Page:The Winning Touchdown.djvu/66

54 "I wrenched my knee a bit," spoke Phil, "but it doesn't bother me now."

"And I'd like to get hold of the fellow who rubbed my nose in the dirt," came wrathfully from Sid. "I must have chewed up about an ounce of it."

"It's good for your digestion," asserted Tom, with a wry face. "But say, fellows, doesn't it strike you as rather queer that we didn't get a hint about our missing chair and clock?"

"It is sort of so-so," admitted Phil.

"You'd have thought," went on Tom, as he stopped for a moment in the shadow of biology hall to favor his bruised ankle, "you'd have thought that if it was some of the boys putting up a job on us that they'd have given it away."

"Yes, such as asking what time it was, or if we rested well in our room, or something like that," added Sid. "But there wasn't even a look to give us a clew."

"Which means," declared the 'varsity left end, as he limped on, "that either none of our fellows have had a hand in it, or that they can keep a secret better than we fellows could. If this bunch had done anything like that we'd be wanting to rig the victim. But I can't understand this silence."

"It means something," declared Phil. "There's some mystery about this that's deeper than we have any idea of."