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.