faction shook the hall.

Instead of jumping down and returning to his seat, Teeny-bits left the
platform by the back way and hurried out of the building by the rear
door. He wanted to be alone just then. The November night air was cool
on his flushed face and he strode swiftly toward his room, thinking of
all the things that had happened to him in the few short weeks since he
had come to Ridgley and of all the friends he had made. Never had he
seen the campus so deserted; every one was at the mass meeting, it
seemed. There were lights only in the entries of the dormitories. He
took a short cut across the tennis courts and approached Gannett Hall
from the rear.

When the grayish-white bulk of the building was only twenty-five yards
away, Teeny-bits heard a sudden sound that caused him to gaze upward.
What he saw instantly dispelled from his mind the pleasant thoughts in
which he had been absorbed. A window in the third story was open;
stretching downward from it was one of the fire-escape ropes with which
each room was equipped. Some one was letting himself downward by sitting
in the patent sling and allowing the rope to slide slowly through his
hands. Teeny-bits stepped behind one of the beech trees that grew close
to the building. While he watched, the person on the rope came down even
with the second story. There he paused, resting his feet on the ledge of
a window. In a moment he had raised the sash and had climbed inside.

Teeny-bits remained behind the tree, peering upward and wondering if he
had hit upon the solution of the mystery of the petty thefts. Inside the
room on the second floor a dim light shone for a moment and then went
out; the thief was using a flashlamp. Teeny-bits' first thought was to
notify some one in authority, but he quickly made up his mind that he
would do better to observe developments and to stay on watch until the
thief should come out.

Close to the wall of the building grew some shrubs which seemed to offer
a better vantage point from which to watch. Teeny-bits stepped quickly
among them and crouched down so that, as seen from above, the dark
shadow of his body would seem to be part of the shrubbery. Looking
upward he could see any object on the side of the building outlined
clearly against the starlit sky. Two or three minutes after he reached
this new place of concealment a foot was thrust out of the second story
window above him; some one climbed out and after closing the window