Chapter 17

THE MATTER SETTLED

Lessons were resumed and no more was said concerning the charge against Jack or any of the boys having the same initials, Sawyer and Sharpe being ready to turn out their desks for the doctor's satisfaction but not being required to do so.

Jack's friends did not believe in his guilt, even without his saying that the book was not his and they all regarded the affair as a very clumsy one.

"Whoever it was ought to know that Jack was not in Caesar," said Harry. "If he had put in a translation of something Jack was doing at this time there would have been more reason."

"And nobody sends an anonymous letter who has any spunk," muttered Billy Manners. "The doctor would have done right to have paid no attention to it but he is a good old fellow and wants to do right by all."

"I'd like to know what Jack is going to do about it," thought Dick. "He won't let it rest. I have an idea who did this for it was just his clumsy way of working that betrays him but I won't say anything."

When the forenoon recess arrived, the boys generally went out upon the campus but Jack went straight to the cellar where the negro coachman and general caretaker was at work cleaning up.

"What do you do with the papers and stuff you sweep up of a morning, Bucephalus?" asked Jack.

"Ah gather them in a receptickle fo' de puppose, sah, and den Ah communicate dem to de fiah, sah," answered the man.

"Have you done so as yet?"

"Ah have not yet consigned the rubbish to the fiah, sah. Dere it is in dem baskets yondah. You done lose something, sah?"

"No, I want to find something," replied Jack.

He went over to the waste paper baskets standing on the floor in one corner and began to turn out their contents.

"The fellow may have torn out the fly leaf before," he thought, "but it looks like a fresh tear. If so, and he did not keep the leaf or throw it away somewhere it will probably be here."

Turning out the bits of torn paper, old exercises and other things, Jack looked carefully at every scrap in search of the missing fly leaf.

"It's only a fool who would put his name in a translation, to betray him at any time," he mused, "but there are just such fools in the world."

There were many bits of paper which were obviously not the one he wanted and he passed them over rapidly and threw them aside.

He came upon more than one crumpled bit and picked them up but upon smoothing them out found that they were not the thing he wanted.

At length he saw a tight ball of crumpled paper which he was about to pass over as being nothing and then took up and unrolled carefully.

Smoothing it out he saw that it was a piece of book paper and was written on.

When it was nicely smoothed out and laid upon the inside of the book found in his desk and now produced from his pocket, he read the following inscription written in a scrawly hand:

"This book is the property of Peter Herring, Hilltop. Don't steal."

The torn edges fitted perfectly and the letters remaining on the inner edge of the leaf were followed regularly by those on the other side.

"That accuses Peter Herring all right," said Jack. "This is his book and if he did not put it in my desk who would? At any rate, it will be safe enough to make the accusation."

Putting the book back in his pocket, the torn leaf being now in its place, Jack went up stairs and out upon the grounds.

There were some of his chums at a little distance and Herring and Merritt were just going around the corner of the building toward the barn, being evidently engaged in earnest conversation.

Jack waited a minute and then followed them into the barn.

"Maybe it didn't work all right," Herring was saying, "but folks'll suspect him just the same."

"It wouldn't have went all right if I hadn't seen your name in it," snapped Merritt, "and made you tear it out before you slipped it in his desk last night."

"That's all right, he didn't see it and I did tear it out."

"Burn it up?"

"I guess so. Anyhow, no one won't find it and if they do so long as it ain't in the book--what the mischief!"

Herring suddenly found a book placed in front of his nose and, turning his head quickly, saw Jack Sheldon standing behind him.

"They will know that it belongs to this particular book now, won't they, when the edges match so perfectly, Herring?" asked Jack. "You were very clumsy in putting a Caesar in my desk when I am not studying it and more so in having your name in it."

Herring turned crimson and tried to snatch the book out of Jack's hand.

"You can have it now, for I no longer have any use for it," said the boy, slapping Herring's face with the book, "and now I am going to give you the thrashing you have so long deserved."

"You are, eh?" snarled Herring, backing away.

"Yes. It is the only thing you understand."

"You see fair play, Ern," blustered the bully.

Jack only smiled and then without further notice attacked his enemy and administered what he had promised, a sound thrashing.

In a very few minutes he forced Herring to cry for a respite and to acknowledge that he was beaten.

"I could make you apologize before the doctor and the whole school," said Jack, as he heard the bell ring to call the boys back to their duties, "but there is no shaming a fellow who is without shame and the way I have taken is much more efficacious and you will remember it."

Then Jack left the barn and went back to the building, meeting Percival and Billy Manners at the door.

"Where have you been, Jack?" asked Dick.

"Wrestling with a passage from Caesar," said Jack, with a laugh.

"Did you get the best of it?"

"I think I did."

"Yes, but you are not studying Caesar. What do you mean?"

"I'll tell you later if you don't guess," and Jack passed on and into the room and took his accustomed seat.

Merritt came in rather late and some of the boys noticed that he looked excited over something.

It was nearly ten minutes before Herring took his seat and then it was seen that his face was wet and evidently lately washed and that there was a discoloration around his nose and another under one of his eyes.

"Hello! I guess he has been wrestling with something, too," thought Percival. "I wonder if it had anything to do with Caesar?"

"You are very late, Herring," said the doctor. "What is the reason?"

"Fell down and bruised my face," muttered Herring. "Had to wash up before I came in. My nose bled."

"See that it does not occur again," said Dr. Wise, using the customary phrase which had become a habit with him.

"It will if he fools with Jack Sheldon," chuckled Percival. "I'll bet anything that he was the one who put the Caesar in Jack's desk and got paid up for it."

Neither Percival nor any of the other boys had a chance to speak to Jack about the matter until dinner when a knot of them interviewed him at the door of the dining hall.

"Were you the cause of Herring's being late to class after recess, Jack?" asked Percival.

"Did you find out anything?" put in Harry. "I had a bet that it was Pete who tried to undermine you in his generally clumsy fashion."

"The affair is settled, boys," said Jack, quietly. "We need not think any more about it."

And that was all he would say, for all their coaxing.