ers. Try to act as really
grown-up boys and girls ought to."

"Clu-wawk, clu-wawk," came the maddening repetition. She sprang to her
feet.

"That will be quite enough," she snapped. "If that boy makes that noise
again he will be sent to the office and suspended for two weeks." During
the awed silence which followed, she seated herself and took up the
black-covered book with impressive deliberation. All went well until the
"H's" were reached.

"Albert Harrison," she called, "Albert!"

[Illustration: _"Who shot that rubber band?"_]

"School doctor sent him home this morning," volunteered the boy nearest
Albert's empty desk.

As Miss Brown's eyes sought the record book again, an unseen something
whizzed through the air. Thomas Jackson jumped to his feet and rubbed a
chocolate ear belligerently.

"Who shot that rubber band? I'll fix him. Who done it? He's afraid to
let me know."

Miss Brown stepped down from the teacher's platform with an angry swish
of her skirts, and took up a position half-way down the aisle where she
had a better view of the class. John studied her carefully. The usually
smiling lips were set in a thin, nervous line, and the hand which held
the record book trembled ever so slightly. In an opposite corner of the
room, two little girls giggled hysterically. The ring of pupils around
him, true to the child's creed of no talebearing, glanced at school
books or lesson papers with preternaturally grave faces. Discipline had
been so badly broken that the class was at the stage where a dropped
piece of chalk or a sneeze will provoke an outburst of laughter.

John drew the needle from his coat lapel and wedged it carefully in the
joint between his desk and the back of Olga's seat. A glance at Miss
Brown found her watching Billy Silvey closely in the belief that he was
the miscreant. The time for his crowning bit of persecution had arrived.

Suddenly a nerve-wracking, ear-piercing vibration filled the room. Miss
Brown's face went white with rage. John caught the tip of the needle
with his fingernail and bent it back again.

"T-a-a-ang." The class gasped at the sheer audacity of the deed. A ray
of reflected light caught the teacher's eye, and she pounced upon the
boy before he could remove the incriminating bit of steel.

"John Fletcher," she screamed, as she stood beside him. "So it's you who
have been causing all this trouble!"

He admitted as much. Sober second thought would have counseled Miss