with a fool's-cap, and on that sketched
rough hieroglyphics.

"Now whose picture have I drawn?" he demanded loudly.

"Well, you tried to draw mine," responded the professor, dropping into
normal English, "but as the dunce's tie is far up the back of his collar,
I leave the audience to decide whose it is."

At this there were shouts and shrieks of laughter, and Peters, hurriedly
feeling, and finding his own tie far out of place, threw the chalk to the
floor and dashed back to his seat amid a perfect bedlam of hilarity.

The uproar soon subsided, however, for not one in the crowded room but
was now thoroughly wonderstruck at the demonstration. Some of the older
people began to step forward, writing the most difficult names they could
think of, meaningless words, groups of figures. A teacher chalked a
proposition in algebra. Without error all were called out promptly.

The climax was reached when o