"Ho, ha!" roared Terry, seeing the look of disgust on their faces. "Wasn't that a pretty picture? I almost expected you to salute, gentlemen!"
"We're going to salute you so that you won't sit down for some time to come," growled Jim, moving around the table with his chemistry book in his hands. Don leaped at Terry and bore him to the bed. The red-head was too weak to offer any resistance and Jim paddled him vigorously with the book, until he cried for mercy.
"I just heard something that will interest you," Terry said, when the fooling had stopped.
"What is it?" asked Jim. "Out with it, or we'll paddle you some more!"
"The Gates family has moved out of town!" Terry said.
"I'm glad of it," cried Don, promptly. "I've always thought it too bad that such rascals should live in that fine, historic old place."
"That isn't such a sanctified place," observed Jim. "Don't forget the spy that lived there."
"But the spy had even purer motives in life than the Gates family did," Don defended. "The house is really a historic relic and I think some fine American family ought to live in it."
"I see your point," nodded Jim. "So the Gates' skipped, did they?"
"Yes, moved out completely," Terry replied. "No one seems to know just where they did go. Of course, they were dreading the time when the colonel will tell the truth about them."
"Oh, sure," Don said. "Well, we're not a bit sorry to see the last of them. For a number of years the school has actually suffered from contact with father and son and nothing is lost by their going."
"By the way," observed Terry. "What is to be done about the matter of that scholarship that Woodcrest won so many years ago from Roxberry? When the story is published the preparatory school will find out that we didn't win the contest fairly."
"I imagine that it will be held all over again, or the matter entirely dropped," Jim said. "I'm pretty sure that Roxberry won't care to say much when they find that one of their professors gave Gates the list of questions before the exams."
That proved to be the case. The scholarship contest was never held again and nothing was said by the Roxberry Alumni when the story got into the papers. As for the dishonest professor, nothing more was ever heard of him.