Mr. Finbrink, however, had slipped back, catfooted, and was now
outside the door, where he could hear the barely audible mutterings
of his son and heir.

"So it was Tom Reade, eh?" murmured Mr. Finbrink, as he started
for the stairs in earnest this time. "I might have guessed it
was Tom Reade. He has genius enough for even greater things than
that. But Timmy has certainly helped, at least, to earn a right
not to be strapped this time." Then the father returned to his
chair downstairs, to resume his interrupted smoke. Within the
next half hour Mr. Finbrink chuckled many a time over the remembrance
of the pranks of his boyhood days.

"But we had no Tom Reade in _our_ crowd in those good old days,"
he repeated to himself several times. "If we had had a Tom Reade
among us, I think we would have beaten any crowd of boys of to-day!"

Meanwhile Tom's love of mischief was speeding him into other experiences
ere he reached his bed that night. Some of the consequences of
his mischievous prank were to be immediate, others more remote.

"Humph! But that did sound just like a window breaking," Tom
chuckled as he slowed down to a walk. "Whee! I'd like to show
that one to Dick Prescott. I wonder if he is up yet?"

Whereupon Tom walked briskly over to the side street, just off
Main Street, whereon stood the book store of Prescott, Senior,
with the Prescotts' living rooms overhead.

"Good evening, Mr. Prescott. Good evening, Mrs. Prescott," was