CHAPTER XII

TOMMY CORRECTS A REPORT

Allan was almost the last of Pete’s friends to give up hope; but when, by the next morning, Pete had neither returned nor had news of him been received, even Allan accepted the general belief. The janitor at the boat-house readily identified the overturned boat, while as for the hat, which had washed ashore at the foot of Main Street, even if Allan and Hal had been in doubt about it, there was still Pete’s initials marked on the inside. Inquiry at Hillcrest had elicited the information that Pete had never reached there.

The Guilds were deeply concerned, and Mr. Guild not only added a sum to that offered by the college for the recovery of the body, but himself took charge of a boat which all the next day dragged the river between his place and Centerport. The drowned body, however, was never recovered--a fact which surprised nobody, since the current is capricious, and the stream so broad as to preclude the possibility of searching every foot of its bed.

The accepted theory was that Pete had encountered a sudden squall while crossing the river which had either swamped the boat or overturned it. Although Pete was known to have been a capable swimmer and a fellow of more than ordinary strength, yet the fact that he had failed to win the shore from midstream, weighted down as he had been with heavy clothing, was not considered strange.

A telegram was at once despatched to Pete’s father in Colorado, and, since that did not elicit a reply by the following forenoon, a second message was sent. The death was announced in the city papers with much detail, and Pete’s athletic prowess was highly exaggerated. The Erskine Purple, which appeared the second day after the accident, contained a half-column notice of the sad affair, in which Pete’s many estimable qualities were feelingly set forth. Tommy wrote the notice himself, and, as he felt every word he wrote, the article was a very touching tribute.

The club table was a subdued and sorrowful place for several days. Pete’s chair stood pathetically empty until, in desperation, Allan put it away. But as a head to the table was essential, an informal election was taken two days after Pete’s disappearance, and Wolcott was elevated to the place of honor. A meeting of the freshman class was called and a committee was appointed to draw up resolutions of sorrow, to be sent to Pete’s father and to be published in the Purple.

When, after the second day of search, the tug-boat commissioned by the college to drag for the body abandoned its work, the first depression had passed and the college by degrees returned to its usual spirits. But Allan and Hal and Tommy were not so speedily resigned. Tommy, in especial, took the event hard.

Perhaps it had been the utter dissimilarity of Pete’s nature and his own which had drawn him to Pete. That as may be, Tommy was a very grave-faced little chap in those days.

But Allan, if he showed less grief, was sadly depressed. He had not realized before how much he had grown to care in six weeks for the big, good-hearted Westerner. He felt terribly lonely, and besides he blamed himself for not having accompanied Pete; perhaps, he thought dolefully, had he gone along, the accident wouldn’t have happened, and Pete would have been sitting there now across the table, puffing lazily at his evil-smelling corn-cob pipe. But instead of Pete there was only Tommy and Hal--and Two Spot.

Two Spot, grown greatly in bulk since her advent, was snuggled against Tommy’s arm. Outside it was blowing a gale and lashing the rain against the long windows. It was a most depressing afternoon, and the spirits of the three friends were at a low ebb. Tommy looked now and then as though a good cry would do him worlds of good. Hal scowled morosely and drummed irritatingly on the arm of the Morris chair until Allan, in desperation, begged him to “cut it out.” It was at this juncture that Tommy let fall a remark that set Allan thinking hard.

“Poor old Pete got what he was after, though, didn’t he?” asked Tommy, breaking a silence of several minutes’ duration.

“What’s that?” asked Allan.

“Don’t you remember the bet he and I made?” Tommy replied. “Well, he got his name on the first page of the Purple, after all. Wish he hadn’t.”

“That’s so,” said Hal. “I’d forgotten about that bet. I guess you’ll have to pay that wager to us, Tommy, and we’ll drink to Pete’s memory.”

Allan, his heart thumping wildly, looked at the other fellows’ faces, but it was quite evident that the wild surmise which had come to him had not occurred to them. He pushed back his chair abruptly and went to the window.

Was it possible? he asked himself. Surely, Pete would not have gone to such a length merely to win a bet! And yet--Pete was Pete; what another fellow would do was no criterion when it came to Pete’s conduct. Allan’s heart was racing and thumping now. The more he considered the affair in the light of Tommy’s remark the more plausible seemed the startling theory which had assailed him. He turned to blurt out his suspicions to the others, then hesitated. If he should prove to be wrong, he would regret charging Pete with such madness. Perhaps he had better keep his own counsel for a while longer.

To you, respected reader, who have all along known, or at least suspected, the truth of the matter, it probably seems strange that Allan should not have instantly realized the hoax. I have no explanation to offer in his behalf. He was still in doubt when Fate, in the not uncommon semblance of a postman, came to his relief.

When he answered the landlady’s tap on his door, he received a letter the mere sight of which set all his doubts at rest. The envelope was postmarked Hastings--Hastings is a small city eighteen miles down the river from Centerport--and the round, schoolboy writing was unmistakably Pete’s.

Tommy and Hal glanced around when the door opened, but paid no attention while Allan tore open the envelope and rushed through the two pages of writing inside. They only awoke to the fact that something had happened when Allan, waving the sheet above his head, gave vent to a blood-curdling yell of joy that sent Two Spot scuttling out of Tommy’s arms and under the dresser.

“What is it?” they cried in unison.

Allan waved the letter again ecstatically.

“It’s a letter from him!”

“Him? Who?”

“_Pete!_”

To attempt to describe the subsequent confusion would be absurd. Only a wide-awake phonograph could do it. Two chairs were overturned, Tommy screeched, Hal roared, Allan yelled back. The letter waved in air. Then Tommy danced an impromptu jig and, being quite unconscious that he was doing it, did it with much grace. Unfortunately none noticed it. Hal was struggling for the letter. Allan was fighting to keep possession of it. Tommy danced on. Occasionally he shrieked. His shriek was not nearly so pleasant as his dancing. After many moments comparative quiet settled and three breathless fellows gathered at the window while Allan, holding the precious document in his hands, read aloud. This is what they heard, leaving out, for the sake of clearness, the frequent interpolations of the listeners:

HASTINGS HOUSE, HASTINGS, _Dec. 7, 1903_.

DEAR ALLAN--I guess you weren’t fooled, but anyhow it may be best, in case you are getting worried, to write and let you know that I am still alive and kicking like a steer. I would have written before, but only got a copy of the Purp this morning. It was fine. Tell Tommy he did nobly. I know it was Tommy wrote it because of the poetry. I’m going to have that front page framed for my descendants to look upon. They’ll know then what a noble youth I was.

I’m leaving here for New York to-night. The old man’s there. I’m not stuck on telling him about it, you can bet. He will be rip-snorting mad. I had to drown myself when I did because I got a letter saying he was going to be in New York a couple of weeks, and I knew he wouldn’t get any telegrams or things announcing my sad death. I don’t guess they’ll let me come back to college, and I don’t care very much, except that I hate to say good-by to you and Hal and Tommy. But I’ll see you again before I go home, unless they are easy on me, which doesn’t seem likely, does it?

You see, I rowed up to Harwich, turned the boat over and set it adrift, and tossed my hat after it. I had another inside my coat. Then I walked to Williamsport and took the train back to this place. I’ve been here ever since. It’s a dull hole. But I had to wait for the Purple to make sure I hadn’t slipped up. I suppose there was a lot of trouble. I’m sorry if I worried you fellows, but life was getting duller than ditch-water and something had to be done. I wish you would go down to my room and pack up the things that are lying around.

Tell Tommy I’ll come back some day for that dinner, and that it’s got to be a good one. Maybe, if you have time, you’ll write and tell me how you all are. It seems like I hadn’t seen you for a month. Address me, Care Thomas A. Burley, Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York. You fellows have got to come out to Colorado this summer and visit me if they don’t let me come back to college. If you don’t, I’ll arise from my watery grave and haunt you. Say “How” to Hal and Tommy, and don’t forget your poor old

UNCLE PETE.

* * * * *

The news astonished everybody save the Dean, who had already begun to smell a rat. Astonishment gave place to relief or joy, according to the hearer’s degree of intimacy with Pete, and joy gave place to resentment. It is rather annoying to lavish regret over the taking-off of a friend only to discover that the friend has worked a deliberate hoax on you and is still alive to enjoy your confusion. That is why, had Pete put in an appearance at Erskine at that time, he would in all probability have been mobbed.

But Pete didn’t appear, and ultimately resentment gave place to amusement. The general attitude became one of laughing disapproval. After all, Pete was Pete, and even if he had harrowed their feelings considerably at the same time he had supplied interest at a dull season and had worked nobody any harm. This reasoning may have appealed to the faculty as well. At all events, their verdict, when announced, was thought to be amazingly merciful. Peter Burley ’07 was suspended for the balance of the term. As there remained less than four weeks of the term, the penalty would be of short duration.

Allan and Hal were delighted, and even Tommy, after the first day or two of rampant rage, grudgingly acknowledged that he was glad Pete was coming back. This was also after Tommy had written a denial for the Purple of that paper’s announcement of Pete’s death. That denial was very, very simple and brief. There was no mention made of Pete’s many excellent qualities, nor did it express exuberant joy over his restoration. It merely stated that the announcement had proved erroneous and that Mr. Peter Burley was visiting relatives in New York city.

When Allan or Hal mentioned that announcement, Tommy went purple in the face and fell to stuttering. Perhaps, as Allan pointed out, it was just as well he stuttered, since what he had to say was really unfit for polite ears. But Tommy’s anger was too intense to last, and by the middle of the month he was able to smile wanly at Pete’s deception. The awarding to him of a two-hundred-dollar scholarship helped, perhaps, to restore his good humor. Hal said the scholarship would come in very handy in paying for the dinner.

Pete wrote that he had heard the faculty’s verdict, and was glad they were going to let him come back. He was leaving New York for home as he wrote, to be gone until the opening of the winter term. By reading between the lines, Allan surmised that Pete’s father had not been over-much pleased with his son’s escapade; there were signs of a chastened spirit.

The term wore itself to a close, and one sunshiny morning Allan and Hal and Tommy left Centerport for their respective homes, traveling the first part of the journey in company. Two Spot, apparently indifferent to the separation, was confided to Mrs. Purdy, and spent the Christmas holidays in the neighborhood of the kitchen range.