least, of his bad habit.

"Say, but you're all right," remarked Bob Movel to Jack, as the boys
rid themselves of the costumes in the woods a little later.

"Towering tadpoles! I should say he was!" exclaimed Nat. "What will
you do next?"

"I guess we'd better be getting back to the Hall," said Jack.
"Professor Grimm might take a notion to sit up late and spot us."

While the boys were slipping quietly back to their rooms, having
enjoyed a night's fun, which also had its useful side, we may take
this opportunity of introducing them more formally to the reader.

Those who read the first volume of this series, entitled "Jack
Ranger's Schooldays; Or, The Rivals of Washington Hall," need not be
told how it was that our hero and his friends came to be at that seat
of learning. Jack was a bright American lad, who lived with his three
maiden aunts, Josephine, Mary and Angeline Stebbins, in the village
of Denton. Jack was to inherit some money when he became of age, but
the conditions under which it was to come, as well as the secret of
who his father was, bothered him not a little.

In the first volume of the series I told of his life in Denton, and
the lively times he and Nat Anderson had before they were sent to the
Academy. There things were even more lively, and there occurs a sort
of sequel to a strange occurrence that happened in Jack's town.

At Denton, one night, Jack saw a man rob a jewelry store, but the