CHAPTER I.
TOM READE HAS A "BRAND-NEW ONE" "Hello, Timmy!" "'Lo, Reade." "Warm night," observed Tom Reade, as he paused not far from the street corner to wipe his perspiring face and neck with his handkerchief.
"Middling warm," admitted Timmy Finbrink.
Yet the heat couldn't have made him extremely uncomfortable, for Tom Reade, amiable and budding senior in the Gridley High School, smiled good naturedly as he stood surveying as much as he could make out of the face of Timmy Finbrink in that dark stretch of the street.
Timmy was merely a prospective freshman, having been graduated a few days before from the North Grammar School in Gridley.
Tom, himself, had been graduated, three years before, from the fine old Central Grammar, whence, in his estimation, all the "regular" boys came.

As a North Grammar boy, Timmy was to be regarded only with easygoing indifference.

Yet a tale of woe quickly made Tom Reade his young fellow citizen's instant ally.
"Aren't you out pretty late, Timmy, for a boy who isn't even a regular high school freshman as yet ?" inquired Reade, with another smile.

"It's almost nine-thirty, you know." "Don't I know ?" wailed Timmy Finbrink, with something of a shiver.
"It's getting later every minute, too, and I'm due for a trouncing when I do go in, so what's the odds ?" "Who's going to give you that trouncing ?" Tom demanded.
"My father," replied Timmy Finbrink.
"What have you been doing ?" "Pop told me to be upstairs and in bed by nine o'clock, without fail," Timmy explained.

"I came along just five minutes ago, and found that pop has the house planted for me.