High School boys, Ripley added to himself:

"That settlement shall stop at nothing to put Dick Prescott in
the dust---where he belongs."

"Oh, freshie, but you've coolness and judgment," cried Thompson,
approvingly. "And you've broken one cad's heart today."

"I'm sorry if I have," declared Dick, frankly, generously. "I
wouldn't have had any heart in the fight if he hadn't started
in to humiliate me. I wouldn't have cared so much for that, either.
But he started to say something nasty about my parents, and I
have as good parents as ever a boy had. Then I felt I simply
_had_ to fit a plug between Ripley's teeth."

Fred Ripley had pain in his eyes to help keep him awake that
night. Yet he would have been awake, anyway, for his wicked
brain was seething with plans for the way to "get even" with
Dick Prescott.




CHAPTER VI

FRED OFFERS TO SOLVE THE LOCKER MYSTERY


For a week Gridley High School managed to get along without the
presence of Fred Ripley. That haughty young man was at home,