"Do you see this?" asked Sid suddenly, holding up an envelope.
"Why--er--yes," answered Tom. "It's addressed to Miss Harrison, and--but--are you going over with a microscope a letter you've written to her, to see if it will pass muster? She's not as particular as that, you old bat."
"I haven't been writing to her," replied Sid coldly. "This is the envelope containing that clipping with my name in it--the report of the gambling raid--I picked up the envelope--that afternoon," and he seemed struggling with some emotion.
"What about it?" asked Phil, who did not exactly catch the drift.
"This," answered Sid quickly. "Look at this note," and he showed them a missive containing some reference to baseball matters. It was signed "Fred Langridge."
"I got that from Langridge last term," went on Sid, "and I saved it, for some unknown reason. I'm glad, now, that I did."
"Why?" inquired Tom, who began to see what was coming.
"Because, look at that!" and Sid placed side by side the note from Langridge and the envelope that had contained the damaging clipping. He held the magnifying glass first over one and then the other. "Do you notice any similarity?" he asked.
"Looks to me as if the same person wrote both," said Tom.
"They did!" cried Sid, as he held up the envelope. "Fred Langridge sent to Miss Harrison that lying clipping about me, and to-day he was out walking with her!"
Sid stood facing his two chums, and his breath came quick and fast. He was much worked up over his discovery, as were also his roommates.
"From the time I picked up this envelope, after that day when we had lunch with your sister, Phil," he went on, "I've been trying to think in whose handwriting it was. Perhaps I had no right to take the envelope, but I couldn't help it after she--Miss Harrison dropped it. To-night, after I saw him--saw Langridge out walking with her--I came back here, and I had a suspicion. I knew I had an old note of Langridge's somewhere around. I found it, and compared it with the envelope. You see what it shows."
"He must have sent her the clipping," agreed Tom. "But why?"
"Easy enough to see that," answered Sid. "He was mad because I--er--I happened to go with her a few times, and he is taking this course to give me a bad name, though if she only knew it Langridge is no white-ribboner."