CHAPTER XVIII

A TALK

Shealey and Beecham captured Roy Henning and took him for a long stroll through the woods that Sunday afternoon. He, in the keen enjoyment of witnessing nature once again awake from its long winter slumber, for a time forgot his annoyances, and was the merriest of the three. The time passed as only a bright holiday can pass with the light-hearted.

Now there was a hunt for the nimble squirrel, which always got safely away. Anon there was a plunge into the thickest coppice for spring flowers. From these dense undergrowths the three more than once emerged minus the treasures they sought, and plus a number of scratches on hands and face, and with not a little damage to Sunday suits. In the sunny spots they found the first delicate fern fronds. In one particularly romantic spot they found a number of beautiful fungi. Jack Beecham dexterously made a little birch-bark box, which he filled with soft green moss, carefully placing his treasures therein. In their journey they were lucky enough to come across some morels, and one or two of those vegetable curiosities, the earth-star. With these boys a ramble into the country was much more than so many steps taken to a certain spot, and so many back again. Their studies had sharpened their powers of outdoor observation, so that a walk was an intellectual exercise as well as a physical one.

Many times during that afternoon Roy recalled the interview with his cousin a few minutes before starting, but with a certain determination he put the matter from his mind for the present, intent on giving himself entirely to the enjoyment of the beauties of nature on an ideal spring day, and to the pleasant companionship of two very delightful fellow-students. For a time he forgot all about Garrett.

When the journey was near its end; when the tired and healthy, hungry three were once more nearing the college grounds, the thoughts of what he had said and done with regard to his cousin, and that same cousin's noncommittal responses, once more filled Roy's mind and made him thoughtful and reserved again.

"There you are!" scolded Jack Beecham; "I do declare, Roy, you ought to live in the woods altogether. As soon as you come near home you at once put on a long face, turn down the corners of your mouth, and look as sour as--as vinegar and water."

"Yes," added Tom Shealey, "I'm going to call you in future Old Glum--that's the only name that suits you now. What on earth is the use of being so sober and somber about things?"

"Just at present," answered Roy, "I do not think I have anything to make me unusually cheerful; nothing certainly that would make me dance and sing with joy."

"Afraid of your semi-annual exam?" asked Beecham.

"No. That examination does not bother me. The Little Go, as our English cousins call it, will, I believe, be somewhat of a picnic for me."

"That's what you think," said Jack, "but we don't all think that way, do we, Tom?"

"Indeed, no," answered Tom Shealey grimly. The half-yearly had certain terrors for poor Tom. He had not shone with particular brilliancy in the examination in minor logic. He assured his friends that the examiners were unanimous that he had not shown any remarkable scintillations of genius in his mathematical trial, and the least said about the opinion entertained of him by his professor in geology and astronomy, the better for Tom's reputation as a hard student.

"Well, then, Roy," asked Beecham, "if you are not afraid of the semi, why do you look so gloomy?"

"I wish most heartily, Jack, that something would turn up to settle that wretched robbery business. At all events, one great load is off my mind. Yesterday I received a letter from my father. I think I have already told you that he is a pretty stern man. Well, he's all right. He wrote that he had the fullest confidence in me in this money business."

"Whoopla!" shouted Shealey, "good for the old gentleman. Whoop! Don't you know, old fellow, I was terribly afraid for you from that quarter. He's a brick!"

"He tells me that every effort should be made to discover the culprit. He even said he was willing to bear a good share of the expense of securing a detective and so forth, considering that his son was the one who had the management of the funds."

"What's the matter with Henning père?" shouted Shealey the irrepressible.

"Wait, Tom. He wrote more. He is willing to send me a check for the seventy-two dollars, if by paying it back into the fund I do not compromise myself."

"How? What does he mean?" asked Beecham.

"This way, I suppose. If I pay it back I shall be considered by some to have--to speak plainly--to have taken it myself, or to have had some knowledge of the guilty party, and, consequently, to have connived at it."

"Does any living soul in his sound senses, you Don Quixote," exclaimed Beecham, with an earnestness curiously resembling anger, "for an infinitesimal moment imagine you knew anything of it!"

The generous tone of voice, the absolute confidence it displayed, was grateful and soothing to the worried boy. His suspicions of his own cousin, which were not dissipated by that afternoon's encounter, was the difficulty with him now. The letter of his father said: "to have any knowledge of the guilty party." Of course, conniving was out of the question. But Garrett! What to think of that which he saw on the night of the play! Could he have been mistaken? Oh, if Garrett that afternoon had only openly denied all knowledge of it, how happy Roy would be now! Under his present knowledge, however, he felt he could not accept the money from his father. Under a full conviction of his cousin's guilt he had made that strange promise of silence, and this he was determined to keep, let come what might. Thus his quandary, which arose on his part from a certain sense of honor, for he would not act upon a mere suspicion, and he also earnestly desired to save a relative the shame of being accused.

"No, I really believe," said Henning, in answer to Beecham's indignant question, "I really believe that even those boys who profess to suspect me do not believe what they say. I do not believe there is a boy in the yard, nor a single member of the faculty, who has the least real suspicion that I know anything about the theft."

"I guess not," said Jack, and then added, "well, then, it's settled, isn't it?"

"Unfortunately, no. There is something in this affair, which, until the robber is caught and the whole question disposed of forever, I can not mention; yet it is important enough for me to be prevented in honor from writing for that money."

Jack Beecham and Tom Shealey looked at each other in blank surprise. They then indulged in a long stare--not a mere look or glance, but a long, open stare--at Roy. Under the two pairs of very wide-open eyes he remained as inscrutable as a sphinx. There was not a movement of eyes or lips which could give them the slightest clue by which they might arrive at some understanding of the strange announcement.

"You don't mean to say," said Shealey, with eyes still wide open, "that, after all, you are in some way impli--oh! hang it all, I'm talking nonsense now!"

Roy Henning burst out laughing. Notwithstanding his worry he enjoyed his friends' bewilderment.

"I guess you are," he said.

"Look here, Mr. Roy Aloysius Henning," said Jack Beecham, "I consider you the most inexplicable, inexorable, incomprehensible creature on the face of the footstool. Now look here! No humbug, you know--we, your friends, I, Tom, and Brose, for here he comes--demand from you an explanation right here and now. You must tell us the whole affair."

"No."

"Yes."

"No. I can not do it."

"If you don't do it, I'll----" Jack stopped dismayed. He saw that Roy was firm. "I'll fling some more big names at you."

"Can't help it, Jackie. I guess I can stand 'em."

"But this thing's got to be straightened out!"

"If so, it has to be done without my taking any part in the straightening--see?"

"But, man alive! You are the most interested! If you know anything of importance, why not inform your friends, and let us ferret out the truth or falsity of your surmises?"

"No. It can not be done. If I am to be exonerated from these very unjust and, I confess, very annoying aspersions, it must be done gratuitously and of the free will of the person or persons malignant enough to start the rumors. Do you not see, my friends, that if you began to move in order to exonerate me, everybody would consider you as acting as my agents and under my direction----"

"Quixotic nonsense----" began Beecham.

"Wait, Jack. This is the penalty you pay for your friendship. I will tell you this much, in gratitude for your interest and loyalty. I have made a solemn pledge to keep absolutely silent with respect to any suspicions I may have until the whole is settled and cleared up."

"But you in the meantime are suffering!" said Jack.

"Can't help it. Better suffer than be unjust. Better bear a little, than perhaps do another an almost irreparable injury."

His friends began to have some glimmerings of the reasons why he would not move or be moved. All of them were aware of his delicacy of conscience. They knew of his high sense of honor, of his exactitude, which amounted in their eyes to scrupulosity. It was, therefore, with no small amount of admiration, which, however, they disguised under much banter and teasing, that they acquiesced in Henning's view of his own conduct in the matter.

"Roy, you're a chump!" said Shealey.

"Yes, and a gump!" added Jack Beecham.

"And my quota of abuse is," said Bracebridge, who by this time understood the drift of the talk, "is that you are a--what shall I say--oh! yes--that you are a frump, whatever that is; it rhymes anyway."

Roy bowed low, as if receiving compliments and bouquets. When he left to go to his classroom to write to his father, Jack Beecham said:

"That fellow is a second Bayard--_sans reproche_."

"So say all who know him," added Shealey, and Ambrose said: "Amen."