Fred glanced quickly around him to see how much of a laugh this had started.  To his chagrin he found his bantering had fallen flat.

“Oh, well,” gaped Dowdell, gazing out of the window near which he stood, “I know one important fact about the mystery.”

“What’s that?” asked half a dozen quickly.

“None of the five hundred is destined to come my way.

“That jest saddens a lot of us with the same conviction,” muttered Ted Butler, shaking his head.

“But this I do know,” continued Dowdell, “if the weather continues cold there’ll be some elegant skating before the week is out.”

Gridley did not slumber over the nitroglycerine mystery.  Len Spencer, though he could gain no actual information, managed to have something interesting on the subject in each morning’s “Blade.”  The people of Gridley talked of the mystery everywhere.

There was one other mild sensation this week that lasted for a part of a day.  Tip Scammon came up for his trial.  He pleaded guilty to the thefts from the High School locker room, and also guilty to the charge of entering the Prescott rooms in order to hide his loot in Dick’s trunk.  By way of leniency toward a first offender the court let Tip off with a sentence of fourteen months in the penitentiary.  This sentence, by good behavior on the part of Tip, would shrink to ten months of actual imprisonment.

In every way the police and the prosecuting attorney tried to make Tip reveal the name of his confederate.  But Tip, for reasons of his own, maintained absolute, dogged silence on this head, and went to the penitentiary without having named the person who met him in the alleyway that evening when Tip himself was caught.

The promise of skating was made good.  Wednesday afternoon it was discovered that the ice in Gaylor’s Cove was in splendid condition, and strong enough to bear.

Thursday a series of High School racing contests were planned for Saturday afternoon.  There was so much money left over in the Athletics Committee’s treasury that it was voted to offer a series of individual trophies for boy and girl skaters in different events.

Moreover, in these skating events members of the freshman class were to be allowed to compete.

“Now, see here, fellows,” urged Dick, when he had gotten his partners aside, “some of the freshman class ought to be winners of some of the events.  We want to give our class a good name.  And, out of the six of us, there ought to be one winner for something.  I wish you’d all do your best to get in shape.  You’ll all go over to the cove with me this afternoon, of course.”

They did.  More than a hundred of the student body, most of them boys, were on the ice that afternoon.

Some went scurrying by for all they were worth.  These were training for the races.

Others gathered in the less traveled parts of the cove, which was a large one, and practiced the “fancy” feats.  Tom Reade and Dan Dalzell put themselves in this class.  Dick and his other partners went in for speed.