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 have changed? "I guess I won't waste time on it," he said dryly, and walked away.

After that, in some strange fashion trouble seemed to lift its head in whatever part of the school building Big Jim was on duty. If a sudden clamor of boisterousness broke out in a corridor while classes were changing rooms, it was usually a corridor in which he was stationed. If the lines on the stairs suddenly began to race and grow confused and disorganized, it generally happened to the lines over which he was supposed to exercise supervision. With the greatest frankness in the world he would tell Lee Merritt about it.

"It started," he said, "and I hustled right for the middle of it, but by the time I got there it was all over. You couldn't tell what had happened or who had started it. You couldn't pin it on anybody."

Merritt, for all that he had spoken of trusting his first recruit, was beginning to have doubts as to that recruit's probity. "It's funny," he said hesitatingly, "that these things always seem to happen in your territory."

The veins in Big Jim Fry's neck stuck out. His face grew red. "What do you mean by that?" he demanded.

Merritt—easy-going Merritt—shrank from