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+Project Gutenberg's The Boys of Bellwood School, by Frank V. Webster
+#3 in our series by Frank V. Webster
+
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+Title: The Boys of Bellwood School
+
+Author: Frank V. Webster
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6444]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 14, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOYS OF BELLWOOD SCHOOL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Vital Debroey, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BOYS OF BELLWOOD SCHOOL
+
+OR
+
+FRANK JORDAN'S TRIUMPH
+
+
+BY FRANK V. WEBSTER
+
+AUTHOR OF "TOM THE TELEPHONE BOY",
+"COMRADES OF THE SADDLE", "THE NEWSBOY PARTNERS", ETC.
+
+
+
+
+             CONTENTS
+
+    I     FRANK JORDAN'S HOME
+    II    THE TINKER BOY
+    III   THE DIAMOND BRACELET
+    IV    GILL MACE
+    V     THE RUINED HOUSE
+    VI    AN ASTONISHING CLUE
+    VII   THE CONFIDENCE MAN
+    VIII  NIPPED IN THE BUD
+    IX    A BOY GUARDIAN
+    X     AN OBSTINATE REBEL
+    XI    TURNING THE TABLES
+    XII   A STRANGE HAPPENING
+    XIII  SOME MYSTERY
+    XIV   THE ROW ON THE CAMPUS
+    XV    DARK HOURS
+    XVI   THE FOOT RACE
+    XVII  THE TRAMP AGAIN
+    XVIII A DOLEFUL "UNCLE"
+    XIX   A CLEAR CASE
+    XX    FRANK A PRISONER
+    XXI   A QUEER EXPERIENCE
+    XXII  A STARTLING MESSAGE
+    XXIII UNDER ARREST
+    XXIV  CLEANING UP
+    XXV   CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+FRANK JORDAN'S HOME
+
+
+"Where did you get that stickpin, Frank?"
+
+"Bought it at Mace's jewelry store."
+
+"You are getting extravagant."
+
+"I hardly think so, aunt, and I don't believe you would think so, either,
+if you knew all the circumstances."
+
+"Circumstances do not alter cases when a boy is a spendthrift."
+
+"I won't argue with you, aunt. You have your ideas and I have mine. Of
+course, I bought the stickpin, but it was with money I had earned."
+
+The aunt sniffed in a vague way. The boy left the house, looking irritated
+and unhappy.
+
+Frank Jordan lived in the little town of Tipton with his aunt, Miss Tabitha
+Brown. His father was an invalid, and at the present time was in the South,
+seeking to recuperate his failing health, and Mrs. Jordan was with him as
+his nurse. They had left Frank in charge of the aunt, who was a miserly,
+fault-finding person, and for nearly a month the lad had not enjoyed life
+very greatly.
+
+There were two thoughts that filled Frank's mind most of the time. The
+first was that he would give about all he had to leave his aunt's house.
+The other was a wish that his father would write to him soon, telling him,
+as he had promised to do, that he had decided that his son could leave
+Tipton and go to boarding-school.
+
+What with the constant nagging of his sour-visaged relative, the worry over
+his sick father, and the suspense as to his own future movements, Frank did
+not have a very happy time of it. He felt a good deal like a boy shut up in
+a prison. His aunt used her authority severely. She kept him away from
+company, and allowed none of his friends to visit the house. From morning
+until night she pestered him and nagged at him, "all for his own good," she
+said, until life at the Jordan home, roomy and comfortable as it was,
+became a burden to the lad.
+
+"It's too bad!" burst forth Frank as he crossed the garden, climbed a
+fence, and made toward the river through a little woods that was a favorite
+haunt of his. Reaching a fallen tree he drew from its side a splendid
+fishing-pole with all the attachments that a lover of the rod and line
+might envy. His eye grew brighter as he glanced fondly along the supple
+staff with its neat joints of metal, but he continued his complaint: "When
+she isn't scolding, she is lecturing me. I suppose if she ever hears of my
+fishing outfit here, she'll be at me for a week about my awful
+extravagance. Oh, dear!"
+
+Frank had a good deal over which to grumble. His aunt certainly was a
+"tyro." She was making his life very gloomy with her stern, unloving ways.
+Frank had promised his parents, when they went away, that he would be
+obedient in all respects to his aunt. He was a boy of his word, and he felt
+that he had done exceedingly well so far, hard as the task had been. His
+aunt was very unreasonable in some things, however, and he had been at the
+point of rebellion several times.
+
+"You'd think I was some kind of a beggar, to hear her talk," he grumbled to
+himself. "Father sends plenty of pocket money, but the way Aunt Tib doles
+it out to me makes a fellow sick. As to the stickpin--heigh ho! I won't
+think about it at all. I've lots to be thankful for. I only care that
+father gets well and strong again. As to myself, he's sure to decide soon
+what school I will be sent away to. That means no Aunt Tib. I shall be
+happy. Hello! What's wrong now?"
+
+From the direction of the river there had come two boyish screams in quick
+and alarming succession. Frank recognized a signal of pain and distress. He
+started on a run and reached the edge of the stream in a few moments. He
+leaned beyond a bush where the bank shelved down a little distance along
+the shore. His eyes lit upon quite an animated scene.
+
+A strange-looking, boxed-in wagon, with an old white horse attached, stood
+stationary about forty rods distant. Just this side of it was a ragged,
+trampish-looking man. He had just picked up a piece of flat rock, and as he
+hurled it Frank discovered that he had aimed at a tree directly across the
+narrow stream, but had missed it.
+
+"Why, there's a boy in that tree," said Frank. "That big bully must have
+hit him before I came, and that was the boy's cry I heard. The good-for-
+nothing loafer!"
+
+Frank rounded the brush in an impetuous and indignant way. He was about to
+challenge the man, when the latter shouted something at the boy across the
+stream, and Frank stopped to listen.
+
+"Are you going to come down out of that tree?" the man demanded in a
+bellowing tone.
+
+There was no reply, and the man repeated the challenge. The boy addressed
+continued silent. Frank could see him crouching in a crotch, his face pale
+and distressed.
+
+"See here," roared his persecutor, getting furious and shaking his fist at
+his victim, "I'm after you, Ned Foreman, and I'm going to get you! Why, you
+vagabond, you--you ungrateful young runaway! Here I'm your only solitary
+living relative in the whole world, and you sit up in that tree with a big
+stone ready to smash me if I come near you."
+
+"Yes, and I will--I will, for a fact!" cried the lad, roused up. "You try
+it, and see. Relative? You're no kin of mine, Tim Brady. I'd be ashamed to
+own you."
+
+"I hain't?" howled the man. "Who married your step-sister? Who gave you a
+home when you was a helpless kid, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Huh, a healthy home!" retorted the boy. "It wasn't your home; it was my
+sister's, and you robbed her of it and squandered the money, and broke her
+heart, and she died, and you ought to be hung for it!" and the speaker
+choked down a sob. "Now you come across me and try to rob me."
+
+"Say," roared Tim Brady, gritting his teeth and looking dreadfully cruel
+and hateful, "if I hang twice over I'll get you. Better give me some of
+your money."
+
+"It isn't mine to give."
+
+"Better give me some of it, all the same," continued the man, "or I'll take
+the whole of it. I'm desperate, Ned Foreman. I'm in a fix where I've got to
+get away from these diggings, and I've got to have money to go. Are you
+going to be reasonable and come down out of that tree?"
+
+"No, I ain't."
+
+"Then I'm coming after you. See that?" and the man held up a heavy stick
+and brandished it. Then he sat down on a rock and started to remove his
+shoes, with the idea of wading across the stream.
+
+Frank felt that it was time for him to do something. He was not a bit
+afraid of a coward, but he realized that he and the boy in the tree
+together were no match for the big, vicious fellow just beyond him. The boy
+in the tree looked honest and decent; the man after him looked just what he
+was--a tramp and perhaps worse. Frank thought of hurrying toward the
+village for help. Then a sudden idea came to his mind, and he acted upon
+it.
+
+The man who was preparing to go after the boy who would not come to him,
+sat directly under a big bush. Right over his head among the branches Frank
+noticed a double hornets' nest. He knew all about hornets and their ways,
+as did he of all the interesting things in the woods. Frank drew his
+fishing-pole around and upward, until its willowy end rested against the
+straw-like strands by which the hornets' nest was attached to the limb.
+
+Very gently he got a hold on the connecting strands of the double nest and
+detached it from the limb. Then he lowered it, carefully poising it with a
+swaying motion over the head of the stooping figure of the man.
+
+"Now!" said Frank breathlessly.
+
+Already the disturbed hornets were coming out of the cells in the nest,
+angrily fluttering about to learn what the matter was. Frank gave the
+fishing-pole a swing. He slammed its end and the hornets' nest right down
+on the head of the tramp.
+
+Instantly a swarming myriad of the little insects made the air black about
+the man. The fellow gave a spring and a yell of pain. Then, his hands
+wildly beating the air, he darted down the river shore like a shot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TINKER BOY
+
+
+"You had better hurry over here quick, if you want to get away from that
+man," said Frank, coming out from cover.
+
+"Yes, I will," responded the boy up in the tree.
+
+He threw to the ground a flat stone he had been resting in the crotch of
+the tree, his only weapon of defense, dropped nimbly down after it, and
+started for the water.
+
+"Hold on," directed Frank; "there's a crossing plank a little way farther
+down the stream."
+
+"I'm wet, anyway," explained the boy, dashing into the water, and he came
+up to Frank, dripping to the waist.
+
+"Don't be scared," said Frank, as his companion looked in a worried way in
+the direction the tramp had taken. "That fellow will be too busy with those
+hornets for some time to come, I'm thinking, to mind us."
+
+"Oh, I hope so," said the lad with a shudder. "He's a terrible man. I must
+get away from here at once."
+
+As he spoke the boy ran to where the wagon stood and climbed upon its front
+seat. As Frank, keeping up with his pace, neared the vehicle, he noticed
+across its box top the words: _"Saws, knives, scissors and tools
+sharpened scientifically."_
+
+"I wish you would stay with me until I get to town," remarked the boy,
+seizing the lines with many a timid look back of him.
+
+"Oh, you want to get to town, do you?" observed Frank. "All right, I'll be
+glad to show you the road."
+
+The boy started up the horse with a sharp snap of the lines. The animal was
+old and lazy, however, and could not go beyond a very slow trot.
+
+"Turn at that point in the rise," directed Frank, pointing ahead a little
+distance, "and it will be a shorter cut to town."
+
+"Yes, yes. I want to get away from here," said Ned Foreman anxiously. "Oh,
+there he is again!"
+
+Frank followed the glance of his frightened companion to observe the tramp
+in among the brush. He was slapping his face and body as if he had not yet
+gotten rid of all the hornets, but he was certainly headed in the direction
+of the wagon.
+
+"Your horse won't go fast enough to keep ahead of that fellow," remarked
+Frank. "Don't tremble so. He shan't bother you again if I can help it. Keep
+on driving."
+
+Frank leaped to the road. Keeping up a running pace with the wagon, he
+stooped twice to pick up two pieces of wood of cudgel shape and size, and
+then regained his seat.
+
+"Now, then," he said, "drive on as fast as you can. It's less than a
+quarter of a mile to houses. If that man overtakes us you must help me beat
+him off. If we can't make it together, I'll pester him and keep him back
+while you run ahead for help."
+
+"I'd hate to leave you--he's a cruel man," said the lad, "but I've got
+quite an amount of money, and it doesn't belong to me."
+
+"Aha!" exclaimed Frank suddenly. "There's no need of our doing anything.
+I'll settle that tramp now."
+
+From the cut in the road ahead they were making for, a light gig had just
+come into view. On its seat was a single passenger, with a silver badge on
+the breast of his coat and wearing a gold-braided cap.
+
+"It's Mr. Houston, the town marshal," explained Frank, and his companion
+uttered a great sigh of relief. "Stop till he passes us. Oh, Mr. Houston,"
+called out Frank to the approaching rig, "there's a man over yonder
+annoying this boy and trying to rob him."
+
+"Is, eh?" cried the officer. "Whoa!" and he arose in the seat to get a good
+view of the spot toward which Frank pointed. "I reckon he's seen me, for
+he's making back his trail licketty-switch."
+
+"Keep your eye on him so he won't follow us, will you, Mr. Houston?"
+pressed Frank.
+
+"I'll do just that," assented the marshal pleasantly. "I'm after these
+tramps. There's a gang of them been hanging around Tipton the last day or
+two, begging, and stealing what they could get their hands on, and I'm
+bound to rout them out."
+
+"There's your chance, then," said Frank, "for, from what this boy tells me,
+that fellow yonder is as bad as they make them."
+
+The officer drove on slowly, keeping an eye out for the tramp. Frank's
+companion urged up his laggard horse. His face had cleared, and he acted
+pleased and relieved as they got within the limits of the town.
+
+"Any place in particular you're bound for?" inquired Frank.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is that?"
+
+"I'm due at the town square."
+
+"Then keep right on this road," said Frank, and within five minutes they
+arrived and halted on the shady side of a little park surrounded by the
+principal stores.
+
+"I expect some one will be here to see me soon," said the lad. "I don't
+know how to thank you for all you've done for me. If that man had got hold
+of me he would have robbed me of every cent I had. I've been trying to keep
+away from him, fearing he might be looking for me and come across me
+accidentally. Now I'm safe."
+
+"Won't he hang around and try it again when you leave town?" questioned
+Frank.
+
+"But I'm not going to leave town," explained Ned Foreman, "that is, not on
+this wagon. I've been working for a man who runs half a dozen of these
+scissors grinders over the country. At Tipton here another employe will
+relieve me. I give him what I have taken in the last week, and he pays me
+my wages out of it. I'm going to give up this job now."
+
+"Don't you like it, then?" asked the interested Frank.
+
+"Well enough--yes, it isn't unpleasant; but I've an ambition to get an
+education, and have been working to that end," said Ned in a serious way
+that won Frank's respect. "I want to go to school. I have saved up a little
+money, and I shall start in right away."
+
+"That's good," said Frank. "I'm only hoping to get away to school myself
+soon. Say, what kind of a traveling caravan is this, anyway?"
+
+"I'll show you," said Ned promptly, and as both got to the ground he
+touched a bolt and the back of the wagon came down, forming steps. Reaching
+in he moved a bracket, and a section of the side of the wagon slid back,
+letting light into the vehicle. Frank noticed a sort of a bench, a lathe,
+and some small pieces of machinery.
+
+Ned Foreman got up the steps and touched something. There was a click and a
+spark of light. He pulled a wheel around and then there was a chug-chug-
+chug.
+
+"Now, what's that?" asked the curious Frank.
+
+"It's a little gasoline motor," explained Ned. "Step in and see what a
+famous tinkering shop on wheels we've got."
+
+"Why, this is just grand!" declared Frank, as he glanced around the
+interior of the wagon in an admiring way.
+
+"Yes, it's clean, attractive and made up to date," said Ned. "The man who
+owns these outfits is working up some good routes. If you have anything to
+sharpen, now, I'll show you the kind of work we do."
+
+Frank whipped out his pocket knife in a jiffy. Ned touched a lever near the
+motor, and things went whirring. There was a busy hum that made the place
+delightful to Frank. He was astonished and pleased to observe how deftly
+his companion handled the knife, putting it through a dozen operations,
+from grinding to stropping and polishing. Then he adjusted a little drill
+to a handle and said:
+
+"I'll put your name on the handle, if you like."
+
+"All right," assented Frank with satisfaction. "It's Frank Jordan."
+
+"There you are," said Ned a minute later, handing the knife back to Frank.
+"You'll find a blade there that will cut a hair."
+
+"Yes, that's fine work," declared Frank, looking over the knife in a
+gratified way. "You've got quite a trade, haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, sort of," answered Ned carelessly, "and the knack of doing things like
+this comes in handy for a fellow who has to work and wants to work. There's
+my man," he added suddenly, as there was a hail outside, and Frank observed
+a middle-aged man, with a tool-kit satchel extending from his shoulder,
+approaching the wagon.
+
+"Well, good-by, and glad I met you," said Frank, shaking hands with Ned.
+
+"Lucky for me I met you," retorted the tinker boy gratefully. "I hope I'll
+meet you again some time, but I don't suppose I'll ever be in this town
+again."
+
+"If you ever do--" Frank paused, and then added quickly: "why, hunt me up."
+
+He had an impulse to invite his new acquaintance up to the house, but
+suddenly thought of his aunt and changed his mind. Nothing would have
+delighted him more than to have Ned Foreman tell him about his travels and
+adventures, for they must have been many.
+
+Frank strolled homeward, trying his knife on a piece of willow and shaping
+out a whistle. As he came up the walk to the house he heard voices inside.
+His aunt was speaking in her sharp, strident tones, a little more excitedly
+than usual.
+
+A gruff, masculine voice responded, and Frank, wondering who the owner
+might be, stepped into the hall and peered into the reception-room.
+
+"Aha!" instantly greeted him, as a man there sprang to his feet. "Here is
+that precious nephew of yours, Miss Brown. I say, Frank Jordan, what have
+you done with my diamond bracelet?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DIAMOND BRACELET
+
+
+Frank looked at the speaker in wonder. He knew Samuel Mace, the jeweler,
+perfectly well. The village tradesman was greatly excited, and he glided
+toward Frank in a threatening way, as if he would walk straight over him.
+
+What made the occasion doubly puzzling to Frank was the fact that his aunt
+looked more severe, shocked and alarming than ever before. He did not move,
+drawing upright with boyish manliness, and the jeweler halted and then
+retreated a step or two.
+
+"Your diamond bracelet, Mr. Mace?" repeated Frank in a perplexed tone; and
+then, with a faint smile, glancing at the wrist of the angry visitor: "I
+did not know you wore one."
+
+"Don't you try to be funny!" stormed the jeweler, and he seized Frank by
+the arm. "You young rascal, where is that bracelet you took from my store?"
+
+Frank got a glimmering of the facts now. He was dumfounded, and listened
+like one in a dream, while Mr. Mace continued his furious tirade:
+
+"He took it. Can't you see from his actions that he took it, Miss Brown?
+Nobody else could have done it--nobody else was in the store when he bought
+that stickpin he wears. After he left the shop the bracelet was missing."
+
+"Frank, if you have the bracelet give it up," said his aunt coldly.
+
+"See here, aunt," cried Frank, firing up instantly at this, "you don't mean
+to say that you imagine for one instant that I am a thief?"
+
+"We are all sinful and tempted," returned Miss Brown in a tearful,
+whispering tone.
+
+"Not me," dissented Frank--"not in that mean way, anyhow. Why, you wretched
+old man!" he fairly shouted at Samuel Mace, "how dare you even so much as
+insinuate that I know anything about your missing bracelet--if there is any
+missing bracelet."
+
+"You was in my store--it was gone after you left. You took it," stubbornly
+insisted the jeweler.
+
+"I tell you I didn't take it!" cried Frank.
+
+"You give it up, or I'll have you arrested," declared the jeweler.
+
+"If you do, my folks will make it hot for you," declared Frank. "I am no
+thief."
+
+He drew himself up proudly in his conscious innocence, and marched from the
+room all on fire with resentment and just indignation.
+
+"Why, the old curmudgeon!" exclaimed the boy as he passed out into the open
+air again. "How dare he make such a charge. I won't even argue it with him;
+it's too ridiculous."
+
+He had cooled down somewhat after walking aimlessly and excitedly about the
+garden a round or two. When he came again to the front of the house, Samuel
+Mace was departing from the scene. As he caught sight of Frank he waved his
+cane angrily at him with the words:
+
+"I'll see about this, young man!"
+
+Frank went into the house to find his aunt locking up the secretary in the
+library, just as she did when there was a burglar scare in town. Her very
+glance and manner accused Frank, and he could scarcely restrain himself
+from arguing with her. Then he remembered his promise to his absent parents
+and that Miss Brown was a credulous, suspicious old maid. He tried to
+forget his troubles by going after his fishing-rod. This he had left at the
+spot near the river where he had met Ned Foreman. Frank swung along
+whistling recklessly, but he did not feel at all pleasant or easy.
+
+He had returned from his errand and was putting in a miserable enough time
+feeding some pet pigeons when a voice hailed him from the fence railings.
+
+"Hey, Frank--this way for a minute."
+
+Frank recognized a friend and crony of Samuel Mace. This was pompous, red-
+faced Judge Roseberry. He had once been elected by mistake a justice of the
+peace, had never gotten a second term, but for some eight or ten years had
+traded on his past reputation. He managed to eke out a living by giving
+what he called legal advice at a cheap rate, and mixing in politics.
+Sometimes he collected bills for the tradesmen of the town, and in this way
+he had been useful to Mace. Most of the time, however, he hung around the
+village tavern. He looked now to Frank as if he had just come from that
+favorite resort of his. There was an unsteady gravity in the way that he
+poked an impressive finger at Frank as he spoke to the youth.
+
+"What do you want?" demanded Frank, ungraciously enough, as he half guessed
+the mission of this bloated and untidy emissary of the law.
+
+"Judicial, see?" observed Roseberry, gravely balancing against the picket
+fence.
+
+"Go ahead," challenged Frank, keeping out of radius of the judge's breath.
+
+"Come, come, young man," maundered Roseberry. "I'm too old a bird to have
+to circumlocate. You know your father has great confidence in me."
+
+"I never heard of it before," retorted Frank.
+
+"Oh, yes," insisted Roseberry with bland unction. "Had a case of his once."
+
+"The only case I ever knew of," returned Frank, "was a collection he gave
+you to make. I heard him tell my mother that he never saw the creditor or
+the money, either, since."
+
+"Ah--er--difficult case; yes, yes, decidedly complex, costs and
+commissions," stammered the judge, becoming more turkey-red than he
+naturally was. "We won't retrospect. To the case in hand."
+
+"Well?" spoke Frank, looking so open-faced and steadily at Roseberry that
+the latter blinked.
+
+"I--that is--I would suggest an intermediary, see? The law is very
+baffling, my friend. Once in its clutches a man is lost."
+
+"But I'm not a man--I'm only an innocent, misjudged boy," burst forth
+Frank. "See here, Judge Roseberry, I know why you come and who sent you."
+
+"My client, Mr. Mace--"
+
+"Is a wicked, unjust man," flared out Frank, "and you are just as bad.
+Neither of you can possibly believe that I would steal. Why, I don't have
+to steal. I have what money I need, and more than that. I tell you, if my
+father was here I think you people would take back-water quick enough. When
+he does come, you shall suffer for this."
+
+Judge Roseberry looked impressed. He stared at Frank in silence. Perhaps
+his muddled mind reflected that the accused lad had a good reputation
+generally. Anyhow, the open, resolute way in which Frank spoke daunted him.
+But he shook his head in an owl-like manner after a pause and remarked:
+
+"My function's purely legal in the case--must do my duty."
+
+"Do it, then, and don't bother me," said Frank irritably, and started away
+from the spot.
+
+"Hold on, hold on," called out the judge after him. "I've a compromise to
+offer."
+
+"There is nothing to compromise," asserted Frank over his shoulder.
+
+"Suggestion, then. Don't be foolish, young man."
+
+"Well, what's your suggestion?" demanded Frank.
+
+"We'll take a walk in the woods, see? I've got a ten-dollar bill in my
+pocket. I'll walk one way, you walk the other. No witnesses. I'll put the
+ten-dollar bill on the stump--you'll do your part at another stump. We'll
+turn, pass each other. Backs to each other, see?"
+
+"I don't know what you are driving at," declared Frank.
+
+"As you pass my stump you take up the ten-dollar bill; it's yours. As I
+pass your stump--backs to each other, mind you, no witnesses, matter
+pleasantly adjusted--I'll pick up the diamond bracelet."
+
+"All right--that suits me," said Frank readily, but with a grim twinkle in
+his eye.
+
+"You agree?" inquired the judge eagerly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good."
+
+"Provided you furnish the bracelet," went on the boy.
+
+"Bah!" snorted the judge in high dudgeon, marching from the spot. "Young
+man, I've done my duty out of consideration for your respected family. You
+won't listen to reason, so you must take the consequences. I shall advise
+Mr. Mace to have you arrested at once."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+GILL MACE
+
+
+About the middle of the afternoon Frank strolled down to the village. He
+had been worked up a good deal all morning, and when dinner time came he
+was made aware that his aunt was determined to treat him as a kind of
+culprit.
+
+The cross-grained old maid did not speak to him during the entire meal. She
+sat prim and erect, barely glanced at him, and as Frank arose from the
+table, half choked with the unwelcome food he had eaten, he resolved to
+speak his mind.
+
+"I'd like to say a word or two, Aunt Tib," he began.
+
+"Say it," snapped his ungracious relative sharply.
+
+"About this monstrous charge made against me by Mr. Mace," continued Frank.
+
+"It is indeed a terrible charge," remarked Miss Brown, with a chilling,
+awesome groan.
+
+"Of course it isn't true, and of course you can't believe it," went on
+Frank. "I am sure that a day or two will change things that look so black
+for me now. All that I am worrying about is that this affair may get to
+father and mother. It would simply worry them both to death, and it mustn't
+be. I hope you wouldn't be so cruel, so wicked, as to add to their
+troubles."
+
+"I shall not write to them until you have confessed."
+
+"Confessed!" cried Frank hotly. "There is nothing to confess. Don't I tell
+you that I never saw old man Mace's bracelet? Aunt Tib, I am ashamed of
+you. I tell you, I'm holding in a good deal. If I thought you believed that
+man's story I'd leave the house for good."
+
+"You mustn't do that, Frank," she said quickly. "We must bear our crosses
+patiently."
+
+"It's no use; I'm just fighting mad," declared Frank to himself as he left
+the house. "I just hope Mace and Roseberry will do something to bring
+affairs to a focus. If this thing gets around the village, it will be a
+nice, pleasant thing for me, won't it, now? I've half a mind to make a
+break and get out of it all."
+
+Frank was in a decidedly disturbed state of mind. From being angry he got
+dejected, and for some time he allowed his thoughts to wander unrestrained.
+He actually envied Ned Foreman and his wandering career. If it had not been
+for his loyalty to his parents he would have hunted up the grinding wagon
+to ask the man who had relieved Ned to give him a job.
+
+It would not have been so hard for Frank if he had had any close chum to
+whom he could have confided his troubles. But Miss Brown had spoiled all
+that. She kept the garden like a parlor, and scared away what few
+acquaintances Frank had with her severe looks and manner. The Jordans had
+lived at Tipton for only a year. The greater part of that time Frank had
+been absent at a boarding-school in a neighboring town. The lads with whom
+he had formerly associated in Tipton were away at various academies. Frank
+did not know the town schoolboys very well.
+
+He went downtown and strolled about for a time. Defiantly he walked calmly
+past Mace's jewelry store, and even paused and looked through its front
+plate-glass show window. He passed the usual hangout of Judge Roseberry,
+and did not hasten his steps a bit when he saw that the judge, lounging on
+a bench, noticed him.
+
+Frank fancied that after he had passed the tavern the judge said something
+to some of his fellow hangers on, and that they glanced after him with some
+curiosity. A little farther on two little schoolboys paused in their walk,
+stared hard at him and then scooted away, saying something about a
+"burglary."
+
+"Mace is bluffing, and so is the judge," determined Frank. "They have no
+evidence against me, and they don't dare to arrest me. If they spread their
+false stories, all the same, they shall suffer for it."
+
+Frank felt pretty lonesome and gloomy as he passed the schoolhouse. The
+boys were rushing out, free from the tasks of the day. It might have been
+imagination, but Frank fancied that one or two of them greeted him with a
+cool nod and hurried on. As he politely lifted his cap to a bevy of girls,
+he imagined that they were rather constrained in their return greeting and
+looked at him queerly.
+
+Beyond the schoolhouse was Bolter's Hill, a famous place for coasting in
+the winter time. Just now it had a new power of attraction for the
+schoolboys. An old hermit-like fellow named Clay Dobbins had lived for
+years at the other side of the hill. He owned a little patch of ground and
+a dilapidated house. His wife had died recently, and all the village knew
+of his two chronic complaints.
+
+The first was that "Sairey had died leaving a sight less money than he had
+expected," and old Dobbins had wondered if the lawyers or the speculators
+had got it.
+
+The second was that the old man had got nervous and lonely living in the
+isolated spot. So he had rented a hut the other side of Bolter's Hill, near
+the schoolhouse. He planned to have his house moved there, and intended
+starting a little candy and notion store.
+
+There had never been much house-moving in Tipton, and nobody in the village
+was equipped to undertake even the simple task of conveying the Dobbins
+dwelling uphill and then down again. A house-moving firm from Pentonville,
+however, had engaged to perform the work. They had jacked up the house on
+screws, chained it securely to a log frame, and, setting a portable
+windlass at the top of the hill, operated this by horse power.
+
+An immense rope cable, thick as a man's arm, ran to a pulley under the
+house. It was a novelty to the school youngsters to watch the horse go
+round and round the windlass, and to see the house come up the hill a slow
+inch at a time.
+
+Work on the moving had been suspended for the day, but the boys hung around
+the spot. They raced through the house, clambered over the moving frame,
+and knocked with the workmen's mallets on the rollers to make the hollow
+echo that was new to them and sounded like music.
+
+The house movers had set the windlass locked, and the strain on the rope
+brought it taut. The house was anchored about half way up the hill,
+straining at the giant cable dangerously and on a sharp tilt.
+
+A little urchin was trying to "walk the tightrope," as he called it, as
+Frank came up, shaping a willow stick with his pocket knife.
+
+"Say, Frank Jordan," cried the lad, "won't you make me a whistle?"
+
+"Of course I will," replied Frank accommodatingly, and got astride a moving
+timber and set at work. Only a few of the large boys were about the spot.
+Frank noticed that Gill Mace, the nephew of the village jeweler, was among
+their number.
+
+Frank soon turned out a first-class whistle for the applicant, who went
+away tooting at a happy rate. A second urchin preferred a modest request,
+and Frank had just completed the second whistle when the boy he had sent
+away contented came back sniveling.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Frank sympathizingly.
+
+Between sobs the little fellow related his troubles. Gill Mace had forcibly
+taken the whistle away from him, and when he had got through testing its
+merits had pocketed it and sent its owner away with a cuff on the ear.
+
+"I'll give Gill Mace a piece of my mind, just now," declared Frank, hastily
+getting to the ground. The jeweler's nephew was up to just such mean,
+unmanly tricks all of the time. Frank felt that he deserved a lesson.
+Besides, at just the present moment he had no great love for the whole Mace
+family.
+
+Frank hurried around to the side of the house, to come upon Gill and his
+companions, who were engaged in leaping across a puddle near a pit in the
+hillside. He marched right up to the culprit, the little fellow he had
+befriended trailing after him.
+
+"See here, Gill Mace," cried Frank promptly, "can't you find a little
+better employment of your time than bullying little children?"
+
+Gill flushed up, but put on a braggart air.
+
+"Any of your business?" he demanded blusteringly.
+
+"I'm making it my business--it ought to be the business of any decent,
+fair-minded fellow," asserted Frank staunchly.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do about it?" demanded Gill, doubling up his
+fists."
+
+"I'm going to give you just twenty seconds to give that whistle back to
+that boy, or I'm going to take it out of your hide," declared Frank
+steadily.
+
+"Oho! you are, eh?" snorted Gill, swelling up and glaring wickedly at
+Frank. "Well, you won't get the whistle, for it's there in the mud."
+
+"I've a good mind to make you go after it," began Frank, when Gill, making
+a sudden jump, landed up against him, and dealt him a quick, foul blow
+below the waist.
+
+"I don't care about dirtying my hands with a thief," answered Gill, "but--"
+
+"What's that?" cried Frank, all the pride and anger in his nature coming to
+the front.
+
+"I said it," replied Gill, keeping up his doubled fists, but edging away,
+for the look in the eyes of his adversary warned and cowed him.
+
+"You call me a thief, do you?" demanded Frank.
+
+"Yes; you stole a diamond bracelet from my uncle's store this morning."
+
+"It's a falsehood!" shouted Frank--"a falsehood as foul and dirty as the
+muck in that pool! That for you!"
+
+Frank's arm shot out like a piston-rod, and into the mud-puddle, head over
+heels, went Gill Mace with a frightened howl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE RUINED HOUSE
+
+
+"Well, it's been a pretty lively day for me, and every move I make I seem
+to be getting deeper and deeper into trouble."
+
+This was the sentiment expressed by Frank as he retired to rest at the end
+of the most eventful day in his young life. The hours had indeed been full
+of incidents. He reviewed them all as he lay, his head on his pillow.
+
+Frank smiled to himself as he remembered Gill Mace. The boy who had called
+Frank a thief was unable to repeat the vile accusation when he emerged from
+the puddle into which Frank had pushed him. His mouth was full of mud, his
+hair was a dripping mop, his clothes were plastered with it. Frank had
+waited to respond to any later move that Gill might decide on. The
+jeweler's nephew, however, made none. As he emerged from the puddle three
+schoolgirls, arms linked in friendly companionship, passed the spot. They
+noticed Gill and tittered, and Gill sneaked away without so much as even
+glancing at Frank again.
+
+"I always thought you three fellows a pretty good lot," Frank spoke to the
+companions of Gill. "I'd hate to change my opinion by thinking you believe
+what Gill Mace said about my being a thief."
+
+Frank looked so manly and earnest as he spoke these words that his hearers
+were impressed. One of them stepped up and shook hands with him. Another
+remarked that he believed no story until he had evidence of its
+truthfulness, and a third half intimated that he would have served Gill
+Mace just as Frank had done if he made an untrue accusation.
+
+When Frank got home he discovered that his pocket knife was missing. He
+tried to remember what had become of it, and finally decided that he must
+have left it on the log frame or dropped it to the ground when he had
+started out to meet Gill Mace. Frank valued the knife as a pleasant
+reminder of Ned Foreman, and planned to get up extra early the next morning
+and make a search for it.
+
+He was pretty well satisfied as he closed his eyes in sleep that the
+jeweler would not dare to have him arrested for the theft of the diamond
+bracelet.
+
+Nothing would probably come of the ridiculous charge, except that the
+underhanded public insinuations of Mace would damage Frank's character. Now
+that he had taught Gill Mace a needed lesson, of course his family would be
+more bitter against Frank than ever.
+
+"The thing will die down," decided Frank. "If they get too rampant, I'll--
+yes, I'll actually sue them for slander."
+
+It must have been about midnight when Frank awoke with a shock. The echo of
+a frightful rumble and crash deafened his ears, and he fancied that the bed
+was vibrating. A scream inside the house made him sit up and listen. He was
+startled and bewildered.
+
+"Frank! Frank!" quavered the terror-filled tones of his aunt, as she
+knocked sharply at the door of his bedroom, "get up at once!"
+
+"What has happened?" inquired Frank quickly.
+
+"I don't know--something dreadful, I am sure!" gasped the affrighted
+spinster. "It felt like an earthquake. It shook the whole town. It must
+have been an explosion."
+
+"Humph! Good thing you know I'm in the house," observed Frank, as he jumped
+to the floor and hustled into his clothes.
+
+"Why is that, Frank?"
+
+"Because it may have been a dynamite explosion blowing up somebody's safe,
+and of course Mace would say I did it."
+
+"Don't jest, Frank," pleaded his aunt. "I'm chilled through and shaking all
+over. Get outside and see if you cannot learn what it all means."
+
+"I think myself it was probably an accidental blast at the quarry down the
+river," said Frank; "but I'll soon find out."
+
+He did not dress fully, and let himself out on the porch in his slippers.
+As he walked down to the gate Frank noticed lights appear in many houses
+nearer the village, as if their inmates had been suddenly aroused from
+sleep.
+
+Then distant voices, a rumbling wagon, people talking in loud tones, boyish
+shouts and a vague chorus of sounds unusual for the midnight hour, were
+drifted to Frank's hearing. From all this, however, he could think out no
+coherent idea as to what might be going on nearer town.
+
+"It's not a fire, for there's no glare," he decided. "There's some kind of
+a commotion over near the schoolhouse, it seems. Reckon I'll dress fully
+and investigate."
+
+There was a certain attraction for Frank in the distant bustle and turmoil.
+He went back into the house to find his aunt seated in the front hall. She
+was wrapped up in a shawl, pale and shivering.
+
+"Oh, Frank, what is it?" she chattered.
+
+"I didn't find out, but I'm going to," he announced, as he hurried on to
+his room.
+
+"Is--is it coming here?"
+
+"Is what coming here?"
+
+"The--the--whatever it is."
+
+"It hasn't hurt us any, has it? And I don't think it will."
+
+Frank got back to the road ten minutes later and started on a run toward
+the town. Taking the middle of the road, he nearly bumped into a man where
+the highway turned.
+
+"Hi, there!" challenged the latter.
+
+"Hello!" responded Frank, recognizing a truck gardner who lived just beyond
+the Jordan place. "What's happened, Daley?"
+
+"Old Dobbins' house."
+
+"What, the one they're moving?"
+
+"Yes. It broke loose from its bearings and has rolled right back to where
+it stood."
+
+"You don't say so?" exclaimed Frank, with something of a shock.
+
+"Yes, it has," asserted Daley, "only it's the greatest wreck of bricks and
+plaster now you ever saw."
+
+"No one hurt, I hope?"
+
+"No, except old Dobbins' feelings. He's capering around at a great rate,
+saying that the town, or the county, or the government, will have to pay
+him for the damage."
+
+"The movers couldn't have understood their business very well to have such
+a thing happen." said Frank.
+
+"Looks that way," acceded Daley, and they parted at the gateway of the
+Jordan home.
+
+Frank advised his aunt of the state of affairs and went back to bed.
+Naturally he was curious to have a view of the wrecked house. He got up
+early before breakfast and took a stroll over to the scene of the disaster.
+The lad, too, thought of his lost knife and bore that fact in mind.
+
+He gave up all hopes of recovering the knife, however, as he reached the
+spot where he believed he had lost it the afternoon previous. Where the
+Dobbins house had been anchored on the hillside the ground was torn up and
+disturbed as though a cyclone had passed over the place. At the bottom of
+the hill, jammed half way through the rickety old stable, was what was left
+of the dismantled house.
+
+Miss Brown made Frank stay in the house and study from eight until ten
+every morning. With all the exciting thoughts that were passing through his
+mind, Frank found it difficult to fix his attention on his books that
+morning. He was glad to get out of the house when ten o'clock came. His pet
+pigeons were his first care. Then he started for the post-office, hoping
+that he would find a letter from his father.
+
+"Hi, Frank," a voice hailed him as he made a short cut through a little
+grove at the rear of the house, and a familiar form emerged from some
+bushes.
+
+"Why, it's Mr. Dobbins!" exclaimed Frank in some surprise. He had expected
+to find the miserly old fellow in the depths of despair over the loss of
+his house, but Dobbins was grinning and chuckling at a great rate.
+
+"So 'tis Frank," he bobbed with a broad smile. "Was looking for you."
+
+"What for, Mr. Dobbins?"
+
+The old man blinked. Then he laughed in a pleased, crafty way and put his
+hand in his pocket.
+
+"See here," he cried, and Frank noticed that he held three coins in his
+palm. There was a twenty, a ten and a five-dollar gold piece.
+
+"Um-m," observed Dobbins. "Double eagle a good deal of money, isn't it now,
+Frank?"
+
+"Why, yes," assented Frank wonderingly, and the old fellow picked out the
+twenty-dollar gold piece with his free hand and put it in his vest pocket.
+
+"It would be extravagant for a boy to squander even as much as ten dollars,
+hey?"
+
+Frank did not answer, for he could not surmise what the old fellow was
+getting at.
+
+"So, if you'll consider this five-dollar gold piece the right thing,"
+resumed Dobbins, "you're mightily welcome to it, and say, Frank--you're a
+bully boy!"
+
+"How's that?" inquired Frank.
+
+"Oh, you know," asserted Dobbins. "Take it quick, before I change my mind."
+
+"Take the five dollars, you mean?" questioned Frank.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Why should I do that? You don't owe me anything."
+
+"Don't?" cried Dobbins. "Why, boy, I owe you everything. No nonsense
+between friends, you see."
+
+"I don't see--" began Frank.
+
+Old Dobbins placed a finger beside his nose in a crafty, expressive way. He
+winked blandly at Frank, with the mysterious words:
+
+"That's all right, Frank, boy. No need of going into particulars, but--you
+know right enough. Mum's the word. Take the five dollars."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+AN ASTONISHING CLUE
+
+
+"But I don't know," declared Frank forcibly, "and as I have _not_
+earned any five dollars, of course I can't take it."
+
+"Sho!" chuckled old Dobbins, dancing about Frank, as spry as a schoolboy
+and poking him playfully in the ribs. Frank had to smile.
+
+"See here, Mr. Dobbins," he observed, "it appears to me that you feel
+pretty lively for a man who has just had his house all smashed to pieces."
+
+"That's just it--that's just it," retorted Dobbins in a tone almost
+jubilant. "Where would I be if it hadn't happened? Why, boy, when I think
+of what you've done, I--I almost would adopt you--that is, if you weren't
+too big an eater."
+
+There was some mystery under all this, Frank discerned. He wanted to get at
+the plain facts of the case.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't entirely understand," he began when his eccentric
+visitor interrupted him.
+
+"Ho! ho!" he guffawed. "You will be _sharp_, you young _blade_,
+won't you? Got some _temper_--hey? True as _steel_--hi! When the
+rope gave out you _cut_ for it--ho! ho! ho!" and the speaker went into
+spasms of merriment over his own wit.
+
+"'Blade, temper, steel,'" quoted Frank. "Are you getting off a pun, Mr.
+Dobbins?"
+
+"Put it that way if you like," returned Dobbins cheerfully. "There was a
+knife. That's the long and short of it, don't you see? A boy's pocket
+knife. It sawed the big moving cable. Snap! Bang! Away went the house.
+Whose knife? Aha! Dear me--who can tell? Sly, hey--Frank, boy? We ain't
+going to tell. No need of it. Artful dodgers--ho! ho! ho! Take the five
+dollars."
+
+Frank gave a vivid start. He was partly enlightened now. He had mislaid his
+knife near the house that had been anchored on the hill side. Somebody had
+found it and had cut the cable with it.
+
+"What you are getting at, then," said Frank, "is that a knife cut the rope
+loose?"
+
+"Ah, just that."
+
+"And my knife?"
+
+"Oh, yes, it was your knife, Frank--no doubt about that at all."
+
+"How do you know it was my knife?" asked Frank.
+
+"Because it had your name on it. Of course I didn't see the knife used, but
+Judge Roseberry found it the next morning right under the windlass."
+
+"Who?" fairly shouted Frank.
+
+"Judge Roseberry. The knife fitted to the cut. Judge Roseberry came to me
+with it. 'Dobbins,' says he to me, 'business is business. I have made a
+discovery. The person who smashed your house is Frank Jordan, and I can
+prove it.' Then he told me the rest."
+
+"And what did you say?" cried the astonished Frank.
+
+"Well, feeling pretty perk over a discovery I had just made, I listened to
+the crafty old varmint."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He told me that you had stolen a diamond bracelet from Mace, the jeweler."
+
+"Which was a falsehood," asserted Frank with vehemence.
+
+"Yes, I can believe that," nodded Dobbins, "seeing that Roseberry said so.
+He then began to tell me how they were trying to have you give up that
+bracelet. He said that if I would have you arrested for smashing the house,
+it would break you down and make you confess about the bracelet. Anyhow, it
+would look so bad for you that your father would settle all the damage."
+
+"The villain!" commented Frank.
+
+"Them's my sentiments, too, Frank. Mebbe, if things hadn't turned out as
+they did, I might have acted mean and measly, too, but I was so tickled
+over the way they did come out that I just laughed at your boyish mischief
+of letting the old shack slide downhill."
+
+"But I had no hand in anything of the sort," declared Frank stoutly.
+
+"Let it pass, Frank, let it pass," chuckled Dobbins unbelievingly. "You
+see, when I came to look over the old ruins I come to where the old
+storeroom wall had busted out. You know it's always been a mystery to me
+what had become of my wife Sairey's scrapings and earnings?"
+
+"I've heard you tell so--yes," nodded Frank.
+
+"There they were, boy!" cried old Dobbins in a sort of ecstasy. "She'd
+hidden them in a hole in the wall. The wall broke out in the crash.
+Confidentially," and the narrator looked around cautiously and lowered his
+voice to a mysterious whisper, "I found in gold and silver a heap of money
+amounting to nigh three thousand dollars."
+
+"Well!" ejaculated Frank.
+
+"So, you see, it was a lucky day for me when you cut that rope."
+
+"Which I never did," replied Frank vigorously. "If you will come over to
+the house, Mr. Dobbins, my aunt will assure you that I was in bed hours
+before and after the crash happened."
+
+"Well, anyway, it was your knife."
+
+"Yes," assented Frank, and explained about it being mislaid. Apparently
+Dobbins was convinced. He was thoughtful for a moment or two, exchanged the
+coin in hand for another in his pocket, and extended this to Frank with the
+words:
+
+"I guess it's worth ten dollars, then."
+
+"No, Mr. Dobbins," said Frank positively, "I can't take your money. I'll
+tell you, though, if you really feel kindly toward me."
+
+"I do, for a fact, Frank."
+
+"And want to do me a favor?"
+
+"Try me, Frank."
+
+"I want you to come up to the house and satisfy yourself that I have told
+you the truth about being home last night, and then I want you to go to
+town with me."
+
+"Why, Frank, I don't doubt your word."
+
+"No; but others may, and I want to settle this affair."
+
+"All right, Frank, though I'd feel better if you took the money."
+
+Miss Brown looked rather curious and perplexed when confronted by Frank and
+Dobbins, but satisfactorily answered the questions put by her nephew.
+
+"Oh, Frank," she said, as he and his companion left the place, "if you are
+going to town I wish you would stop at the post-office."
+
+"I will," replied Frank. "I hope there will be a letter from the folks. I
+shall not take much of your time, Mr. Dobbins," he explained to his
+companion as they started for the village.
+
+Frank ran into the post-office as they reached it. The postmistress handed
+out a paper from the Jordan letter-box. Frank stuck it in his pocket a
+little disappointedly, for he had expected a letter from his father.
+
+He led Dobbins from the post-office to the village tavern. As he had
+expected, Judge Roseberry was lounging on the bench outside, spouting
+politics to some loafer companions.
+
+"Keep right with me, Mr. Dobbins," directed Frank. "I shall need your
+services."
+
+"Drat me, if I can understand what you're getting at, lad," said Dobbins
+desperately, "but I'll stick, if I can be of any use to you."
+
+Frank marched straight up to the crowd in front of the tavern.
+
+"Judge Roseberry," he said calmly, but with an impressive seriousness, "I
+will thank you to return my pocket knife."
+
+"Hey--h'm!" spluttered the judge, taken off his balance. "Your knife?"
+
+"Precisely," insisted Frank.
+
+"Why--how--who says I've got your knife?" stammered the judge, growing
+redder in the face than usual.
+
+"Mr. Dobbins, here, informs me that he does," replied Frank.
+
+"That's so," echoed Dobbins; "inasmuch as you showed it to me this
+morning."
+
+"Well, if I have," observed the judge, bracing up a little, "I hold it as
+evidence of a crime. As an emissary of the law--"
+
+"That's the right word, judge," grinned Dobbins--"'emissary' fits. It don't
+go in this instance, though. The evidence is all on Frank's side, as I have
+found out. He was in bed when that smash-up took place, so I reckon I won't
+go into any plot to ruin the character of an honest boy, this time."
+
+Judge Roseberry gave up the knife reluctantly and felt pretty sheepish in
+the act, for his cronies were winking and chuckling over his discomfiture.
+
+"I thank you very much for what you have done for me, Mr. Dobbins," said
+Frank as they left the spot.
+
+"That's all right, boy," replied Dobbins heartily; "and if these varmints
+make you any more threats, just sue them and I'll stand the costs--that is,
+if they aren't too heavy."
+
+Frank felt quite lighthearted as he left old Dobbins and started homeward.
+He entered the house whistling, and threw the newspaper he had just got at
+the post-office into his aunt's lap. As he went outside and was passing the
+open window of the sitting-room, a cry brought him to a halt.
+
+"What is the matter, Aunt Tib?" he inquired quickly.
+
+Miss Brown held an open letter in her hand and looked fluttering and
+excited.
+
+"It was inside the paper, Frank," she explained.
+
+"Is it from the folks?" inquired Frank eagerly.
+
+"It is," assented his aunt
+
+"Father is well?" asked Frank breathlessly.
+
+"He is getting better every day. But, Frank," and his aunt looked
+profoundly grave and important, "the serious duties of life are grave. A
+false step may change the whole course of a young life. There is a tide in
+the affairs of men----"
+
+"Yes, yes," interrupted Frank. "I know all about that; but what are you
+getting at?"
+
+Miss Brown did not fancy being interrupted in one of her famous homilies,
+and she answered tart and terse:
+
+"Your father has made arrangements to send you to Bellwood School, and you
+are to start at once."
+
+Frank fairly staggered at the glad news. He was so overcome that he could
+not speak. He just bobbed his head and smiled.
+
+The instant the youth got out of range of the house, however, a riotous,
+echoing yell rang from his lips as he turned a mad, capering somersault:
+
+"Hurrah!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CONFIDENCE MAN
+
+
+"All aboard!"
+
+Frank fancied that he had never listened to a more cheery command than this
+given as the Western Express rolled out of the depot at Tipton.
+
+It was beautiful weather, a glorious day that would put life and sunshine
+into an invalid, let alone a lively, happy boy escaping from what he
+considered thralldom, believing that all the joys of life were awaiting him
+at the end of his trip.
+
+Frank's aunt actually smiled and waved the lad a gracious adieu from the
+depot platform. She had been quite gentle and kind to him the few hours
+preceding his departure. She had put up a generous lunch for him, and had
+even unbent so far as to declare that she had believed from the first that
+he knew nothing about the missing diamond bracelet. All this, however, had
+been the preface to a dozen brief lectures on thorny ways and the dark
+pitfalls of life. Frank was genuinely glad to escape from the gloomy
+influence Miss Brown cast on everything bright and happy about her.
+
+At another part of the platform was Mace, the jeweler. He had a sullen
+frown on his face, and he fixed his glance on Frank as though his eyes were
+boring him through and through to discover the missing diamond bracelet.
+
+The wrecking of old Dobbins' house had remained a mystery. Some thought the
+rope had been cut, while others were of the opinion that it had broken
+because of the heavy strain put upon it.
+
+"Good--we're off!" jubilated Frank, as he waved a last adieu to his aunt
+through the open car window, and Tipton faded away in the distance. Then he
+settled down in his comfortable seat to enjoy the all-day ride to Bellwood.
+
+Miss Brown had doled out twenty-five cents at the depot news-stand for a
+book full of jokes and funny pictures. Frank soon exhausted this literary
+fund. Then he bought some oranges from the train boy and had a lively chat
+with him. He bought a daily paper and read it through and through, and by
+noon the trip began to get a trifle monotonous.
+
+It was about one o'clock when the train arrived at a junction, where there
+was a stop for half an hour. Frank was glad to walk about and stretch his
+limbs. When leaving time came and he returned to the train he became
+interested in studying two passengers.
+
+A husky, farmer-looking man had entered the coach, followed by a stocky-
+built lad about the age of Frank. The latter bore the appearance of a boy
+sullen and unhappy over some circumstance. Frank thought he had never seen
+a more dissatisfied face than that of this lad. He shuffled along after the
+farmer in an ungracious fashion, and taking the first empty seat flopped
+into it unceremoniously.
+
+"All right," said his companion. "You're probably better by yourself when
+you're in one of your tantrums. Just see if you can't get some of your
+natural meanness out of you while looking at the beauties of nature along
+the route."
+
+The boy hunched up his shoulders contemptuously without saying a word in
+reply, while the farmer selected a seat across the aisle and directly in
+front of Frank. He occupied himself looking over a weekly farm paper. After
+a while Frank crossed over to the seat occupied by the boy who had
+accompanied the farmer.
+
+"Going far?" inquired Frank in a friendly tone.
+
+The lad did not move to make room for him in the seat. He turned a sullen
+face on Frank. There was dark suspicion and open animosity in his eyes.
+
+"Far enough," he muttered.
+
+"It's pleasant weather, isn't it?" propounded Frank, bound to be
+companionable.
+
+"Say," said the boy, staring pugnaciously at our hero, "trying to pick on
+me, are you?"
+
+"Why," answered the astonished Frank, "I never dreamed of such a thing."
+
+"Yes, you did! Lemme alone!"
+
+"All right," returned Frank pleasantly. "Only here's an orange and a funny
+book I want you to enjoy," and he placed the articles in question beside
+the boy and stepped back to his own seat.
+
+As he did so he met the big round face of the farmer on a broad grin. The
+latter turned around and accosted him.
+
+"Not very sociable, hey?" he remarked.
+
+"Oh, I probably seem strange to him," observed Frank.
+
+"He's that way all along," declared the farmer. "If he is my son, I say
+it."
+
+"You are his father, then?"
+
+"The only one he's got," replied the farmer. "You see, I married his
+mother. She's dead, now. That boy always was a sulky, ugly varmint. Why,
+he'd ought to be the happiest critter in Christendom. He's got eight step-
+brothers and step-sisters. Won't jibe, though. He's just unnateral, that
+fellow is. No living at home with him, so I'm taking his to a boarding-
+school."
+
+"Maybe he doesn't feel well all the time," suggested Frank gently.
+
+"What, that big, husky boy? Why, he's strong as an ox. No, sir-ree, nateral
+depravity, I say. I tried to whip it out of him. It did him no good."
+
+"I shouldn't think it would," decided Frank mentally, and then the
+conversation dropped and the man returned to his paper.
+
+Frank felt sorry for the grumpy, sad-looking boy across the aisle. His own
+loveless experience with his aunt at Tipton gave him some reason for this.
+The boy was worse off than he was, though, for Frank had kind-hearted,
+affectionate parents, while the farmer boy was motherless. The latter had
+eaten half of the orange and was quite engrossed in the book given him.
+Frank was about to start another effort to make friends, when the train
+came to a station and a passenger came aboard who diverted his interest.
+
+The newcomer was a tall, dark man of middle age. He had a very solemn face
+and wore a black tie and choker and clothes that suggested mourning.
+
+There were plenty of vacant seats, but after a sharp look about the coach
+this new passenger came to where the farmer sat.
+
+"Seat engaged, sir?" he inquired in a polite, ingratiating way.
+
+"No, sure not," responded the farmer heartily. "Sit down. Glad to have
+company."
+
+"I fear I shall not be very good company," observed the new passenger with
+a dismal sigh.
+
+"How's that, sir?" questioned the farmer curiously.
+
+"I'm going to a funeral."
+
+"Ah! Nigh relative?"
+
+"Yes; a brother."
+
+"Too bad," commiserated the farmer. "Lost my own brother last year. Bill
+was a hustling chap. Missed him dreadfully last plowing season."
+
+"My brother lives at Jayville," explained the man, naming a station two
+stops ahead.
+
+"Jayville, eh?" repeated the farmer. "Been there. Went to the bank there
+once to sell a mortgage."
+
+"Indeed. An uncle of mine is an official of the bank."
+
+"Is that so, now?" said the farmer. "There's the mayor, there, too; sort of
+a distant relative of my first wife. Don't know him, do you?"
+
+Frank interestedly watched the stranger deftly draw from a side pocket a
+book. It seemed to be some kind of a country directory. Without attracting
+the attention of his companion, the stranger glanced over its pages,
+meantime suspending conversation by pretending to have a violent fit of
+coughing.
+
+"The mayor," he said finally. "You mean Mr. David Norris?"
+
+"That's him!" exclaimed the farmer.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know him. He is a cousin of mine."
+
+"Is that so? Shake!" said the farmer. "Why, we're quite acquainted, hain't
+we? Almost relatives, hey?"
+
+"Well!" muttered Frank under his breath. "This is getting interesting. Sure
+as sugar, that fellow is a confidence man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+NIPPED IN THE BUD
+
+
+Frank had traveled some in his young career, had read considerable, and had
+thought a good deal. The talk of the melancholy man in the white choker had
+led up to a point where Frank felt pretty sure he was up to some trick or
+other. While pretending to be interested in the newspaper he had read over
+and over, our hero kept eyes and ears wide open.
+
+The stranger talked of things in general now. He asked the farmer
+concerning his crops, and particularly about the wife who must be a distant
+relative of his. Finally he observed:
+
+"It's a pretty bad prospect for the family of my dead brother."
+
+"How's that, neighbor?" asked the farmer.
+
+"Left them without much of anything--that is, in the way of ready money. In
+fact, I must bear all the burden of the funeral expenses. I'm short myself,
+and it's going to cramp me to get hold of ready cash. I've got to make
+something of a sacrifice, and it's worrying me."
+
+"Hope you don't have to sacrifice your homestead, or anything like that,"
+observed the farmer sympathetically.
+
+"I won't, just the same," declared the stranger with some force. "I
+promised my father I'd never let the old home go."
+
+"That's the right sentiment, friend."
+
+"I was offered ten thousand for it, and refused it. Then fifteen thousand--
+I would not listen to it. I may have to borrow on it, but it will be a
+small amount. I'm trying to avoid even that. Let me show you something. See
+those documents?" and the speaker showed a neat little package of papers
+secured with a rubber band. He selected the outside one and spread it open.
+It was a certificate of stock, printed in green and red on fine parchment
+paper. Its blanks were filled in with writing in great flourishes, and
+there was an immense gold seal in one corner.
+
+"What's that, now?" inquired the farmer with bulging eyes. "Government
+bond?"
+
+"Better than a government bond, my friend," assured the stranger. "A
+government bond brings a man only four per cent. a year. This stock paid me
+ten per cent. in January, twenty per cent. in March, and I was offered
+double its face value last week."
+
+"A hundred dollars," said the farmer musingly, noting the handsome
+medallion figure at the top of the stock certificate.
+
+"Yes, and worth two hundred, as I tell you. I wouldn't sell it at any
+price, but I'm short of ready cash, and I'll pay eight per cent. interest
+and give the next dividend as a bonus, for a loan of seventy-five dollars
+for thirty days. I'm proud and particular about my business, and I dislike
+to ask my friends for the loan."
+
+"Say," observed the farmer, dazzled at the sight of the pretty document,
+"you mean you'll give all that security and interest for a loan of seventy-
+five dollars?"
+
+"To an honest man who won't run away with the security, yes."
+
+"I can show you letters telling you who I am," declared the farmer, perking
+up with pride. "Straight business with me, neighbor. I reckon I can dig up
+seventy-five dollars on any occasion."
+
+"Look over the certificate, friend. You'll find the signatures all right.
+D. Burlingame Gould, president--you've heard of the Goulds?"
+
+"In the paper, certainly."
+
+"He's one of them. Robert Winstanley Astorbilt, secretary, prominent New
+York banker. Excuse me, I've got to get a drink of water. You won't find
+better security in this country than a share of stock of the Little Wonder
+Bonanza Mining & Milling Company of Montana."
+
+"Hello!" said Frank to himself with a start "The Little Wonder--why, where
+did I see that name? I've got it! There's an item in the very newspaper
+I've been reading about it."
+
+The stranger had proceeded to the water tank. He purposely left the farmer
+dazzled with his proposition to think over it. The latter sat in a sort of
+trance of avarice, staring at the enticing stock certificate.
+
+A plan to confuse and outwit the swindler occurred to our hero. He was
+intent on locating the brief item he remembered having seen in the
+newspaper. He wanted to act on his plan before the stranger returned.
+Frank's eye ran over column after column, page after page.
+
+"Got it," he breathed at last, and neatly tore out of place an item near
+the bottom of a page. It told of a swindle astoundingly perpetrated by a
+gang of confidence men in the city where the paper was published. The
+scheme was to induce greenhorns to invest in or loan money on mining stock
+of some companies that had no existence except on paper. The Little Wonder
+Bonanza Mining & Milling Company of Arizona headed the list of the
+worthless concerns.
+
+"Quick--before the man comes back, read that," said Frank, leaning over the
+seat in front of him and placing the clipping in the hands of the former.
+
+"Hey! What----"
+
+"And then give it to him to read," added Frank with a chuckle.
+
+"Hemlock and asparagus!" ejaculated the farmer as his glance ran over the
+item. "A bunko man, eh? And I was nearly gulled!"
+
+"Well, friend," spoke the swindler suavely, returning down the aisle, "how
+about that little loan? You'll have to decide quick, for this is my station
+they're coming to."
+
+"I see 'tis," responded the farmer, arising with a grim face that should
+have warned the man, who had taken him for an easy victim. "Say, you
+measly, flaggerbusted scrub, read that!"
+
+The farmer did not wait to have the swindler read the newspaper item. He
+only thrust it near enough to his discomfited face to allow the fellow to
+get an inkling of its meaning. Then his sinewy hand closed on the collar of
+the swindler's coat.
+
+The train was slowing up just then, and a brake-man threw open the door of
+the coach with the announcement:
+
+"Jayville!"
+
+"I'm going to introduce you to the town," grinned the farmer. "Bolt, you
+varmint!"
+
+He ran the fellow down the car, the other passengers arising from their
+seats in excitement. Straight through the open doorway he rushed the
+swindler, and out upon the platform. Arrived there, the farmer changed his
+mind. The depot was about two hundred feet ahead. Just where the coach was
+running was a deep ditch.
+
+Frank saw the stalwart farmer lift his prisoner bodily, he heard a yell and
+then a splash, and saw the baffled swindler land waist-deep in the ditch,
+deluged, silk hat, white choker and dress coat, in a cascade of murky mud.
+
+"My wife's cousin, the banker, and his friend, the mayor of the town, can
+help him out of that fix if they want to," chuckled the farmer, coming back
+into the car and rubbing his hands as if to wash the dirt from them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A BOY GUARDIAN
+
+
+The conductor grinned and the passengers roared with laughter when the
+farmer explained the incident. Even the glum-faced stepson of the narrator
+roused up into some interest.
+
+"Thankee, neighbor," spoke the farmer, effusively grasping Frank's hand.
+"You're the right sort, sure enough--eyes wide open and up to snuff. Guess
+I'd better keep close to home after this. I ain't to be trusted along with
+them gold-brick fellows."
+
+The old man took a great fancy to Frank and became quite confidential with
+him. He piled candy and peanuts on him from the train boy's supply, invited
+him to the farm, and wanted to know Frank's name so he could tell the folks
+about him.
+
+"I am Frank Jordan, live at Tipton, and am bound for school at Bellwood,"
+said Frank.
+
+"Hey! how--what?" exclaimed the farmer explosively. "You don't mean to say
+that you're traveling to school, too?"
+
+"Yes," replied Frank. "But who else do you mean?"
+
+"Why, my son, Robert, over there--Robert Upton. Now, isn't it funny--he's
+going right to the very school you are?"
+
+"To Bellwood?"
+
+"That's the name--Bellwood is the place," assented Mr. Upton. "Wish you'd
+tell me what you know about it."
+
+"I don't know anything about it, except what I've read and what I've heard
+from friends who went there," said Frank. But it seemed he had enough
+information to quite interest the farmer. Then the latter told him about
+his stepson.
+
+"Robert's been no good at home," he said. "You can see what a sulky,
+unsociable fellow he is. No interest in nothing--thinks everybody hates
+him, and won't make up to anybody. He says he'll run away if I put him in
+school. If he does, I certainly will put him in the reformatory until he's
+of age."
+
+Frank stole a rather pitying glance at the lad. The latter was hunched down
+in his seat, his hands rammed into his pockets, looking bored and
+miserable. Frank wondered what kind of a queer make-up his nature could be,
+to mope and scowl that bright, beautiful day, with the prospect of the
+useful chance for study and the gay life of schoolboy sport.
+
+"Why, say," suddenly ejaculated Farmer Upton, starting under the spur of
+some exciting idea, "why can't Robert go with you to Bellwood?"
+
+"He is doing so, isn't he?" said Frank with a smile.
+
+"I mean why can't you sort of take charge of him and introduce him around,
+and save me the time and the expense. You see, if I go with him I can't get
+home until to-morrow. I can get off the train at Chester, and not buy any
+ticket to Bellwood, but go right back home. I've made all the arrangements
+for him by letter at Bellwood. The only reason I was going with him was to
+deliver him into the hands of the teachers and give them an inkling of what
+a troublesome fellow he is."
+
+"Doesn't it strike you that that would hurt his chances with them and
+discourage him?" suggested Frank.
+
+"I never thought of that."
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Upton," said Frank, "but maybe you're too hard on your
+stepson. It's hard to understand people, and a boy is a queer make-up. I
+will be glad to have him come with me to Bellwood, and I'll put myself out
+to make it agreeable for him."
+
+"But he won't be agreeable; that's the trouble, you see," declared the
+farmer. "When he gets in one of them tantrums of his, you simply can't
+reason with him."
+
+"Well, I'll take charge of him, if you don't wish to make the long journey,
+Mr. Upton."
+
+"I'll never know how to thank you, if you will," said the farmer
+gratefully. "Hi, there, Robert."
+
+"Me?" droned the boy in the seat across the aisle.
+
+"Who else do you suppose?" snapped his stepfather testily. "Come, rout out
+there, or I'll unhitch a strap somewhere and make you step lively."
+
+Frank made up his mind that he would interest himself in the drifting waif
+of a fellow. As he thought of the big, husky farmer and his houseful of
+grown sons and daughters, he wondered if in their rough, unthinking way
+they had not quite broken the spirit of the motherless lad in their midst.
+
+"Sit down here," ordered the farmer, turning the seat so it faced Frank.
+"This boy is going to Bellwood, Robert. He's agreed to take you along with
+him, and I'm going back home."
+
+Robert shot a glance of dislike and suspicion at Frank, as if he was a link
+in a chain of jailers waiting for him along the line of life.
+
+"You behave yourself along with him down at the academy, or I'll put you in
+the reform school," threatened the farmer harshly.
+
+"Oh, give Bob something to think of that's pleasant," put in Frank
+cheerily. "It's a scary thing for a fellow, first time he goes among
+strangers. I'm bracing up myself to meet the rollicking, mischief-making
+crowd at Bellwood, who will just be lying in wait to guy us and haze us.
+We'll stand together, Bob, hey? and give them good as they send," and Frank
+slapped the lad on the shoulder, with a ringing laugh.
+
+"They won't haze me," muttered Bob.
+
+"Yes, they will, and then you and I will lay around to haze the new fellows
+who came after us," cried Frank. "Ha! ha! you'll see some fun down at
+Bellwood, Bob. They're a capital set of fellows, I'm told. We'll make the
+best of them, anyhow, and the best of ourselves. Come, friend Bob, we'll
+stick together and get all the fun out of life we can. Chums, is it?"
+
+Frank was irresistible in his cheery, open-hearted good nature. Bob was
+ashamed to refuse his hand, but the set, glum look on his face did not
+lighten.
+
+They had to change cars at a place called Chester. The farmer gave Frank
+minute instructions as to his charge. He went over his "perky meanness" in
+all its details, and he said to his stepson at parting:
+
+"Now, then, you've got your chance to make a man of yourself. Any tantrums,
+and you'll hear from me quick, and hot and heavy."
+
+This was his parental farewell, and Frank felt truly sorry for poor Bob,
+who, with all his sullenness, seemed entitled to a little better treatment.
+
+After Farmer Upton had left them, Frank tried to break in on his stepson's
+sulky reserve, but failed utterly. Bob drew within himself. He made
+ungracious replies to questions put to him when Frank tried to interest
+him, and about two o'clock went over to a vacant seat and curled up in it
+and went fast asleep.
+
+It was about six o'clock when the train pulled into Bellwood. Frank found
+it to be a quaint, pretty town with delightful country surrounding it.
+
+"Come on, Bob," he spoke as they stepped to the depot platform; "we must
+arrange to have our trunks sent up to the academy."
+
+"You've got my check," said Bob. "You can attend to all that; I'll wait
+here."
+
+"Oh, no," replied Frank lightly, "we'll stick together until we get
+landed."
+
+He was determined to afford his companion no opportunity to stray off.
+There was a look in Bob Upton's eye that recalled the oft-repeated
+injunction of his stepfather to watch out for "tantrums."
+
+Frank arranged for the delivery of the trunks, and then made an inquiry of
+a truckman as to the location of Bellwood School. The man pointed out its
+towers about half a mile away.
+
+They passed through the business part of the little town. At the village
+post-office several boys were waiting for their mail. They looked the
+newcomers over, but did not address them, and in a few minutes Frank and
+Bob found themselves pursuing a path following the windings of a little
+stream.
+
+"We'll soon be there," announced Frank as they came to where on a slight
+rise of landscape the academy buildings stood pretty plainly in view.
+"What's the matter, Bob?"
+
+The latter had halted in a peculiar, positive way. He backed slightly. His
+eye was defiant and determined now, instead of sullen.
+
+"The matter is this," he announced bluntly. "I don't intend to go to that
+school."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AN OBSTINATE REBEL
+
+
+"What's that?" demanded Frank, looking Bob over in a quiet but resolute
+way.
+
+"I said it," observed Bob Upton obstinately. "I don't go to that school."
+
+"Nonsense!" retorted Frank simply with a laugh.
+
+He understood that a crisis had come. He read in the face of his companion
+a set purpose, and he prepared to meet the dilemma squarely.
+
+"I think all the more of you, Bob," he observed, "for speaking your mind
+right out, but you'll have to change it this time."
+
+"Why will I?" demanded Bob.
+
+"Because I'm going to convince you that your scheme won't work at all."
+
+"We'll see," muttered Bob.
+
+"We will," declared Frank. "In the first place, you're thinking things out
+wrong. In the second place, I've promised your stepfather to take you to
+the academy."
+
+"What of it? I didn't agree."
+
+"No; but I never break my word. I'm going to fill my contract, if I have to
+carry you to Bellwood School."
+
+"You'll have to do it, then," retorted Bob Upton. "I shan't budge an inch."
+
+"I won't argue with you, Bob," said Frank evenly. "I'll give you some
+advice----"
+
+"Don't want none," flared up Bob.
+
+"Then I'll give you two minutes to resume the tramp."
+
+Frank took out his watch and held it in his hand, surveying his opponent
+with a pleasant smile. Bob Upton with scowling brows dug his shoes into the
+ground for sixty seconds, and then began to back away.
+
+"It won't do," said Frank, stepping after him and seizing his arm firmly.
+"Come, now, be a good fellow."
+
+"You let me alone."
+
+"I shan't."
+
+There was a vigorous struggle. Bob was stoutly built, but he was no match
+for Frank. The latter laughed at his threatening struggles.
+
+"Give me a chance to fix my shoe, will you?" growled Bob as he gave up the
+fight and Frank released him. Then he stood patiently awaiting his
+pleasure, while his companion fumbled at his feet.
+
+Bob's back was to Frank, but the latter suspected no trick. Of a sudden,
+however, Bob whipped off both shoes, flinging them into the creek, his cap
+after them, stripped his coat from place and tossed it also into the water.
+Then he flopped flat to the ground.
+
+"I won't go another foot," he declared. "I'll rip every stitch of clothes
+on me to tatters and I'll fight like a wildcat before I'll make another
+step."
+
+Frank's eyes flashed. His settled will showed in his resolute face.
+
+"All right," he said quietly. "If you want to be handled like a wildcat, I
+can give you the treatment."
+
+Quick as a flash Frank sprang to a plank reaching a few feet out into the
+stream. It appeared to have been a landing place for small boats. Lying
+across it was a piece of rope, evidently used in securing some water craft.
+Seizing this, Frank made a leap back to his stubborn companion, jumped
+squarely astride of him, and snatching his knife from his pocket, cut the
+rope in two. In a jiffy he had bound the struggling hands of Bob. He
+performed the same function for his feet. Then, arising, he looked down
+steadily at his helpless captive.
+
+"I can carry you easily that way," he observed.
+
+Frank went along the banks of the stream until he found a long branch.
+There was little current to the rivulet, and he soon fished out the
+floating coat and cap. One of the shoes had sunk, but it was in shallow
+water, and he managed to rescue this also.
+
+"You're making a good deal of trouble, Bob," he remarked, "but you'll think
+better of it when you get cooled down."
+
+All the stubborn resistance began to fade from the face of the wretched
+lad. He realized that he had found his master. The mute misery and
+helplessness in his eyes appealed more strongly to Frank's sympathies than
+had his former unpleasant mood.
+
+"See here, Bob," said Frank, sitting down beside his companion, "while
+these articles are drying, better listen a bit to reason from a fellow who
+wants to be your friend. Will you?"
+
+Bob turned his face away, his laps puckering.
+
+"Oh, leave me alone," he sobbed. "I've got no friends. I never had any. I
+wish I could die and be out of everybody's way, that's what I wish."
+
+"See here, Bob," said Frank, "that's downright wicked, if you mean it. I'd
+like to know what's the matter with you? Can't you see any sunshine in
+life?"
+
+"Sunshine!" retorted Bob hotly. "Oh, yes, lots of it. Blazing, blistering
+sunshine in the harvest fields, where those big, selfish louts my
+stepfather told you about were loafing. Many a night I've crawled up to bed
+so tired and sore I could hardly get there, to have those fellows torment
+me or kick and cuff me because I wouldn't sneak down into the cellar and
+steal cider or preserves for them. I tell you, my stepfather has treated me
+wrong. I tell you, that heartless family of his had made my life so dark,
+I'm just discouraged."
+
+Bob Upton broke down and cried bitterly. Frank felt very sorry for him.
+
+"Bob," he said, "I'm glad you told me all of this. I begin to understand
+now. They haven't given you a fair chance; I see that. They've cowed you
+down and have nearly broken your spirit. All right. Show them that you're
+going to make something of yourself, all the same. We all have our
+troubles," and Frank told something of his own irksome, unpleasant life
+with his fault-finding aunt.
+
+It was by slow degrees that Bob Upton livened up and then braced up. No one
+could help liking Frank Jordan.
+
+"You're a cracking good fellow," said the farmer boy at last. "I hope it
+isn't like the spurts Jeff Upton used to have one day, and wallop me like
+thunder the next."
+
+"I'll see to it that no one wallops you or jumps on you," promised Frank.
+"You keep right with me till you learn the ropes and unlearn all the
+bitterness those relations of yours have put into you. I'm going to have
+you and me paired off for the same room, if I can."
+
+"Say," choked up Bob at this, "any fellow who would do that, after seeing
+how measly mean I can be, is a brick. Just wait. When the time comes that I
+can show you what I think of you, I'll be there, true as steel."
+
+"I believe you will," said Frank heartily. "You've been a good deal of a
+martyr, Bob Upton, and--there's your chance to be a hero! Quick, for
+mercy's sake, stop that runaway!"
+
+Frank shouted the words excitedly. He had removed the ropes from Bob's
+wrists and ankles, and they had been standing near the coat spread out on
+the grass while they conversed. A clatter and wild shouts had suddenly
+pierced the air, and whirling about Frank saw coming down a steep roadway
+toward the river a spirited team of horses attached to a light carriage.
+
+It had two seats, but the front one held no driver. In the rear seat,
+clinging frantically to one another and swung dangerously about by the
+swaying vehicle, were two affrighted children.
+
+Frank was speedy, but Bob Upton was quicker. It amazed and gratified Frank
+to see his companion dart off like a shot. He himself ran to where the road
+curved down to the river to obstruct the runaway's progress when it reached
+that point. Bob, however, who knew all about horses from his farm
+experience, had made a rush on a short cut to intercept the runaway horses
+before they reached a spot where the descent was sharp, and where deep
+ravines showed on either side of the winding roadway.
+
+Frank ran with all his might up the road, but Bob Upton by his short cut
+reached the point where it narrowed in an incredibly brief space of time.
+He had to catch at saplings and bushes to make the ascent. He was so far in
+advance of our hero that, while Frank continued running, he foresaw that he
+could not be first on the scene, and he watched Bob's progress with
+admiration and suspense.
+
+Bob Upton did a risky thing. He seemed to think only of diverting or
+stopping the runaway team--anything to keep the spirited horses from
+reaching the dangerous point where the road narrowed.
+
+Frank saw him pick up a great tree branch lying on the incline. Bearing
+this before him, Bob ran at the fast approaching horses with a loud shout.
+
+Squarely into their foam-flecked faces the farm boy drove the branch,
+dropped hold of it, and let it rest on the carriage pole. The horses reared
+and tried to turn. Quick as lightning Bob grabbed a bit strap in either
+hand, gave them a jerk, then grasped the nose of each horse, and brought
+them to a panting standstill.
+
+A man, the driver, pale and breathless, came running up from behind as
+Frank reached the spot.
+
+"Oh, you've saved them! Oh, I'll never leave them unhitched again! Boy, you
+shall have my month's wages--all I've got--for this!" shouted the man
+hysterically.
+
+"Get the lines," directed Bob. "The horses are restive yet. Hold them till
+I see what the matter is."
+
+His practiced eye had noticed one of the horses acting queerly with one
+foot. As the driver gained the front seat and held the team under control,
+Bob picked up the off foot of one of the animals.
+
+"This is what started them," he explained, holding up a sharp, long thorn.
+
+"Say, who are you--what's your name? I want to see you again about this."
+
+"Nothing to see me about," responded Bob. "Glad I was on hand, that's all.
+If you loosened that check rein your horses will go a great deal easier."
+
+"He's Robert Upton," spoke Frank, determined to give his valorous comrade
+all the distinction he deserved. "Bob," he added, as the restive team
+proceeded on their way, "you have been something of a martyr--now you are a
+positive hero."
+
+"Pshaw! that little thing!" observed Bob carelessly, but his face flushed
+at Frank's honest compliment. "I've had a wild stallion drag me all around
+a forty-foot lot, and never got a scratch."
+
+"You've made a fine beginning in the new life, Bob; you can't deny that,"
+said Frank. "Come, get on your duds and let's travel."
+
+Half an hour later, within the classic precincts of the big hall of
+learning on the hill, Frank Jordan and Robert Upton were duly registered as
+students of Bellwood School.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TURNING THE TABLES
+
+
+"Frank, we are marked men!" declared Bob Upton tragically.
+
+"Ha!" retorted Frank with a laugh. "The deadly enemy approaches!"
+
+"No nonsense!" declared Bob, quite earnestly now. "We're in for a course of
+sprouts; it's to come off this very night, and the savage horde which is to
+begin the hazing operations is that gang of ten who occupy the big
+dormitory room next to us."
+
+"How did you find all this out, Bob?"
+
+"I overheard them plotting."
+
+"I see."
+
+"I'm going to spike their guns and turn the laugh on them."
+
+"How?"
+
+"That's telling. You'd object, so I'm going to keep my own counsel. There
+are four degrees of initiation. If a fellow consents to all the tests with
+a good-natured grin he passes muster. If he doesn't, he's tabooed."
+
+"Well, then, let's stand muster cheerfully."
+
+"Not I," retorted Bob grimly. "We'll turn the tables; then they'll think
+all the more of us. Ever hear of the Chevaliers of the Bath? Or the Knights
+of the Garter?"
+
+"They are new to me--some school rigmarole, I suppose."
+
+"Yes. Then there's Scouts of the Gauntlet."
+
+"Worse and worse."
+
+"And finally the Guides of Mystery."
+
+"Whew!"
+
+"To be a free and accepted Chevalier of the Bath a fellow has to be a
+water-proof rat. To be a Knight of the Garter he must consent to wake up at
+midnight to find a rope tackle around one ankle, and be dragged out of bed
+and down the hall."
+
+"Well, we'll have to take our medicine, I suppose," said Frank lightly.
+
+"To be a Scout of the Gauntlet," went on Bob, "is to be sent in the dark
+down the stairs on a fool errand, and come back to face a pillow shower. A
+genuine Guide of Mystery must have the grit to be left blindfolded in the
+village graveyard at midnight, barefooted, and with a skeleton stolen from
+the museum hitched to one arm."
+
+"That's the program, is it, Bob?"
+
+"Exactly," assented Frank's new chum. "The show begins to-night, as I say.
+Stick close to me and you won't lose any rest."
+
+Frank looked blandly and admiringly at his comrade, and was rather proud of
+him.
+
+There had never come so marked and agreeable a change over a boy as that
+manifested in the instance of Bob Upton within three days.
+
+There was still under the surface with Bob, when he met strangers, a
+certain suspicious element that had been engrafted in him. The least hint
+that any one was guying him or imposing upon him would bring the old look
+back to his face, but Frank watched him closely, and coming to Bellwood
+School had indeed been the beginning of a new life for Bob.
+
+An incident had occurred the morning after their arrival that, outside of
+Frank's friendly effort in behalf of Bob, had been the means of lifting the
+farmer boy to a new level.
+
+The fellows at Bellwood School were of the average class in such
+institutions, a mixture of jolly and gruff, good and bad. Like attracts
+like, and the very first morning stroll on the campus Frank found himself
+attracted to some boys who took him into their ranks as naturally as if he
+had come recommended to them by special testimonials. Of course Bob went
+where Frank went, and loyally followed his leader.
+
+Frank soon found out that there were two cliques in the so-called
+"freshman" crowd. A boy named Dean Ritchie lead the coterie that had
+accepted Frank and Bob as new recruits. Frank liked him from the first. He
+was a keen-witted, sharp-tongued fellow, out for fun most of the time and
+never still for a minute.
+
+At any time the appearance of a lad named Nat Banbury or any of his cohorts
+was a signal for repartee, challenges, sometimes a sortie. Advances were
+made by Banbury toward the enlistment of the two new recruits in his ranks,
+but Frank had already made his choice.
+
+"Oh, come on, he isn't worth wasting breath on," spoke up a big, uncouth
+fellow named Porter, when Frank had politely announced to Banbury that Dean
+Ritchie was a friend of some old friends of his at Tipton. "Ta, ta, Bob-
+up!" rallied Porter maliciously to Frank's chum. "Keep close to brother!"
+
+Bob flushed and his eyes sparkled. His fists clenched.
+
+"Easy, Bob," warned Frank in an undertone.
+
+"Say, Banbury Cross," observed Bob, "there was a fellow of your name chased
+out of our county for sheep stealing, and another kept the dog pound. You
+snarl just exactly like some of the curs he keeps there."
+
+"Banbury, cranberry, bow, wow, wow!" derided Ritchie. "Good for you, Upton
+--you hit the nail on the head that time."
+
+"Upton--Robert Upton!" bellowed the old janitor, Scroggins, appearing on
+the campus just then.
+
+"That's me," acknowledged Bob.
+
+"President Elliott wishes to see you in the library," said Scroggins.
+
+"Aha!" snorted Banbury. "Called down already! Look out, Bob-up, you're in
+for a quake in the shoes."
+
+"No; the president is going to consult him on how to raise squashes,"
+sneered a crony of Banbury.
+
+"Say, Frank," whispered Bob, quite in a quake, "I'm going to get it for
+something. What can it be?"
+
+"Don't worry," replied Frank. "Face the music. I fancy you won't be hit
+very hard."
+
+Bob went away with the old, worried look on his face. He came back radiant,
+and seemed to walk on air, and he never even heard the jeers of the Banbury
+crowd as he passed them. He made a beckoning motion to Frank, and the two
+strolled away together.
+
+"Frank," said Bob, choking up, "I believe I'm some good in the world, after
+all."
+
+"I told you so, didn't I?"
+
+"I'm glad you made me come here," went on Bob. "Oh, so awfully glad! I
+declare----" and there Bob broke down and turned his face away for a moment
+or two.
+
+"Say, Frank," he continued, "so is the president glad I came, too. He told
+me so. What do you think? The two children in that runaway belong to his
+family."
+
+"Well! well!" commented Frank.
+
+"I almost sunk through the floor when the good old man, with tears in his
+eyes, thanked me for saving them, as he called it. He said he was proud of
+me, and that he predicted that the academy would be proud of me, too. I
+tell you, Frank, it stirred me up. Strike me blue, if I don't try to behave
+myself."
+
+"Good for you, Bob!"
+
+"Strike me scarlet red and sky blue, if I don't try to deserve his kind
+words."
+
+Nothing seemed to ruffle Bob after that. He simply laughed at the snubs and
+jeers of the Banbury crowd. He seemed to lose his old-time unsociability,
+and went right in with the jolly crowd that composed the stanch following
+of Dean Ritchie.
+
+It was just after the nine o'clock bell had rung that evening when Bob so
+mysteriously disclosed his suspicions of the initiation plots of the
+occupants of the adjoining room.
+
+"They're all Banbury's crowd," he explained to Frank. "Get into bed and
+take in the fun. They're waiting for us to quiet down. Don't speak above a
+whisper. Just stay awake long enough to see the program out."
+
+Bob turned out the light and both snuggled down on the pillows luxuriously
+after a strenuous day of sport and study.
+
+"Act first," whispered Bob. "Soon as the Banbury crowd think we're fast
+asleep, you'll hear them come stealthily out into the corridor. They've
+fixed the transom over our door so it will swing open without a jar. One
+fellow will stand on a chair. The others will hand him up the nozzle of a
+hose running to the faucet in their room."
+
+"And we'll be Knights of the Bath--I see," observed Frank.
+
+"Yes, without having to take any of the medicine. Hist--they're coming."
+
+Frank could readily guess what the enemy had in view--the old school trick
+of dousing them in their sleep. He relied on the mysterious promises of his
+chum, and lay still and listened intently.
+
+There was a vast whispering in the next room, a rustling about, and then
+more than one person could be heard just outside in the corridor.
+
+A stool seemed to be placed near to the door. The slightest creaking in the
+world told that the transom had been pushed ajar.
+
+"Hand up the hose," whispered a cautious voice.
+
+"Here you are."
+
+There was a fumbling sound at the transom. Then came the impatient words:
+
+"It don't work."
+
+"Turn on the screw."
+
+"I have. The water can't be on."
+
+"Yes, it is. I turned it."
+
+"I tell you it won't work," was whispered from the stool. "Go back to the
+room and turn on the faucet, I tell you."
+
+Hurried footsteps retreated from the door. Some one could be heard entering
+the next room. Then some one rushed out of it again.
+
+"Say," spoke an excited voice, "we're flooded! The hose has burst, and we
+are deluged, and----"
+
+"Boys, a light--the monitor's coming," interrupted a warning voice.
+
+"Cut for it! Something's wrong! We're caught!"
+
+There was heedless rush now from the next room. Frank could hear the hose
+dragged along the corridor. The door of the adjoining room was hurriedly
+closed.
+
+"Off with your clothes--hustle into bed," ordered some one in that
+apartment.
+
+Shoes were kicked off, beds creaked, and then came odd cries.
+
+"Wow!"
+
+"Murder!"
+
+Tap--tap--tap! came a knock at the door.
+
+"What's going on here?" asked the sharp, stern voice of the dormitory
+watchman.
+
+"Thunder!"
+
+"Oh, my back!"
+
+"I'm scratched to pieces!" So ran the cries, and half a dozen persons
+seemed to bound from beds to the floor.
+
+Bob Upton was shaking with suppressed laughter, stuffing the end of the
+pillow into his mouth to keep from yelling outright.
+
+"Bob," whispered Frank, "what have you been up to?"
+
+"Drove a plug into their hose ten feet from the faucet, slit the rubber
+full of holes--and filled the beds with cockle burrs," replied Bob, and,
+quaking with inward mirth, he rolled out on the floor.
+
+"Gentlemen of Dormitory 4, report at the office in the morning with an
+explanation," droned the severe tones of the monitor out in the corridor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A STRANGE HAPPENING
+
+
+"Bob, this is worse than the Banbury crowd could devise," remarked Frank.
+
+"Yes. The only thing is that in this case it's friends who are responsible
+for it. Ugh! I'm sunk to the knees in water."
+
+"I'm in to the waist," said Frank. "They've gone--the vandals! Off with the
+blindfolds. Well, this is a pretty fix!"
+
+Two minutes previous a sepulchral voice had spoken the awful words:
+
+"Slide them into the endless pit!"
+
+Then, with a gay college song, the mob that had led Frank and Bob on a
+hazing trip, that had been positively hair-raising in its incidents, had
+seemed to retire from the spot. Their laughter and songs now faded far away
+in the distance.
+
+"Well," uttered Bob, getting his eyes clear and his arms free, "we've had
+an experience."
+
+"I should say so," echoed Frank. "That old ice chute they dropped us into
+must have been a hundred feet long."
+
+"The hogshead they rolled us downhill in went double that distance,"
+declared Bob.
+
+"Well, let's get out of this," advised Frank.
+
+That was more easily said than done. Comparative strangers as yet to the
+country surrounding Bellwood, even when they had got on solid ground out of
+the muck and mire of the boggy waste, they knew not which way to turn.
+
+It was dark as Erebus and the wind was blowing a gale. Nowhere on the
+landscape could they discover a guiding light. They were in a scrubby little
+patch of woods, and they were confused even as to the points of the
+compass.
+
+"I think this is the direction of the academy," said Frank, striking out on
+a venture.
+
+"Yes; and we want to get there soon, too," replied Bob, "for we're going to
+have a great storm in a few minutes."
+
+As Bob spoke the big drops began to splash down. As the lads emerged upon a
+flat field, the drops seemed to form into streams, and they breasted the
+tempest breathless, blown about, and drenched to the skin.
+
+"We've got to get shelter somewhere," declared Bob. "Let's put back for the
+timber."
+
+"I think I see some kind of a building ahead," observed Frank. "Yes, it's a
+hut or a barn. Hustle, now, and we'll find cover till the worst of this is
+over."
+
+In a few minutes they came to an old cabin standing near some dead trees.
+It was small and square and had one door and one window. Bob banged at the
+door with a billet of wood he found, but could not budge it. The windows
+had stout bars crisscrossing it.
+
+"Give it up," he said at last. "No one living here, and padlocked as if it
+was a bank. Hey, Frank, here's a chance."
+
+In veering to the partial shelter of the lee side of the old structure, Bob
+had noticed a sashless aperture answering for a window in the low attic of
+the cabin. He got a hold with fingers and toes in the chinks between the
+logs, and steadily climbed up.
+
+"Come on," he called. "It's high and dry under the roof," and his companion
+joined him, both half reclining across a loose board floor.
+
+"Hear that," said Bob, as the rain seemed to strike the roof in bucket-like
+volume. "I hope the crowd who got us in this fix are ten miles from any
+shelter."
+
+The rain kept on without the slightest cessation. In fact, it seemed to
+increase every minute in volume. Fully half an hour passed by. Neither lad
+thought of leaving shelter, and Bob had stretched himself out. The
+conversation languished. Then Frank, catching himself nodding, sat up and
+looked out of the window, noticing that his rugged, healthy comrade was
+breathing heavily in profound slumber.
+
+"There's a light coming this way," spoke Frank to himself, as he peered
+from the window. "If it's a wagon, I'll hustle down and see if there's any
+chance of a lift in the direction of the school. Hello, it's two men!
+Hello again--they're coming right here to this hut. There, I can hear them
+at the front door."
+
+Frank was convinced a minute later that the newcomers lived in the cabin,
+or at least had secured the right to occupy the place. He could hear them
+at the padlock, and then their lantern illumined the room below. Gazing
+through a crack in the floor, Frank could make out all they did and was
+able to overhear their conversation.
+
+They were two rough-looking, trampish fellows. Each threw a bundle on the
+floor. The room had some old boxes in it and a pile of hay in one corner.
+The men seated themselves on boxes and let the water drip from their soaked
+clothing.
+
+"That was a pretty husky tramp," spoke one of them.
+
+"I see the governor isn't here yet."
+
+"No; so it's up to us to get as comfortable as we can."
+
+They threw off their coats, and one of them undid a bundle. He took from it
+some bread, cheese, and a big black bottle, and the twain were soon
+enjoying themselves. When they had finished eating they lay down in the
+straw, smoking short, stubby pipes and chatting with one another.
+
+"Now, then, look a-here, Jem," one of them remarked, "you wouldn't see me
+tramping around in this kind of weather if it wasn't that there was a
+chanct to get something out of it."
+
+"Don't I tell you what's at the end of it, Dan?" retorted the other. "Don't
+I say as how the governor pays the expenses right royal while we're here?
+And then don't you know as how he's agreed to turn over the other half of
+that card, when we helps him get his plans through about this young kid up
+at the academy?"
+
+"Say, that was a funny thing about that card," observed the man called Dan.
+
+"No, 'twasn't," dissented Jem. "We got our hands on a fine piece of goods.
+We had to hide it till there was no danger of its being looked for. The gov
+and me therefore goes to a friend and we puts it in his strong safe. He is
+told that we has a card torn up with writing on it, atween us. The
+arrangement is made that he doesn't let go the property till we both
+presents them there pieces of card together. So you see, the gov can't get
+the property and run off with it. No more can I. Now, then, the gov says I
+can have the property entire if we help him on his present business here."
+
+"Say," spoke up the interested Dan, "is the property pretty fine?"
+
+"I'd call it good for a thousand dollars."
+
+"Where did you fellows get it, Jem?"
+
+"At a town called Tipton."
+
+"Ah!" aspirated the listening Frank in a great gasp.
+
+"And what was it, Jem?"
+
+"A bracelet--a diamond bracelet," replied the man Jem.
+
+Frank held his breath. He was greatly excited and startled. It seemed a
+strange thing to him that here, in a lonely loft hundreds of miles from
+home, by pure accident he should run across a clue to the person who had
+stolen Samuel Mace's diamond bracelet, the mysterious theft of which had so
+darkened our hero's young life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+SOME MYSTERY
+
+
+Frank gulped down his astonishment. Then he sat still without a rustle. He
+was afraid that Bob might snore, wake up talking, and had an idea to creep
+closer to his chum, wake him up softly, and warn him to remain perfectly
+quiet.
+
+Before Frank could act, however, there came a sudden interruption to the
+conversation between the men below, Jem and Dan. There was a thundering
+knock at the door.
+
+"It's the gov at last!" shouted Jem, jumping to his feet.
+
+"No one else!" echoed Dan.
+
+Jem opened the door and a man staggered in. His slouch hat, dripping wet,
+was pulled down over his face. He was completely enveloped in a great rain
+blanket. The hole in its center fitted about his neck and covered him
+nearly to the feet, even to his arms. These held something under the cloak,
+for its bulging surface showed that he was carrying something.
+
+"Help me out of this," growled the newcomer. "Good I borrowed this blanket
+in a convenient barn, or everything would have been soaked."
+
+"Borrowed!" guffawed Jem.
+
+"Haw! haw!" roared Dan, as if it was a great joke. "There you are, mate."
+
+If Frank had been surprised and startled at the secret concerning Samuel
+Mace's missing diamond bracelet, he was dumfounded at the face of the
+newcomer.
+
+"Why," he breathed in wonderment, "it's the man I drove off from bothering
+that traveling scissors grinding boy at Tipton, Ned Foreman. Yes, this is
+the man the boy called Tim Brady, and--whew!"
+
+Frank's thoughts seemed to come as swift as lightning. He had marveled at
+the strange series of events that had given him a clue as to the persons
+who had stolen the diamond bracelet that had got him into so much trouble.
+Now that the tramp, Brady, had appeared on the scene, Frank saw how it all
+could have happened, for Brady was in Tipton the day the diamond bracelet
+was stolen.
+
+The only thing that mystified Frank was why these people should be at
+Bellwood, so far away from Tipton. There was scarcely a chance in a
+thousand that they could have come accidentally.
+
+When the two men had pulled the blanket from Brady, he disclosed two
+packages in his hand, one resembling a hat box. He placed them on the
+floor.
+
+"Got the togs there?" inquired Jem.
+
+"Yes," nodded Brady. "I'm famished; give me something to eat."
+
+Frank did not stir. He felt that it was important that he should remain
+where he was. These men knew about Samuel Mace's missing bracelet. That was
+one point of interest. They were up to something now; that was another.
+
+Frank listened to every word they said, but they did not just then again
+refer to the bracelet nor discuss their plans. They talked generally of how
+easy the farmers they had met gave away meals. They discussed various
+stores and houses that might be robbed readily. Frank realized that they
+were very bad men.
+
+Finally, having finished his meal, Brady got up from the box he had been
+seated on. He went over to the bundles he had brought, undoing one of them.
+He took out a long black dress coat. This he tried on. It buttoned up to
+his neck closely, like some clerical garb.
+
+He opened the other box and took out a silk hat. As he put this on his head
+he straightened up and drew his face down in mock seriousness.
+
+"My friends," he sniffled, "you see in me a penitent and reformed man."
+
+"Hold me!" yelled Jem, rolling around on the straw in a paroxysm of
+laughter.
+
+"Will it do?" smirked Brady. "Ter-rewly, my friends, I seek only now to
+make amends for my wicked, misspent life--a--ah!"
+
+"Wow! Oh, you actor! It's enough to make a cow laugh!"
+
+"Will it work?"
+
+"Work!" chuckled the man Jem. "Why, you'd win over the president of the
+college himself."
+
+Bang!
+
+"What was that?" demanded Brady sharply.
+
+Frank was in dismay. In his sleep Bob Upton had groaned, then moved.
+Probably, in some nightmare, dreaming he was back among his old tyrant
+masters on the farm, he had kicked out his foot, landing heavily on the
+floor of the loft.
+
+"Oh, I guess it was the wind rattling some loose timber about the old ruin
+of a place," observed Jem.
+
+Frank crept cautiously to the side of his sleeping comrade.
+
+Bob was muttering restlessly in his sleep, and Frank feared another
+outbreak. He placed his hand over Bob's mouth.
+
+"Wake up--quietly, now--there is somebody below," he whispered.
+
+"What's the row?" droned Bob.
+
+"S--st! Follow me. Get out of this. It's stopped raining."
+
+Frank managed to get himself and his friend out of the place without
+disturbing the three men in the hut or apprising them of their presence.
+The rain had nearly stopped. Bob rubbed his eyes sleepily.
+
+"Some tramps came into the cabin yonder after you went to sleep," explained
+Frank. "They are hard characters, and it is best to steer clear of them."
+
+It took the two boys an hour to find their way to Bellwood School. Bob was
+tired out and sleepy, and Frank was by no means in a mood for chatting. He
+was absorbed in thinking out his strange discoveries of the night.
+
+"I've got a clue to that diamond bracelet of Mace's," he reflected. "Mace
+don't deserve any favors from me after the outrageous way he's acted, but
+if I can do anything toward getting it back for him, all right. I wonder,
+though, what it means--that man, Brady, being here, and what trick he is up
+to with the high hat and the dress coat? His friend spoke of the president
+of the college and some 'kid.' Are they up to some thieving trick? If so, I
+want to be alert to balk them."
+
+When the two boys reached the academy, they had some difficulty in locating
+a loose window, and they had to use caution in getting to their room. The
+bed felt so good after the rough experiences of the night that Frank soon
+joined his snoring companion in the land of dreams, leaving action as to
+the crowd at the cabin for the morrow.
+
+They met their friendly persecutors of the evening before good-naturedly at
+breakfast. It was easy for Frank to see that Ritchie and his associates
+were ready to accept them as gritty comrades who could take a joke as a
+matter of course.
+
+"You've paid your initiation fee in pluck and endurance, Jordan," said Mark
+Prescott, the able lieutenant of Dean Ritchie in his rounds of mischief.
+"You and Upton can consider yourselves full-fledged members of the Twilight
+Club."
+
+"Good!" laughed Frank as he started for the campus. Before he was out of
+the building, however, Frank got thinking of his adventures of the evening
+before. And instead of immediately joining his fellows he strolled around
+to the side of the academy.
+
+There was a walk, not much used by the students, leading past the kitchen
+and laundry quarters of the school. As Frank got nearly to the end of this
+a baseball whizzed by him and he saw Banbury and a crony named Durkin
+making for it.
+
+Just at that moment, too, Frank noticed a boy wearing a long apron sitting
+on a stone step just outside the kitchen door.
+
+He was peeling potatoes, and he was peeling them right, fully engrossed in
+his labors, as though it were some artistic and agreeable occupation.
+
+"Well! well! well!" irresistibly ejaculated Frank. "If it isn't Ned
+Foreman!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE ROW ON THE CAMPUS
+
+
+"Shake!" cried Frank, rushing forward and extending a warm hand.
+
+The boy peeling potatoes looked up in some surprise. For a minute he was
+puzzled. Then his face broke into a genial smile.
+
+"It's the fellow I met at Tipton----" he began.
+
+"That's who--Frank Jordan."
+
+"Who saved me from getting robbed."
+
+"Put it that way, if you like," answered Frank. "How did you ever come
+here?"
+
+"Walked, coaxed freight hands, and got some passenger lifts," explained
+Ned. "You know I told you I was going out of the scissors grinding and into
+school?"
+
+"I know you did."
+
+"Well, I've landed. I've saved up twenty dollars. That don't go far in
+tuition, so I'm working my way through school."
+
+"Good for you," cheered Frank. "You're the kind that makes a mark in the
+world. Say, come up to my room. I want to have a real chummy chat with
+you."
+
+"I couldn't do that just now," demurred Ned. "You see, I help in the
+kitchen here from six to eight in the morning, eleven to one at noon and
+five to seven in the evening."
+
+"I haven't seen you in any of the classes."
+
+"No; one of the professors is coaching me. You see, I need training to get
+into even the lowest class. As I said, I can't leave my work here now, but
+I may meet you occasionally after dark."
+
+"Come at four this afternoon."
+
+"Think I'd better?" inquired Ned dubiously.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, to be candid," answered Ned manfully, "my clothes aren't very good,
+as you see, and some of the fellows here have pretty well snubbed me, and
+maybe it would be wiser for me to keep my place."
+
+"Your place?" fired up Frank. "Except among the stuck-up cads, your place
+is to be welcome to all the privileges of any well-behaved student, and
+I'll see to it that you get them, too."
+
+"Hi, Jordan; on the domestic list?" broke in Banbury just then. He had
+regained the baseball and with his companion stood staring at Frank and
+Ned.
+
+"Hum! I should say so," sniggered Durkin with a chuckle. "Pah! How it
+smells of onions and dishwater!"
+
+"Take your friend and introduce him to Ritchie," sneered Banbury. "He needs
+a new catcher for his measly team that we're going to wallop to-morrow."
+
+"Say," spoke Frank steadily, though with a flashing eye, "I'll bet you that
+my friend here--understand, my friend, Ned Foreman--would prove as good a
+catcher as he has to my knowledge run a business where he was trusted and
+did his duty well. I'll make another bet--you'll be the second-rate scholar
+you are now two years further on, when my friend is the boss of some
+surveying camp, where the smartest fellow is the one who has learned the
+cooking and science both--not a smattering--but from the ground up."
+
+"Yah!" yawped Banbury, but he saw something in Frank's eye that warned him
+to sheer off promptly.
+
+"You'll run up against a few cads like that fellow," explained Frank to
+Ned. "Use 'em up in one chapter, and stick to the real friends I'll
+introduce you to."
+
+"Jordan, you're a true-blue brick," declared Ned heartily, "but I know from
+experience how these things go----"
+
+"There's the rally whistle for our crowd, so I've got to go," interrupted
+Frank; "but four o'clock at my room. You come, or I'll come and fetch you."
+
+Frank bolted off for the campus. As he neared his group of friends he
+observed the Banbury crowd, just rejoined by their leader and Durkin.
+Banbury was pointing at Frank and saying something, derisively hailed by
+his companions. Then Frank saw his stanch champion, Bob Upton, spring
+forward with clenched fists. Frank hurried his steps, guessing out the
+situation, and anxious to rescue his impetuous friend from an outbreak.
+
+"Hi, chef!" howled out Durkin, as Frank approached, and Frank knew that the
+mean-spirited cads had been spreading the story of his meeting with Ned
+Foreman.
+
+"What have you got to say about it, huh? Who are you?" Frank heard Bob cry
+out angrily, as he came nearer to the crowd.
+
+Frank could not repress a start as he observed the boy whom Bob was facing.
+He was a newcomer--he was Gill Mace. It appeared that the nephew of the
+Tipton jeweler had been sent to the same school as Frank.
+
+Gill Mace looked as mean as ever. There was a sneer on his face. He was
+loudly dressed, or rather overdressed. His uncle had probably provided him
+with plenty of spending money, for he was jingling some coins in his
+pocket. His money and his natural cheek had evidently made him "solid" with
+Banbury and the others, for they seemed to be upholding his braggart
+insolence.
+
+"Don't get hot, sonny," advised Gill. "I said that Jordan needed to make
+friends, for he never had any where he came from," and then, staring meanly
+at Frank, he whispered something to Banbury.
+
+"Hello!" broke out the latter. "That so? Jordan, how's the diamond market
+this morning?"
+
+Frank started as if he had been struck by a whiplash. A bright red spot
+showed on either cheek. His eyes flashed, his finger nails dug into the
+palms of his hands.
+
+He advanced straight up to where Gill Mace stood, brushing aside heedlessly
+all who were in his way. The jeweler's nephew tried to hide behind his
+cohorts in a craven way, but Frank fixed him with his eye.
+
+"Gill Mace," he spoke in a firm, stern tone, "you have been telling that
+bully friend of yours some more of the falsehoods you peddled out at
+Tipton."
+
+"I told him how you stood in that old burg," admitted Gill.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I said that you robbed my uncle's jewelry shop."
+
+"Then you uttered a low, malicious falsehood," retorted Frank. "Fellows,"
+he cried, turning to his adherents, "I ducked this sneak in a mud puddle
+for lying about me once. I want to now make the announcement in public that
+if within twenty-four hours he does not retract his words I shall whip him
+till he can't stand, leave the academy, and never come back till I have the
+proofs to vindicate myself, which I can do."
+
+Mace turned white about the corners of his mouth.
+
+"Everybody in Tipton knows that Frank Jordan stole a diamond bracelet from
+my uncle," he stammered.
+
+"It's false!" shouted out Bob Upton, squarely springing before Gill, who
+retreated in dismay, "and you are more than a thief, for you're trying to
+rob an honest boy of his good name. Take that!"
+
+And Bob Upton knocked Gill Mace down--flat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+DARK HOURS
+
+
+Gill Mace went down with a shock of surprise and a yell of fright. He
+blubbered as his teeth went together like a pair of castanets.
+
+Banbury stepped forward in his usual braggart way. Bob did not wait for him
+to advance. He flew right up to him.
+
+"You want some?" he shouted. "Come on, the whole bunch of you, one at a
+time."
+
+Just then, however, Dean Ritchie uttered a familiar warning, and there was
+a general movement of commotion and dispersement among the group.
+
+"Scatter, fellows," was what Ritchie said.
+
+The Banbury contingent proceeded to sneak away. Some of Ritchie's crowd
+surrounded Bob Upton and cleverly tried to manipulate him out of view.
+
+Frank, turning, learned the motive for the maneuvers. Professor Elliott
+stood not thirty feet away, his eyes fixed upon them. The seriousness of
+his countenance told that he had witnessed the fight.
+
+Bob brushed aside his friendly helpers. He walked straight up to Professor
+Elliott, took off his cap respectfully and stood with his head bowed. Then
+some words seemed to pass between them, and Mr. Elliott turned toward the
+academy, Bob following him.
+
+Frank was a good deal stirred up by the exciting events of the hour. He did
+not feel much desire for companionship, and less for sport. He left his
+friends and went up to his room.
+
+He sat down on the bed somewhat gloomy and worried. Frank knew that the
+malicious story told by Gill Mace would spread through the school like
+wildfire.
+
+Frank valued his fair name and the good opinion of the new friends he had
+made. To be dubbed a thief meant harm, and there were some who would
+believe the story. He recalled the impression such an accusation had made
+on several people at his home town, and he grew quite downcast thinking it
+all over.
+
+"I won't mope," he cried resolutely, stirring about the room. "I am
+innocent, so who can hurt me? I won't think of it."
+
+Frank tried to whistle a careless air, but his efforts were somewhat
+feeble. Then he went over to his trunk and looked over its contents. He got
+to thinking of Ned Foreman, and took out a suit of clothes, some neckties
+and a couple of shirts from the trunk, and had just placed them on a chair
+when Bob entered the apartment.
+
+"Well, what's the latest?" inquired Frank with a sharp quiz of his
+impulsive friend's face.
+
+"I'm all broken up, that's the latest," declared Bob, throwing himself into
+a chair, his face a puzzling mixture of soberness and satisfaction. "Say,
+Frank, I want to say one thing with all my heart--President Elliott is a
+bang-up good old man. I've been ashamed, near crying, sorry, glad, mad, and
+just about all knocked out in the last five minutes. Oh, that measly
+Banbury mob! And oh, that miserable Gill Mace!"
+
+"What's happened, Bob?"
+
+"Why, I went to the library with the president, and told him manfully that
+the Mace fellow had insulted the best friend I had, you, and that I
+couldn't stand for it and just had to land him one."
+
+"And the president?"
+
+"He looked grave. Then he turned his head away. Then he sort of looked at
+me as if he'd been a--a corker himself in the old boy days. He gave me a
+mild lecture on controlling my temper. I told him he'd better have me tied
+up or put Mace somewhere so I couldn't find him, or I was afraid I'd break
+loose again."
+
+"That was pretty strong, wasn't it, Bob?"
+
+"I spoke my mind, and he knew it. Then he carried me right off my feet, and
+I'd die for that bully old man any time. He just placed that gentle old
+hand of his on my head and looked at me with his kind old eyes and said:
+'Upton, we're going to be proud of you some day. I feel sure of that. My
+little ones remember how bravely you risked your life to save them the
+other day, and pray for you every night. Don't disappoint us, my boy. Young
+Jordan is a good fellow, and I am sure he wouldn't encourage you to violate
+our school discipline. Just simply forget the fellows who stir you up.
+After a good many years' experience, I may say to you that in the long run
+the bad ones sift out and the good ones come to the top. Make us proud of
+you, Upton, and become proud of yourself by controlling your temper and
+acting the gentleman.'"
+
+"That was fine, and it's true," said Frank heartily. "Yes, Bob, we've got
+to forget those fellows. You are a true-blue champion, but you've shown
+your colors, so let it go at that."
+
+"What, and have any of those fellows call you a thief?"
+
+"Some day I shall prove my innocence," declared Frank firmly.
+
+"You don't have to prove it--with your friends," flared up Bob. And just
+then the chapel bell called them to the duties of the hour.
+
+Frank did not pass a very happy day. He mingled of necessity with the
+Banbury groups during the studies, but only for an occasional glowering
+look from Gill Mace's discolored eye and some suppressed sneers from
+Banbury, Durkin and others of their crowd, there was no allusion made to
+the cause of the fight.
+
+However, there were mysterious whisperings going on at times. Some boys
+with whom Frank was not well acquainted shied off from him at noon time,
+and Frank knew that the poison of Mace's insinuations was working among the
+general school group.
+
+Frank was in his room at four o'clock, and promptly at the hour Ned Foreman
+put in an appearance. Frank set aside his troubles and greeted him in a
+friendly manner. He locked the door and gave his visitor a comfortable
+chair.
+
+"Tell me about yourself, Ned," he said. "How you got here from Tipton, and
+about your plans, and all that."
+
+It was not much of a story, but its details showed again the homeless lad
+was set and sensible in his resolve to gain an education.
+
+"I like you, Ned," said Frank, "and you know it, and I wouldn't be acting
+as a true friend if I didn't say just what was in my mind, would I, now?"
+
+"You'll never say a thing to hurt a fellow's feelings, I'll risk that,"
+returned Ned with a smile of confidence.
+
+"I hope not. I've been thinking about you, and I'm interested in you. Say,
+is that your best suit of clothes you're wearing?"
+
+"Best and only," acknowledged Ned bluntly. "Why?"
+
+"Well, I've got a suit that will just about fit you, and I want you to sort
+of tog up when you have time to come out and join our crowd. Not that I
+would ever be ashamed of you no matter what you wore, but we all have a
+little pride."
+
+"I'm not going to let you rob yourself to do a kindness for me," declared
+Ned.
+
+"Rob myself?" repeated Frank with a laugh. "Say, let me tell you something,
+and you'll see how you are helping me out. I've been living with an aunt at
+Tipton who is a caution in some ways. She ordered a suit for me about six
+months ago. Well, she's a great bargain hunter, and then, too, there was
+some of the same cloth left, and taking two suits she could get a
+reduction. Here's the one I was measured for first."
+
+Frank opened the wardrobe and showed a light checked suit he did not often
+wear.
+
+"The other suit," he continued, "is this one," and he indicated the clothes
+he had taken from his trunk that morning. "The tailor didn't have enough
+cloth, and the suit is too short for me. My aunt packed it in my trunk,
+thinking I could wear it out knocking around Saturdays, but it won't do at
+all. It is nearly new, and you are a little smaller than I am, and I
+believe it will fit you. There are a few spare neckties and such that go
+with it, and there you are."
+
+"Mine, eh?" said Ned with a smile, getting up and looking over the clothes.
+"It will make me dreadfully proud and dressy, Frank. I never had such an
+outfit before."
+
+"You don't know the relief I have in getting rid of it," said Frank,
+smiling. "It's settled, then--you'll lug it away with you."
+
+"I'll carry it away as the finest present I could possibly get," responded
+Ned warmly. "You don't know how I appreciate it."
+
+There was no false pride or affectation about Ned Foreman, and Frank liked
+him better than ever for his manly actions. He did up the bundle for Ned.
+Then they had a general talk. An hour drifted by before they knew it.
+
+"Saturday, remember," said Frank as they parted. "I want you to get in on
+some of the games and know all the good fellows who train with Dean
+Ritchie."
+
+Frank sat alone at the window after Ned left him, reflecting very
+seriously.
+
+"I couldn't tell him," he murmured; "at least, not yet. How do I know that
+I am right? Maybe I'm guessing it all out. Oh, dear, how I miss my father
+to go to with all my troubles and perplexities. I'd have a talk with
+President Elliott, only I don't want to bother him and make a lot of talk
+about things that may naturally right themselves in time. Hello, there's
+Bob."
+
+Frank got up to greet his friend, who swung down the corridor and into the
+room, whistling.
+
+"The very fellow!" exclaimed Frank. "I say, Bob, I want to ask your
+advice."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE FOOT RACE
+
+
+"You want my advice?" asked Bob in some surprise.
+
+"Just that, Bob," responded Frank Jordan.
+
+"Huh--no one ever asked that before. I'm afraid I'm not much in that line,
+but I'll do the best I can."
+
+"All right. Sit down while I tell you a little story," directed Frank.
+
+Bob had come into the room red and perspiring, as though he had just been
+indulging in some very violent exercise. He soon settled down to steadiness
+from sheer interest as Frank proceeded to talk.
+
+Frank began at the beginning of quite a lengthy narrative. He recited the
+episode of the diamond bracelet. He described his first meeting with Ned
+Foreman. Then he brought his recital down to what he had seen and heard in
+the lonely hut the night of the hazing and while Bob had been fast asleep.
+
+"You're some story-teller, and that all sounds like a story-book romance,"
+commented Bob, when Frank paused in his narrative.
+
+"I only hope it will end in the good story-book way," observed Frank. "This
+is all secret between you and me."
+
+"Surely," assented Bob.
+
+"I had to tell it to somebody, for it was worrying me dreadfully,"
+confessed Frank. "You see, I'm in a dilemma."
+
+"I do see that, Frank," nodded Bob seriously.
+
+"I can't see it any other way, but this tramp and his friends, Jem and Dan,
+among them stole that diamond bracelet."
+
+"I think so, too," said Bob. "Anyhow, judging from their talk you overheard
+they know where it is now."
+
+"What had I better do? I am awful anxious to prove my innocence to the
+world."
+
+"Why, I shouldn't hesitate a minute to have those three fellows arrested,"
+exclaimed Bob.
+
+"That wouldn't help the case any."
+
+"Why wouldn't it?"
+
+"They evidently haven't got the stolen bracelet with them."
+
+"That's so, Frank."
+
+"And I haven't the least proof in the world that they are the thieves. No,
+I must get about it in a different way."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"You see, this man Brady knows me by sight. He doesn't know you. Do you
+think you could locate the old cabin, Bob?"
+
+"I don't think I could go direct to it," answered Bob, "but I am pretty
+sure that by hunting for it and making some inquiries I could find it."
+
+"All right; try it, Bob. If you succeed, sort of spy around and you may
+pick up something that will give us an idea of what those men are about.
+You see, the fact of Brady being here makes me anxious on another score."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"They mentioned the academy here. I am afraid that Brady has some plan
+concerning Ned Foreman."
+
+"Say, Frank, it looks that way," declared Bob thoughtfully. "Why don't you
+tell Ned about it?"
+
+"I don't want to worry him until I find out something more."
+
+"I'll get on the track of that old cabin and those men first chance I
+have," promised Bob. "Say, Frank, I was coming to tell you I've just done a
+big thing, Dean Ritchie says."
+
+"What is it, Bob?"
+
+"You know we are going to have a baseball game and some other matches to-
+morrow."
+
+"Yes, I know," nodded Frank.
+
+"Well, there's a foot race scheduled. The crack runner of our crowd,
+Purtelle, is out of trim, and they were looking for a substitute. I don't
+want to brag, but about the one thing in the athletic line I can do well is
+running."
+
+"Then you must try to fill the bill."
+
+"I'm going to. Ritchie asked me to give them a test. It's a long-distance
+spurt--twice around the track over in the meadow where they train their
+horses on the stock farm. I made the sample run just now. I don't know but
+what the crowd were guying me, but they seemed to go wild over it."
+
+"Oh, I guess they're in earnest, Bob."
+
+"I hope so, for that big bully, Banbury, is to be my opponent, and I'd do
+anything to take the conceit out of him and his crowd. Ritchie timed me,
+and said I had discounted the best record ever made by an academy runner."
+
+"That's grand," said Frank.
+
+"They took me to the gymnasium and gave me this pair of shoes for the ones
+I had on. They're going to grease up and soften my own shoes to make the
+running easier, they say. I hope I don't disappoint them."
+
+"You won't, I am sure," said Frank encouragingly.
+
+The next day was Saturday. The weather was ideal, and the boys anticipated
+a great deal of pleasure for the holiday.
+
+Frank was pleased when his friend, Ned Foreman, showed up about ten
+o'clock. Ned looked neat and handsome in the light checked suit Frank had
+given him. He was modest and natural, and Ritchie and his crowd treated him
+nicely.
+
+There was the first ball game of the series after lunch. Then the whole
+school adjourned to the training track for the foot race.
+
+Banbury, Mace and their chums were in great evidence. The ball game had
+come out a tie, and even this barren honor swelled them up considerably.
+Banbury was gotten up in a flashy sporting suit, as though he was in for
+the championship of the world, and Mace was also overdressed. Bob wore his
+every-day clothes. He looked eager and hopeful as Frank helped him put on
+his running shoes.
+
+The evening previous Bob's remarkable test run had been noised around the
+school, and Frank somewhat wondered at the vaunting spirit shown by the
+Banbury crowd.
+
+The start of the race was made in good order. The opponents were off on the
+second, and they looked in splendid trim as they kept evenly abreast up to
+the first quarter post. There Bob forged ahead slightly, and there was a
+cheer from his excited friends. Then he lagged, and Banbury got the lead,
+and his cohorts gave out ringing huzzahs.
+
+"What's wrong?" uttered Ned breathlessly, as Banbury, with a jump and
+kicking up his heels derisively at the Ritchie group, shot by the starting
+post on the second spurt with Bob fully ten yards to the rear.
+
+"Bob is lamed," said Frank in consternation. "See, he's limping."
+
+"Go it, Bob!" yelled the voices of a dozen loyal friends.
+
+Bob looked haggard and unfit. One foot dragged, and he acted like a person
+in acute pain. At the encouraging word, however, he braced up, made a
+prodigious spurt, but at the end of fifty yards hobbled and fell flat.
+
+A cry of dismay went up from the Ritchie crowd, while Banbury's adherents
+made the air echo with delirious shouts of triumph.
+
+Suddenly, however, Bob was on his feet again and off down the course like
+an arrow.
+
+"He's thrown off his shoes. What's up, I wonder?" spoke Ritchie.
+
+"He's gaining!"
+
+"He's up to him!"
+
+"Past him--huzzah!"
+
+The spectators held their breath. Never had the boys of Bellwood School
+witnessed so sensational a foot race.
+
+Bob Upton flew like the wind. He was five--ten--twenty yards in the lead of
+his laboring antagonist.
+
+His face was colorless as he crossed the starting line. A flash of triumph
+was in his eyes, but Frank saw that he was reeling. Our hero sprang forward
+just in time to catch the falling champion in his outstretched arms--the
+winner of the race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE TRAMP AGAIN
+
+
+"He's in a dead faint--give him air," ordered Dean Ritchie.
+
+"Get a dipper of water," said Frank quickly, letting Bob slip gently to the
+grass.
+
+There was a pump just beyond the enclosure. Ned ran to it, and soon Frank
+was sponging Bob's face with cool water.
+
+"Who did it--and why?" spoke Bob suddenly and opening his eyes and sitting
+up.
+
+He drew up one foot with a wry face. As he did so Dean Ritchie gave a start
+and a stare.
+
+"Why," he cried, "your stocking is dripping with blood."
+
+"The sole of my foot feels like a raw beef-steak," said Bob.
+
+One of the boys had gone after the shoes that Bob had thrown off a distance
+from the course.
+
+"Ritchie," he said gravely, "feel there."
+
+His leader took the shoe, ran his hand into it, and looked into it.
+
+"Oh, shame! shame!" he exclaimed with a wrathy face. "Whoever did this
+deserves to be tarred and feathered."
+
+"What is it?" inquired Frank.
+
+"An old trick among touts and welchers. Just feel, Jordan--some one got
+into the gym last night and doctored these shoes."
+
+"Doctored the shoes?" repeated Frank vaguely.
+
+"Yes, they set in a light cushion sole, with a half dozen blade-pointed
+brads under it that would break through after a little use. It's a wonder
+that Upton's foot isn't ripped to pieces."
+
+"It feels pretty near as if it was," said Bob, wincing. "Frank, I guess I'm
+crippled for a few days. You'll have to help me get to our room."
+
+There were dark frowns of indignation and suspicion among the group. The
+Banbury crowd were making off with glum faces and uneasy haste.
+
+"Stop!" sharply shouted Ritchie after them. "I accuse nobody, but I want to
+say right here and now, and I want everybody to hear me, that I'm going to
+ferret out the low sneak who put those brads in Bob Upton's shoes. When I
+do, he leaves this school or I do, and one of us will have reason to
+remember the drubbing of his life."
+
+"They're a fine set, aren't they?" spoke Purtelle. "Fellows, I think this
+circumstance should be reported to the faculty."
+
+"No," dissented Bob Upton decidedly. "The rascals will reach the end of
+their tether some time, and we can't prove who worked this mean trick."
+
+They got Bob to his room. Ned did not go there with the crowd, but he
+appeared a little later with a box of salve and some strips of cloth. He
+fixed up Bob's injured foot so skilfully that Ritchie complimented him as
+an expert surgeon.
+
+Frank stayed with his friend, reading to him for a time. All the others had
+gone away. Finally Bob fell asleep, and Frank strolled out on the grounds.
+As he again entered the building bound for his room, he ran directly
+against Ned as he turned down a corridor near the reception-room.
+
+"Why, Ned," he exclaimed, "what are you doing here?"
+
+Ned Foreman was almost crouching in a dark corner. He was trembling, and
+his lips were white, and there was a marked terror in his eyes. Frank was
+profoundly startled, almost shocked at the strange appearance of his
+friend.
+
+"That man is in there!" gasped Ned.
+
+"In where?"
+
+"The reception-room."
+
+"What man do you mean?"
+
+"Tim Brady."
+
+"Oh!" uttered Frank, and a whole lot of light seemed to flood his mind in
+an instant. "How do you know that?"
+
+"President Elliott send word to me that a visitor wished to see me in the
+reception-room. I just came down and looked in. That terrible man who calls
+me his relative is in there talking to the president."
+
+"What is he after?" asked Frank.
+
+"Can't you see?" spoke Ned in a tone of great agitation and excitement. "He
+has followed me clear here. He is going to drive me away from here, just as
+he has driven me away from other places. I can't meet him--the cold chills
+run all over me whenever my eyes light on him," and Ned shuddered.
+
+"See here, Ned Foreman," said Frank, "you go right into that room. Brace
+straight up to that miserable wretch, and defy him. Don't be a bit scared
+at anything he may say to you. I'll do the rest."
+
+"How--how can you?" stammered the terrified boy.
+
+"Leave that to me. I know a lot I'll tell you afterward. Go ahead, now, and
+don't you show one particle of fear. Leave the door ajar a little, just as
+it is. I'm no eavesdropper, but on the present occasion I'm mightily
+interested in seeing and hearing all that's going on."
+
+There was something unaccountable about Ned Foreman's dread of his
+professed relative. He passed into the reception-room, but he was trembling
+all over and his face was pale and frightened.
+
+President Elliott sat near a table, and the tramp whom Frank knew as Tim
+Brady was standing up in front of him.
+
+He did not look much like the fellow Frank had rescued Ned from at Tipton.
+
+In his hand he carried a high silk hat. He was clean shaven, and his hair
+was combed and plastered down over his bullet head. His clerical-looking
+frock coat was buttoned up to the chin. His face was drawn in a
+hypocritical expression of great concern.
+
+"Ah, my boy! my boy!" he exclaimed, jumping about and rushing at Ned,
+extending both hands as if about to greet some beloved friend.
+
+Ned Foreman shrank from his obnoxious relative in horror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A DOLEFUL "UNCLE"
+
+
+Frank, peering in at the doorway of the school reception-room, saw that
+President Elliott looked both grave and concerned. Judging from the
+expression of his face, Frank decided that the academy head was not very
+favorably impressed with either the words or the appearance of the visitor.
+
+"You see, kind sir," said the repulsed Brady, turning to him and snuffling
+as if at the point of tears, "my own kin disowns me. Oh, sir, it is hard,
+hard, to have it happen so!"
+
+Ned did not say a word. He simply kept at a safe distance.
+
+"If I may ask," spoke Mr. Elliott, "what do you expect of this boy?"
+
+"Forgiveness," whined the tramp. "Yes, sir, that is the word. I have
+wronged him cruelly. I admit it, to my shame. I was a worthless, shiftless
+man, and I abused him and drove him from my heart. Now I have reformed, and
+I seek to make atonement. He is my last living relative. To whom shall I go
+for sympathy, to whom shall I cling but my dead wife's brother?"
+
+"Stepbrother," corrected Ned almost sharply. "You are no relative of mine."
+
+"Boy, don't taunt me, don't make my sufferings more than they are," and
+Brady heaved a prodigious sigh. "I have given up drinking. It's this way:
+An old-time friend of mine, who has made eighteen million dollars in a
+diamond mine in Canada----"
+
+"How's that? How's that?" challenged the learned old professor keenly.
+"According to the last authoritative geological data available, Canada----"
+
+"I mean Brazil; yes, that's it, Brazil--anyhow, somewhere over in Africa."
+
+"H'm!" sniffed the old professor suspiciously.
+
+"He found me in rags. I told him my story. He offered to set me on my feet
+again if I would sign the pledge. I signed it. Then he bought me a home,
+and put enough money in the bank to start me in some nice little business,
+and some other money. I got thinking of this poor, homeless lad. It almost
+broke my heart. I have spent several hundred dollars having detectives
+trace him down."
+
+"Jem and Dan," Frank told himself, and almost laughed outright.
+
+"At last I find him," proceeded Brady. "I wish to provide for him; I wish
+to educate and make a man of him."
+
+"Very well," nodded Mr. Elliott. "He is here at a good school. Let him
+remain. I shall be pleased to have him now on a basis where he can study
+and learn all of his time, instead of having to work his way, for he is a
+bright, promising scholar."
+
+"Exactly, exactly," assented Brady eagerly; "only, you see, sir, I want to
+prove that I mean well by him."
+
+"Prove it, then, by paying his tuition for a year, and leave him in
+competent hands," suggested the practical, sensible educator.
+
+"Willingly," declared Brady. "I'll pay five years in advance if you say so,
+only I'd like to have him come with me for a week or so."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"To get used to me. To see that I'm in earnest I want his advice about my
+new house, about my business. I want to get him a fine outfit. He can have
+the best, sir, I assure you. I will get him a watch. I understand these
+college fellows like pets. I'll buy him a pug dog."
+
+"Not for Bellwood School you won't," observed Mr. Elliott bluntly.
+
+"No, sir, that's so," assented Brady. "I'll buy him a horse and a boat,
+then, anything he wants, only let him come with me. We are all of us weak,
+sir. I may be tempted, I may fall. Let him sort of brace me up for a couple
+of weeks. Then he will return, realizing that his poor old relative is
+genuine, and I'll be proud all the time thinking I've won his respect."
+
+Professor Elliott fixed his eyes on the speaker as if he would pierce him
+through and through. Then he regarded Brady thoughtfully. Finally he spoke.
+
+"Foreman, do you wish to go with this man?" he asked.
+
+"No, sir, never!" cried Ned fervently. "Professor Elliott, please, please
+don't let him take me away!"
+
+"Do I understand," inquired the professor of Brady, "that you pretend to be
+the legal guardian of this boy?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir; no, indeed," Brady hastened to say. "I'm only his poor old--"
+
+"Then, if you are not his legal guardian," remarked Mr. Elliott decidedly,
+"the boy remains here, if he so elects. That ends the matter, I think."
+
+Brady made a great ado. He tried to look pathetic and mournful.
+
+"My boy," he sniffled, "won't you grant the dying request--I mean the
+ardent request of your poor, homeless old relative?"
+
+"I thought your eighteen million dollar friend had given you a home,"
+intimated Ned.
+
+"True, but what is a home without a--a relative?"
+
+"I won't go with you, and that ends it," said Ned firmly.
+
+"I will go, then, sir," said Brady to the professor with affected sadness,
+"but I shall return to make another appeal to you."
+
+"This incident is closed, sir, and my time is valuable," observed the
+school president with some asperity, arising to his feet and waving Brady
+out of the room.
+
+The latter directed a venomous look at Ned. Frank noted this, and shuddered
+as Ned himself had done. It was an evil face, unmasked now, that of the
+tramp, and Frank realized that his young friend would do well to keep out
+of the power of this hypocrite and knave.
+
+Frank dodged aside as the man came out into the corridor. Then he followed
+him at a distance. He waited till Brady had reached the road in front of
+the academy. Then he stepped more briskly, caught up with him and touched
+him on the arm.
+
+"One moment," said Frank.
+
+"Eh--ah--what is it?" stammered Brady, halting and staring suspiciously at
+our hero.
+
+"Do you remember me?" inquired Frank, looking him squarely in the eye.
+
+"I don't," replied Brady.
+
+"You're sure of that?"
+
+"I never saw you before."
+
+"Think again," spoke Frank. "I'll recall a little incident at Tipton, where
+I came very near getting you into the hands of the town marshal."
+
+With a frightened scowl Brady glared at Frank, the light of recognition now
+in his eyes.
+
+"I see you recall the incident," proceeded Frank steadily. "You are a
+scamp, and you are up to some game about my friend, Ned Foreman. Now I've
+something to say to you. If you hang around this place one single minute,
+if you ever dare to come to this academy again, I'll have you in jail
+inside of an hour."
+
+"You impudent puppy!" shouted Brady, lifting his hand as if to strike
+Frank. "You'll do what?"
+
+"I'll have you arrested."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"For stealing a diamond bracelet from Mr. Samuel Mace of Tipton," was
+Frank's reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A CLEAR CASE
+
+
+The shot had told--Frank saw this at once.
+
+Brady gasped for breath and turned white as a sheet.
+
+"W--what diamond bracelet?" stammered the man.
+
+"I guess you know," said Frank. "I guess, too, that the best and safest
+thing for you to do is to get that bracelet back to the man you stole it
+from before he sends an officer after you."
+
+Brady simply stared at Frank. He was all taken aback. Frank saw that he was
+dumfounded and scared. He followed up his advantage.
+
+"You can't play any of your 'reformed man' tricks here, I can tell you," he
+continued. "You practiced your game pretty well in that plug hat and
+swallow-tail coat up at the cabin."
+
+"The cabin?" repeated Brady, as though he was shocked.
+
+"Yes; the cabin with those precious 'detectives' you told the professor
+about, Jem and Dan."
+
+"Say--look here--I don't see---- How do you know?"
+
+"Never mind; you see I do," interrupted Frank. "Now, then, you follow my
+advice. You get those two pieces of card together, and get that bracelet
+from the man who has it in safekeeping for you."
+
+Brady's eyes goggled. The amount of information Frank had about him, its
+tremendous importance, staggered the man. He almost reeled where he stood.
+
+"Send it at once to Samuel Mace at Tipton," went on Frank, "if you don't
+want to be hunted down across the world if necessary. Then get as far as
+you can from here. If you don't you're lost. Yes, sir," declared Frank
+impressively, "a lost man."
+
+"Thunder!" ejected the tramp in an overwhelmed sort of a way.
+
+"You'd ought to be ashamed, hunting down an honest boy like Ned Foreman,
+who is trying to make a man of himself," continued Frank indignantly.
+"You've nigh ruined his chances already. You want to leave him alone. Mean
+and low as you are, he is ashamed to tell the professor about it, but I'll
+tell him, you bet. Now, then, you get away from here, double-quick."
+
+The tramp started up as if he had been struck by a whip.
+
+"And stay away," added our hero.
+
+"I'm an abused man," sniffled Brady, trying the pathetic tack again.
+"You're talking Greek to me about diamonds, and that such. Suppose I was a
+bad one once, ain't I a reformed man now?"
+
+"No, nor never will be, until you tell what dodge you're up to in getting
+Ned into your clutches again."
+
+"Boy, you mistake a poor old reformed man," said Brady, drawing a
+handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his screwed-up eyes. As he did this a
+lose pack of playing cards came out with the handkerchief and scattered all
+around the ground, much on his confusion and assumed surprise.
+
+"That looks like a reformed man, doesn't it?" said Frank. "You're a real,
+right bad one, you are. Now you get away from here."
+
+Brady went. He gave Frank an awful look of hatred and menace, but he
+hurried his steps.
+
+Frank stood watching him until the fellow was clear out of sight. Then,
+very thoughtfully, he walked back to the school.
+
+"Maybe I said too much; maybe I spoiled my own case," he reflected, "but I
+was thinking of Ned's interests."
+
+Frank had an idea in his mind that he would go to Professor Elliott, tell
+him the whole story from beginning to end, and see if something could not
+be done, here at Bellwood, to have the officers of the law try and find the
+stolen diamond bracelet.
+
+When Frank got to his room Bob Upton was awake, and, pale and worried-
+looking, Ned Foreman sat conversing with him, and both occupied Frank's
+thoughts for the next hour.
+
+Frank had a reassuring talk with Ned. He told him that he need not worry
+about Brady any further, that he had pretty effectually scared the rascal
+away.
+
+"All he can do is to try and kidnap you," explained Frank. "So you keep
+pretty close to the academy for the next few days. Then I'll know if he is
+hanging around here anywhere."
+
+The next day Professor Elliott went away from Bellwood to visit a friend,
+and Frank had no chance to talk with him about Ned, as he had planned.
+
+Late that afternoon Frank strolled alone from the school grounds. He had no
+definite purpose in view when he started. A little distance progressed,
+however, he thought of the old hut, and made up his mind to see if he could
+locate it.
+
+For the first time since becoming a student at Bellwood Frank wore the
+light checked suit of clothes, the counterpart of which he had given to
+Ned.
+
+Our hero had a pretty good idea as to the direction of the old cabin. He
+must have gone a mile, when, as he was passing through a dense patch of
+shrubbery, Frank became aware that some persons were following him.
+
+Two men were skulking in his rear, advancing as he advanced, but keeping
+well under the shadow and shelter of the bushes.
+
+"It's those two men--Jem and Dan," said Frank to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+FRANK A PRISONER
+
+
+Our hero quickened his steps a little. Then he made up his mind what he
+would do. He fancied he knew what the presence of the men, Jem and Dan,
+meant. He smiled to himself as he strolled along, carelessly now.
+
+Sidelong glances enabled him to make out the movements of his trailers
+without awakening their suspicions. He could observe that they had branched
+off from one another, aiming at a clear space, where they planned to head
+him off.
+
+This is just what they did do. Frank anticipated their action as they
+suddenly moved toward him. He was as cool as a cucumber, and halting hailed
+them with a nod and a familiar:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+"Hello, yourself, youngster," returned Jem, looking Frank over keenly,
+while his comrade stood as if ready to pounce upon the lonely boy in the
+woods at a given signal. "One of the school fellows, aren't you?"
+
+Frank nodded.
+
+"Thought so. Let's see, your name is----"
+
+"Oh, call me Brown for short," retorted Frank with a laugh.
+
+"You can't fool me," declared Jem, coming nearer.
+
+"What do you want to know my name for?" demanded Frank.
+
+"I'm sort of curious, that's all. Say, you give us the initial, and I'll
+bet we can guess at the rest of it."
+
+"Think so? All right, what do you say to N, now?"
+
+"I'd say Ned, right off the handle," piped in Dan.
+
+"All right," laughed Frank. "Then you might take F for the last name."
+
+"Foreman--Ned Foreman!" shouted Dan excitedly. "It's him, Jem. The light
+suit of clothes that Brady told us about----"
+
+"Shut up--the bag!"
+
+Quick as lightning Dan drew something from his breast and sprang forward.
+It was to slip a canvas bag over Frank's head. Then each of the men
+pinioned an arm, and Frank was a prisoner.
+
+This was just as Frank had calculated it would be done, and he was not in
+the least worried. He figured it out that these men had been sent by Brady
+to kidnap Ned Foreman. The light suit of clothes had deceived them, and his
+own verbal parrying had aided in their accepting him as the boy they had
+been hired to capture.
+
+The bag hung loosely about Frank's head. It was perforated at the top, and
+he could breathe easily. He could not, however, see through the opaque
+covering.
+
+"Don't you make any noise now, if you're wise," ordered Jem.
+
+"I'm not doing it, am I?" propounded Frank coolly in a muffled tone.
+
+"Better not," said Dan. "I've got a heavy stick here, and I'd use it pretty
+quick."
+
+"Who are you, anyway, and what do you want of me?" asked Frank.
+
+"Well, lad," answered Jem, "we're going to take you on a little journey. It
+will take all night to do it, and we'll make you as comfortable as we can,
+if you behave nicely. There's a real fine man you are to see. If you do as
+he wants you to do, you won't be five minutes with him, and you'll leave
+him with good pay for all the trouble we're putting you to."
+
+"That's fair enough; I'm agreeable," said Frank.
+
+"He's easy enough to handle," Frank heard Jem tell Dan.
+
+"Maybe that's all put on," suggested the other. "Don't take any risks.
+You'd better leave him with me when you get to the creek, and hurry on to
+Middletown and get the horse and wagon."
+
+Frank knew that Middletown was a small village not far from Bellwood. After
+they had proceeded a little farther there was a halt. Dan made our hero sit
+down on the grass and kept hold of his arm. The man Jem seemed to go away
+somewhere.
+
+It must have been nearly half an hour when Frank caught the echo of
+rumbling wheels. Then there was a whistle as an approaching vehicle halted.
+
+"Come on," said Dan, helping him to his feet. "We'll take a little ride."
+
+"Anything for a change," laughed Frank. "What are you fellows up to,
+anyhow?"
+
+"You're pretty cheerful for a boy in the dark," observed Dan.
+
+"Oh, that's all right--I'm thinking of that good pay you were talking
+about."
+
+"You're a sensible young fellow," commented Dan. "Don't you worry a bit.
+You'll fare all right if you last through as you've begun. But if you
+don't, then most everything fierce is likely to happen to you."
+
+Frank was lifted into a wagon. Its back hinged out, and it was closed again
+by Jem as Dan got into the vehicle after his prisoner. Frank dropped to a
+pile of old blankets. Then Dan lifted the bag from his head.
+
+"Don't try to see any further than the law allows," he remarked, "and it's
+all right."
+
+There was nothing to see, Frank found, but the sides, back and roof of a
+shut-in delivery wagon. The driver's seat was obscured by a water-proof
+blanket that came within a foot of the top of the wagon, leaving a small
+space through which light and air might come.
+
+"All right in there?" sang out Jem, and the vehicle started up.
+
+"You can sleep or loaf, any way you like," said Dan. "If you get hungry or
+thirsty we'll stop at some tavern and get you some food and something to
+drink."
+
+"I'm comfortable," declared Frank. "Say, look here, we've got quite
+friendly. Maybe I can ask you a question or two."
+
+"Ask away, youngster," directed Dan.
+
+"Of course I guess what you are up to, or rather who put you up to it,"
+said Frank.
+
+"You wouldn't be Ned Foreman if you didn't," chuckled Dan.
+
+"All right. Give me a guess, will you?"
+
+"For certain."
+
+"You're taking--me to see a man for five minutes, you said?"
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"I'll bet you I know his name."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"Tim Brady."
+
+"You've hit it wrong, youngster," declared the man Dan in apparent good
+faith; "it's not Tim Brady."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A QUEER EXPERIENCE
+
+
+Frank was a little surprised at the definite announcement of the man Dan.
+The latter seemed to be telling the truth.
+
+"If it's not Brady, who is behind this business?" began Frank.
+
+"I didn't say that," retorted Dan.
+
+"Why----"
+
+"I said that it wasn't Brady you were going to meet."
+
+"Oh!" uttered Frank vaguely.
+
+"If you hadn't acted so sensible and handsomely," proceeded Dan, "I
+wouldn't talk with you at all. You've got me sort of chummy, though. I like
+you. I don't suppose there's any harm in telling you that it's a lawyer
+you're going to see. He'll explain the business to you."
+
+"What is the business?" persisted Frank.
+
+"Bless me if I know," declared Dan. "We were to do something--get you. We
+were to take you somewhere--we do it. After that we're paid off, and that's
+our end of it."
+
+Frank did some thinking and surmising; but he could only theorize. He saw
+that now he was in the mix-up he must see it through.
+
+How far they traveled in the next eight hours he could only guess at. The
+vehicle had two horses attached; they were pretty good travelers, and the
+road was a smooth and level one and in excellent condition.
+
+A little after dark the team halted, and Jem went to some place near by and
+bought some doughnuts. He gave them to Dan, who divided up with Frank. Then
+Frank went to sleep, awoke, and went to sleep again on the heap of blankets
+in the bottom of the wagon, to be aroused by Dan shaking his arm vigorously
+and saying:
+
+"Wake up, youngster."
+
+"What time is it?" inquired Frank.
+
+"Just struck midnight by the village clock," Dan informed him.
+
+"What village?" asked Frank.
+
+"You're not to know that, youngster," responded Dan with a chuckle, as
+though he considered the prisoner a pretty keen lad. "You'll have to put on
+this headgear again," and Frank did not demur as the bag was drawn over his
+head.
+
+Then our hero was lifted out of the wagon, and Jem took hold of one hand
+and Dan of the other, and he was led across a yard, up a pair of outside
+stairs, along a porch, and then there was a pause. Jem knocked at a door.
+There was some delay, and then the door was opened.
+
+"We're the men from Brady," said Jem.
+
+"Pretty outlandish hour to disturb a man," snapped a sharp and domineering
+voice in return.
+
+"Acting on orders, judge," said Jem.
+
+"This is the lad, is it?"
+
+"It's him, judge," answered Jem, and they entered some kind of a room.
+
+Frank was pushed down into a chair. Then Dan removed the bag from his head.
+Frank looked about him with a good deal of curiosity.
+
+He found himself in a room that he decided must be a lawyer's office. It
+had cases full of law books. On a table stood a shaded lamp, and beside it
+was the man who had admitted them.
+
+This was a wiry, shrewd-looking individual, whose hair was all touseled and
+who was only partially dressed, as if he had been aroused from sleep. He
+moved to a chair and drew toward him a little package of documents with a
+rubber band around it.
+
+"This is the lad Foreman, is it?" he demanded.
+
+"It's him, judge," declared Jem.
+
+"Very good. Young man, I am acting for a client. Understand one thing. You
+appear before me voluntarily. If at any future time any--er--
+misunderstanding, complications arise out of this extraordinary midnight--
+er--invasion, I simply act as attorney for my client. Here's a document. It
+is to be signed by you. In consideration of the same, at a later date, my
+client is to remit to some school or other the money to pay for your
+schooling four years in advance."
+
+"Don't say a word but 'uh-huh,'" whispered Dan quickly to Frank. "You'll be
+glad if you do it. It's all right."
+
+"Uh-huh," said Frank obediently, but thinking somethings that would have
+startled the men with him if they had guessed them.
+
+"_Ipse dixit, de facto,_ as we say in the law," proceeded the judge
+pompously. "That's all, I think."
+
+The speaker dipped a pen in ink. He set before Frank a two-paged document.
+Its first page was turned over. Its second page our hero was not given time
+to read, but Frank's keen glance took in words and phrases that plainly
+indicated to him that the document alluded to a guardianship of some kind.
+
+Frank signed a name that was no name at all. It was a meaningless scrawl.
+He believed it would bring about a crisis, but he was now ready for just
+that. The document was drawn from his hand, but before the judge could look
+at it there was a ring at a telephone at the end of the room. The judge
+hastily thrust the document into a drawer and hastened to the telephone.
+
+He spoke to somebody over the phone and nodded to Jem, and said:
+
+"It's Brady."
+
+"No need of us waiting," responded Jem. "Here's my half of that card,
+judge. I suppose you know the arrangement."
+
+For reply the judge walked to a safe standing in the corner of the room,
+opened it, took out a little box and handed it to Jem.
+
+Frank felt somehow that this was the diamond bracelet that had been stolen
+from Samuel Mace back at Tipton. The thought connected with the talk he had
+overheard at the cabin near Bellwood about two pieces of card. He theorized
+that it was the reward to Jem and Dan for agreeing to kidnap Ned Foreman.
+
+"Got it?" spoke Dan eagerly, edging up to Jem. "Then our part's done. Let's
+get away from here."
+
+Frank took a last glance around the room. It was to note a row of law books
+that had written on their calfskin backs the name "Grimm." Frank treasured
+this clue. He did not doubt that it was the name of the "judge." He did not
+know what town he was in, or how far away from Bellwood, but he believed he
+now had learned the name of the "judge," and that it would afford a
+starting point in a later investigation.
+
+Frank smiled to himself as, the bag again over his face, he was taken back
+to the covered wagon. He wondered what the "judge" and Brady would say when
+they found a meaningless scrawl to the document they had gone to so much
+trouble to have signed.
+
+He made up his mind that, although he was a minor, the signature of Ned
+Foreman to that paper meant something important. It probably gave some
+power to Brady over Ned. What this was Frank felt sure that he could soon
+find out, and he planned upon his return to Bellwood School to go straight
+to Professor Elliott with the whole story.
+
+"Now, then, youngster," observed Dan as the wagon started up, "you've
+behaved fine. Nobody is hurt, and you've done yourself some good. I'll
+promise you that your schooling bills will be paid, and you just want to
+forget everything that's happened to-night. Don't be foolish and stir
+things up. It'll be no use. You'll be provided for until you're of age, and
+that's a good deal for a fellow who was grubbing for every cent yesterday."
+
+Frank went to sleep after that. He was roused by Dan in broad daylight, and
+Jem opened the back of the wagon. Dan walked a few steps with Frank.
+
+"You're about two miles from your school," he said. "I've taken quite an
+interest in you. If I was the right sort, I'd kind of like to adopt you.
+Good-by."
+
+"Good-by," answered Frank, starting in the direction of Bellwood School.
+
+Frank walked on for a distance. He observed that the wagon had not started
+up immediately, and he believed that the two men would satisfy themselves
+that he was not delaying or lurking around before they resumed their
+journey.
+
+Frank chuckled to himself. He had gone through a night of considerable
+mystery, but he fancied he had gathered up some pretty important points as
+to the reason for all the planning and plotting regarding Ned Foreman. He
+felt pretty well satisfied with himself.
+
+"I don't want to pat myself on the shoulder any," was the way he put it to
+himself, "but I think I've done pretty well for a young fellow about my
+size. They would have it that I was Ned Foreman. They would have me sign
+that paper. I didn't tell any lies, but I wonder what that lawyer will say
+when he reads that signature? Grim he'll be, sure enough."
+
+Frank at first was quite content to return to the academy. The wagon had
+started up at a clattering rate and he did not attempt to follow it.
+Suddenly, however, a crash and then the echo of loud voices halted him.
+
+"Something happened to that wagon," decided Frank. "Jem and Dan are
+discussing things at a great rate, too. I'm going to see what's up."
+
+Frank made a short cut through the shrubbery and reached the road at the
+point whither the loud voices of the two men led him. He came upon the
+wagon with one hind wheel stuck in a muddy rut and the other one smashed at
+the hub. From the shelter of a handy bush Frank surveyed the situation and
+listened to what the recent captors were saying.
+
+"There's no use, Jem," remarked Dan. "She's a goner and you've just got to
+leave her here."
+
+"But what about getting to Rockton?"
+
+"Ain't that plain?"
+
+"Not to me," asserted Jem.
+
+"Why, unhitch the animal, and make it on horseback."
+
+"Me?" hooted Jem. "Why, I never rode a horse twice in my life, and then
+without a saddle--not much."
+
+"Well, unhitch, anyway; it isn't far to the town. Let the livery stable man
+come back after the wagon here and give you a new rig."
+
+"There's no other way to do that I can make out," agreed Jem. "Yes, that's
+just what we'll do."
+
+Frank became interested in watching them unhitch the horse from the wagon.
+They finally started off, Jem leading the horse. Frank was about to go
+about his business, when a casual remark of Dan acted like a magnet in
+attracting his attention away from his former purpose.
+
+"I say, Jem," he observed in a somewhat anxious tone, "you are sure we can
+settle the bracelet business right away?"
+
+"Yes, right away," assented Jem.
+
+"Cash?"
+
+"Ready money, sure."
+
+"Hope you will. I want my share so I can get away from these diggings and
+the crowd into some new district and among new people."
+
+"Oho! Going to turn respectable, are you?" jeered Jem.
+
+"I'm going to try," announced Dan manfully. "I'm afraid of Brady. He's the
+kind of a man who goes from bad to worse. He will be sure to get you in
+trouble if you stick with him long enough."
+
+"Well, as long as he pays the bills as he agrees I'm his man," said Jem.
+
+"I'm not, and I'll cut loose just as soon as I get my share of the
+plunder."
+
+That little talk decided Frank that he would not return to the academy at
+once. He resolved to play the detective, for a little time at least.
+
+Frank believed that what he had done would result in the upsetting of all
+the plans Brady had set on foot regarding Ned Foreman.
+
+He felt certain that when he related the circumstances of the case to
+Professor Elliott, the latter would speedily devise a way to protect Ned
+and ferret out the object of the lawyer, Grimm, and also Brady, in securing
+some kind of guardianship over the orphan boy.
+
+About the bracelet, however, that was a different affair. From what Frank
+had just heard he was convinced that Jem had this now in his possession.
+
+"Yes," mused Frank, as almost involuntarily he followed Jem and Dan at a
+safe distance, "that little box the lawyer gave Jem surely contains the
+bracelet stolen from Lemuel Mace, back at Tipton. It's sure, too, from what
+these men just said, that Jem is going to dispose of it right away. Why, if
+that's so, all trace of it would be lost, and good-by to my chances of ever
+convicting the real thieves. This man Dan, the best of the lot, is going to
+disappear, and, of course, Brady and Jem will never admit they stole the
+bracelet. I sort of feel that if I let these men slip me now I'll never be
+able to clear myself of the charge of stealing Mace's jewelry."
+
+Frank was so impressed with these ideas that he trailed on after the two
+men. He did not know that it would do much good, but that bracelet was a
+kind of a lodestone, and he felt that he would give a good deal to get it
+into his possession.
+
+The little procession covered about three slow miles, arriving finally at a
+little sleepy town. Frank had never been there before. Jem led the horse
+down the main street of the place, and finally turned into a vacant lot, at
+the rear of which stood a livery stable. A lantern was burning just beyond
+the wide open door of the place.
+
+Frank lined a board fence that bounded one side of the livery stable yard.
+When he got opposite the open doorway where Jem had halted, he posted
+himself at a crack in the fence, where he could see and hear what was going
+on.
+
+"Hi, there, somebody--wake up!" bawled Jem loudly.
+
+A sleepy-eyed hostler made his appearance in a few minutes. There was a
+lengthy explanation as to the broken wagon. Jem seemed to make this all
+satisfactory in a money way. Then he told the hostler that he must have a
+light single rig, and the man took the horse into the stable, while Jem and
+Dan remained outside.
+
+"Going on alone, are you?" inquired the latter.
+
+"It's best," replied Jem. "You see, I've got one place in view I want to
+visit. You know--Staggers."
+
+"Yes, I've heard of him," nodded Dan. "He's a mighty close one, though. Get
+the full value, Jem."
+
+"I will, never fear."
+
+"What shall I do?"
+
+"Oh, go up to the old hut and snooze until I come back."
+
+"I hope that will be soon."
+
+"I won't be any longer than I can help."
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+Jem was acting strangely, and the peering Frank was surprised and
+interested. Jem was going through a puzzling pantomime. He would touch his
+head in various places in a whimsical manner, then pause and appear
+undecided as to what he would do next.
+
+"It's funny," he remarked, after silently going through these apparently
+meaningless gestures for some moments.
+
+"What's that?" inquired Dan.
+
+"I can't get it."
+
+"Can't get what?"
+
+"The high sign."
+
+"Oho!"
+
+"You know what I mean?"
+
+"Yes, indeed. Brady told us that Staggers will have no dealings with any
+one not having the high sign."
+
+"Exactly. Brady said it was L.E.H."
+
+"I remember that."
+
+"But I've forgotten part of it. Let's see, L. is lip. I know that--you
+touch your lip. Then E. Is it eye or ear?"
+
+"Ear," cried Dan. "Say, I'm sure Brady said ear."
+
+"All right. And the last? Oh, of course--hand. You touch your lip, then
+your ear, and then put out your hand," and Jem went rapidly through these
+maneuvers. "As to the grip, it's easy--slip the forefinger up the wrist.
+O.K.--I've got it. Say, what kind of an old tumbledown trap is that thing?"
+demanded Jem, as the hostler reappeared leading a sorry nag attached to an
+old buggy with an enormous hood and a big shallow boot at the rear.
+
+"It's an old mail carrier cart," replied the hostler. "But it's the only
+single rig we've got in the stable at the present time."
+
+"Well, I suppose it will have to do," observed Jem indifferently. "I'll be
+back soon, Dan."
+
+"All right."
+
+Jem drove out of the yard and down a road leading out of the town. The
+horse was a decrepit animal and did not go very fast. While trying to think
+out the best plan to pursue, Frank followed after the cart at a safe
+distance.
+
+He had gone only a little way when he wished he had remained near the
+stable and had followed Dan. That would have been easier. Dan had planned
+to return to the hut and had already disappeared in its direction.
+Unguided, however, Frank did not believe that he could locate it. He kept
+on down the road, therefore, after Jem, unwilling to lose sight of both of
+the men who certainly knew all about the diamond bracelet stolen from
+Lemuel Mace's jewelry store at Tipton.
+
+"This man Jem has the bracelet," reflected Frank, "and just as surely he is
+going to some man named Staggers to sell it or get him to sell it for them.
+Then he will return to Dan to divide the spoils. I can't miss scoring some
+kind of a point following that cart."
+
+This Frank did for over two miles. Then he began to grow wearied and
+footsore. He had no idea how many miles Jem planned to go, and finally he
+carried out a bold idea.
+
+This was to climb into the deep boot at the back of the vehicle. The hood
+in front prevented Jem from seeing what was going on behind him. As the
+horse struck a patch of very rutty road, Frank ran close up to the buggy.
+
+The vehicle was wobbling and jolting so that the action of his additional
+weight on the springs did not attract the attention of the driver. Frank
+cuddled down in the shell-shaped receptacle for mail and parcels, fairly
+out of sight.
+
+It must have been fully two hours later when Jem drove into a town of quite
+some size. It was, in fact, a small city, and from what Frank knew of the
+district he decided that it must be Rockton, a place about eleven miles
+from the academy town.
+
+Frank slipped from the boot of the cart after the vehicle had made one or
+two turnings. When he did this he dropped flat in the middle of the road
+and remained there until Jem had made another turn, when he was up and
+away, again on the trail of the man.
+
+After proceeding quite some distance, Jem halted the horse at the edge of a
+sidewalk near an alleyway. He tied the animal to a ring at the curb and
+proceeded down the dark lane near by.
+
+Frank had gained the shelter of an open hallway directly opposite the point
+where the vehicle had halted. He stood there pondering as to his next move,
+when the sharp clatter of running footsteps attracted his attention.
+
+The next minute a boy about his own size darted around the corner, running
+at full speed. As he rounded into view, he seemed to see some one ahead
+blocking his way. With an utterance of dismay and excitement he veered from
+his course, and sprang directly into the hallway that sheltered Frank.
+
+"Hold on, I say!" cried Frank, fairly swept off his footing.
+
+"Don't say a word," panted the strange lad. "Some one is after me! Show
+yourself, fool them, or I'm a goner. Is there any way out of this?"
+
+Frank heard the boy run down the hall, try a locked door at the rear, and
+utter a cry of sharp disappointment and concern.
+
+"They've trapped me!" he gasped.
+
+Frank stepped toward the sidewalk and peered out, not quite able to figure
+out what had happened or was happening. He did not want to become mixed up
+in any trouble, especially just now when all his energies were centered on
+keeping track of the man Jem.
+
+Frank saw one man coming running around the corner which the refugee had
+just turned. Almost in front of the open driveway he met a man who came
+running from the opposite direction.
+
+"They're constables," murmured Frank,
+
+"Did you see him?" began the first officer.
+
+"A boy?" queried the man.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Run into that hallway."
+
+"Ah, there he is! Out with you--aha! I've caught you at last, have I?"
+cried the first officer triumphantly.
+
+He seized Frank by the arm and pulled him out on to the sidewalk. The way
+he whirled him around amid his wild glee made Frank's teeth chatter.
+
+"Hold on!" our hero demanded, struggling to free himself. "What's all this
+about?"
+
+"What's it about, eh?" chuckled his captor. "Mighty innocent, aren't you?
+Don't remember me a bit, do you? Look sharp at me, now," rallied the
+officer. "I guess you'll recognize me, my soft and downy young bird, if
+you'll look hard enough."
+
+"I never saw you before, and you never saw me before," declared Frank,
+getting nettled at his rough treatment.
+
+"Thunder! that's so."
+
+The officer, peering closely at Frank, staggered back as though he was
+about to collapse. He goggled at Frank, choking with stupefaction and
+disappointment.
+
+"What's the matter, Hawkes?" asked the other officer.
+
+"This isn't the boy I was chasing."
+
+"It must be."
+
+"But it isn't."
+
+"Well, anyhow, it's the fellow who shot around that street corner a few
+minutes ago and dodged into the doorway, for I saw him."
+
+"Then I must have been chasing the wrong boy."
+
+"I reckon that's so."
+
+Both officers looked Frank over speculatively and suspiciously.
+
+"No, he ain't the fellow," observed the officer who had grabbed Frank.
+"But, say, who are you?"
+
+"I'm Frank Jordan, a student at the Bellwood Academy," answered our hero
+promptly.
+
+"We don't know that," observed the second officer.
+
+"I can easily prove it to you," asserted Frank.
+
+"All right, fetch him up to the station, Hawkes, and let him explain to the
+captain how he comes to be snooking around people's houses at this
+unearthly hour of the morning."
+
+Frank was very much cut up at this decision. To leave that spot meant
+possibly to lose all track of Jem and the stolen bracelet.
+
+"I'm in this town on business," he said boldly, "and I don't see what right
+you have to interfere with me."
+
+"The captain will explain all that to you," observed the officer. "Here,
+you come right along with us."
+
+There was no use of resisting. Each of the officers seized an arm of Frank
+and marched him down the street. He uttered an anxious sigh as he cast a
+last look back at the horse and buggy Jem had left at the curb.
+
+When they got to the little police station of the town, Frank was
+confronted by the captain. He proved to be a bright, intelligent man, and
+looked over some letters Frank showed him.
+
+"This boy's all right, Hawkes," declared the officer at once. "I should
+have thought you would have known that from a look at his honest face. Get
+to school, though, lad," he added in a kindly tone to Frank. "I was a boy
+once myself, but I know from experience that these student larks don't pay
+in the end. Who did you think the lad was, anyway, Hawkes?"
+
+"A young escaped convict," explained Hawkes. "Nice little fifty dollars
+reward out for his apprehension, too."
+
+"Well, it seems you started up the wrong covey this time. Good morning,
+lad," nodded the officer to Frank, who promptly left the station.
+
+Frank got back to the place where he had been arrested on a run. As he
+turned into the street a single anxious glance made his heart sink.
+
+"Too bad--all for a boy criminal!" he exclaimed. "The buggy is gone."
+
+It seemed certain that during the time the officers had taken Frank to the
+station, Jem had transacted his business with the mysterious Staggers and
+had left town.
+
+Frank came across an early riser opening up a cheap restaurant, and
+inquired if he had ever heard of a man named Staggers.
+
+"Nickname, I guess, that," responded the eating-house man. "Fellows here,
+shady characters, especially, have all kinds of flash names among their
+friends. No, don't know Staggers."
+
+Frank was disappointed and wearied. He had the idea of saying something to
+the police about the bracelet. Then he made up his mind that he would get
+back to Bellwood and take Professor Eliott into his confidence.
+
+Somewhat dejected and a good deal tired out, our hero turned his face in
+the direction of Bellwood Academy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A STARTLING MESSAGE
+
+
+"Wake up, Frank!"
+
+Frank, roughly shaken by Bob Upton, sat up in bed. He rubbed his eyes
+drowsily, and for a moment all the strange happenings of the previous night
+seemed like some dream.
+
+Then Frank recalled reaching the school about ten o'clock in the morning,
+when all the students were in their classes, of reaching his room
+unobserved, lying down on his bed in his clothes to rest and collect his
+thoughts, and of dropping into a nap.
+
+"I say," hailed Bob excitedly, "where in the world have you been?"
+
+"It's a long story," explained Frank with a prodigious yawn and stretching
+himself. "You wouldn't believe it if I told it to you. Have I been missed?"
+
+"Missed?" echoed Bob, almost in a shout. "The head monitor sat up for you
+all night. The gardener and the steward have been searching the creek and
+hunting for you everywhere. Our tutor had arranged to send a party of the
+class to hunt for you after dinner, and there's been all kinds of
+excitement and fuss about you."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Frank, "but I couldn't help it. I've been kidnaped, Bob."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Don't blurt it out. I want to see Ned Foreman first. He's interested."
+
+"Gill Mace was around with his sneering meanness," said Bob. "He said the
+boys had better see that none of their jewelry was missing."
+
+"Did, eh?" said Frank. "He and his uncle will be interested, too, if things
+come out as I think."
+
+"Frank, I must tell Professor Drake that you've come back."
+
+"All right," assented Frank, who proceeded to take a refreshing wash as Bob
+flew from the room.
+
+He returned just as our hero finished brushing his hair.
+
+"You're to come down to the office at once," he said.
+
+"All right," assented Frank.
+
+He proceeded down the stairs without meeting any of his friends. Frank
+knocked at the office door and was admitted by Professor Drake.
+
+"So you have returned, Jordan?" spoke the teacher in a somewhat severe
+tone.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Drake," replied Frank.
+
+"I hope you have some satisfactory explanation to offer in regard to your
+absence against the rules of this school."
+
+"I certainly have, Mr. Drake," said Frank. "There is considerable to tell,
+and it is very important. I would like to see the president before I say
+anything, though."
+
+"Professor Elliott is absent until to-morrow," said the tutor. "I am in
+charge here, and you must explain to me."
+
+"I hope you will excuse me," replied Frank, "but there is a very good
+reason why I must tell the president before any one else."
+
+"You are pretty mysterious, Jordan."
+
+"I hope you believe that I am doing just what is right until Mr. Elliott
+returns," said Frank earnestly.
+
+The teacher studied Frank's manly face for a moment.
+
+"I must at least believe that you think you are right," he said after a
+thoughtful pause. "We will have it that way, if you insist, Jordan."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Drake," said Frank. "You will find that I am not deceiving
+you."
+
+Frank was greeted at dinner with a babel of questions as to his mysterious
+absence. He told his friends that he had been away on business; that he
+could explain only to the president of the academy.
+
+He attended his classes that afternoon, and joined the crowd on the campus
+after study hours. A baseball game was on. Frank was right-fielder, and he
+knew he was on his record in this, his first game, and did some pretty good
+work.
+
+The game was running pretty close. Two of Banbury's men were on bases, when
+Frank noticed a ragged urchin run up to a crowd of spectators.
+
+The strange boy asked some questions, and the lad he addressed pointed to
+Frank.
+
+"Are you--are you Mr. Jordan?" the youngster panted, running up to Frank.
+
+"Yes," nodded Frank.
+
+"Please, sir, quick--there's a man in the old cabin on Greenlee's farm. He
+wants Ned Foreman to come right straight to him. He's all cut up and
+bleeding. He's dying. The boy yonder said you'd get Ned Foreman for me."
+
+"Who is he?" demanded Frank, interested and startled.
+
+"I don't know, only he said he must see Ned Foreman, because he won't last
+long. He's in an awful state. He's in an awful state. He just hollers and
+yells, and he's smashing a great big bracelet with shining stones in it."
+
+"Jordan!"
+
+"Hi--don't miss it!" Whiz!
+
+Just past Frank's head flew a fly from the bat Frank had not turned in
+time. But he heeded not the yells, "Deserted his colors!" "Run away again!"
+or the fact that his neglect had sent two of Banbury's cohorts home.
+
+Frank knew at once that the man the excited boy spoke of was either Jem or
+Dan. The allusion to a bracelet had started him on a vivid run, the boy
+keeping breathlessly by his side, panting:
+
+"I was passing the old cabin, when I heard some one groaning on the inside.
+Then the man told me to get Ned Foreman."
+
+The little messenger led Frank straight to the hut and slipped down to the
+doorstep almost exhausted, while his companion rushed through the open
+doorway.
+
+The man Dan lay on a heap of straw, silent and helpless. His clothing was
+stained with blood. Frank at once ascertained that he was still alive, but
+he had fainted from weakness.
+
+He went out to the little fellow on the doorstep.
+
+"What's your name?" asked Frank.
+
+"It's Lem."
+
+"Well, you're a grand little fellow," said Frank. "You've done a good deal
+already, but I want you to run to the nearest farmhouse and tell the farmer
+that he must get here right away to move a dying man to a doctor at
+Bellwood."
+
+"Yes, sir," nodded the obliging little fellow eagerly.
+
+"Tell him I'll pay all the expenses, and yours, too, Lem, as soon as we get
+through with this business."
+
+The boy darted away. Frank re-entered the hut. As he did so his foot kicked
+some object, and it jangled across the rough board floor.
+
+Frank picked it up with some eagerness and satisfaction. It was the
+bracelet that Lem had described--"with shining stones in it."
+
+Our hero was a good deal excited as he examined the object in his hand. He
+thrust it into his pocket with quite a thrill of satisfaction. He then went
+closer to the suffering Dan.
+
+The man seemed to have dropped into a deep daze or sleep. Frank realized
+that he could do nothing for him until he was removed to some place where
+skilled surgical aid could be summoned.
+
+"It's wonderful," mused Frank, as he went outside, impatient and anxious
+for the return of his messenger. "This is certainly the bracelet that I've
+had so much worry about. I never saw it before, but it must be the one
+stolen from Lemuel Mace. How does it happen, though, that Dan has it here?
+Why is it all battered up? Where is Jem? Why wasn't it sold to the man,
+Staggers? Say, here's a big puzzle, but I've got the bracelet, and this man
+Dan can be made to explain all about it when he gets his senses back."
+
+Frank certainly had some perplexing thoughts as to the peculiar situation
+of the moment. He could only theorize what had happened.
+
+The way he figured it out was that Jem had been unable to make any bargain
+with the man Staggers and dispose of the bracelet. He had come back to the
+hut to report this fact to Dan. They must have had a quarrel over it, Frank
+decided. Jem had probably been beaten off. Not, however, until he had
+pretty badly bruised up his opponent. The bracelet must have got battered
+in the struggle for its possession, or Dan, in the delirium which the
+farmer boy had described to Frank, had banged it about, not knowing what he
+was doing.
+
+Frank paced up and down in front of the hut, turning all these thoughts
+over in his mind, and really anxious about the condition of Dan, counting
+the minutes and hoping for the speedy return of his messenger with aid. He
+was walking slowly on his tiresome patrol, when he heard a rustle in the
+bushes. He turned, somewhat startled. Before he could get fully around a
+brisk hand slapped him sharply on the shoulder, with the words:
+
+"Hello, you--glad I've found you!"
+
+Frank drew suspiciously away from a lad about his own age, and a total
+stranger to him. He was well dressed, and had a keen pair of eyes and a
+pleasant, rather quizzical expression of face.
+
+Frank was on nettles for fear Jem might return, and at first feared that
+the boy might be some emissary of Brady or his recent kidnapers.
+
+"Don't know me?" questioned the lad, smiling boldly and in an extremely
+friendly way into Frank's face.
+
+"Well, I know you," retorted the other. "Here, Frank Jordan, of Bellwood
+Academy, shake," and he extended his hand.
+
+"Who are you?" inquired Frank, only feebly returning the hearty handshake
+of the stranger.
+
+"I am your everlasting debtor--friend, slave!" declared the lad vehemently.
+"See here; that night, or, rather, morning, dark hallway--two officers--
+nabbed you, took you for me, and I got away."
+
+"O--oh!" exclaimed Frank slowly, and with a decided shock. "I remember you
+now."
+
+"Thought you would," nodded the lad briskly. "You don't seem a bit glad to
+see me, but I am to see you."
+
+Frank did not say anything in reply to this. In fact, the boy who had just
+revealed his identity was not exactly welcome to Frank just at that moment.
+The latter remembered what the policeman, Hawkes, had said about him--that
+he was an escaped convict, with a reward out for his arrest. That did not
+speak well for the fellow. Then, too, Frank did not fancy the proximity of
+such a person, with a diamond bracelet in his possession presumably worth a
+great deal of money.
+
+"How did you come to find me here?" demanded our hero with blunt suspicion.
+
+"Didn't--just ran across you. But I was on my way to find you."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At the academy."
+
+"How did you know I belonged to the academy?" challenged Frank.
+
+"Why, didn't I hear you mention the place and tell your name to the
+policeman?"
+
+"Yes, that's so," admitted Frank. "But why did you want to see me?"
+
+"To thank you."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For saving me from arrest."
+
+"Oh, then you admit that you are what the policeman said?"
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"A convict."
+
+"Yes," answered the boy promptly.
+
+"And an escaped convict."
+
+"That's right, too."
+
+"I don't know, then," said Frank, "that I did right in shielding you."
+
+"Oh, yes, you did," declared the lad buoyantly. "See here, you're a good
+fellow, a staving good fellow. You've just about made my future for me.
+Isn't that a big thing to do?"
+
+"It is, if it's true," said Frank.
+
+"Well, you'll think so when I tell you something. See here: I was an orphan
+boy down at the town where you saved me. Five years ago a crowd of fellows
+started out one Hallowe'en night for fun. We had a mean fellow named
+Tompkins for a leader. He got us to obey his orders. I had to set fire to a
+heap of brush at one farmhouse. The others were to do certain stunts in the
+same neighborhood. We found out later that Tompkins was using us as tools
+to cover some real spite work of his. I set fire to the brush heap to scare
+the farmer. The wind blew the sparks into a two-ton haystack near by, and
+it burned down. I was scared and sorry. I was worse scared and sorry the
+next day, when I was arrested. Tompkins and his crowd had burned down some
+barns and an old mill. Their folks were rich, and they could hire good
+lawyers. I was a homeless orphan boy, and was made the scapegoat. They sent
+me to the reform school till I was of age."
+
+Frank's mind, of course, was full of anxiety for the wounded man in the hut
+and impatient for the return of his messenger, but he could not help but be
+interested in the story of his companion.
+
+"My name is Dave Starr," proceeded the lad. "I went to the reform school. I
+soon became a good-conduct trusty, but the life nearly killed me. I escaped
+one day, and if you go into any of the towns around Rockton you'll find my
+picture in the police stations, with a fifty-dollar reward offered for my
+arrest."
+
+"What have you done since you escaped?" inquired Frank.
+
+"I have tried to make a man of myself," replied Dave Starr, drawing himself
+up proudly. "I want to show you something," and he drew a folded paper from
+his pocket and extended it.
+
+This was what Frank read:
+
+"Received from Dave Starr $37.72, being payment and interest for damage
+done to my haystack by fire. He says this was the only fire he was
+responsible for, and that it was an accident, and I believe him to be an
+honest, truthful lad.
+                    "Signed,
+                            "JOHN MOORE."
+
+"Understand?" inquired Dave.
+
+"I think I do," nodded Frank. "You've cleaned the slate by paying your
+debts."
+
+"That's it," assented Dave. "I went back to Rockton to settle that debt,
+and the policeman, Hawkes, saw me, recognized me, and I would now be back
+in that dismal, heart-breaking old reform school if it wasn't for you."
+
+"Well, I'm glad I happened to help you," said Frank warmly.
+
+"I've been pretty lucky since I escaped," narrated Dave. "I went away and
+got work at a factory just outside a little town. One winter day, when a
+lot of us were nooning, an empty palace car swung from a switching train
+into a ditch. It caught fire. There was no water near, and a good twenty
+thousand dollars was burning up, when I led the fellows to the car. We
+snowballed it till we put out the flames. That was my start in life. What
+do you think? About two weeks later an agent of the railroad came around.
+He gave each of my helpers a ten-dollar gold piece, and he gave me one
+hundred dollars for saving the railroad property."
+
+"That was fine," commented Frank,
+
+"Wasn't it, though? Well, that was my nest egg. I bought a small stock of
+notions. I made money. By and by I had five hundred dollars. I had an old
+friend, who had known my father, who had a ranch in California. I wrote to
+him, and he replied to my letter saying that he had a place for me. Well, I
+spent a year on his ranch, raising plums. Then a month ago I struck a fine
+idea. I heard of how they did things in some African fruit colonies. I
+enthused my employer. A month ago I came East with his instructions and
+plenty of money to gather together one hundred monkeys."
+
+"What!" fairly shouted Frank.
+
+"Just as I say," declared Dave with a pleasant smile.
+
+"One hundred monkeys?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To start a show?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"To teach the little fellows to help in the plum orchards. They can be
+trained easily. You see, when the plums are ripe we spread a sheet under a
+tree and shake the tree. The monkeys pick up the plums fast as can be, and
+fill big wicker baskets with them. We take the gang around to other
+orchards, and save the hiring of a lot of men."
+
+"Well! well!" murmured Frank admiringly. "What a novel idea."
+
+"I've had to pick up the little animals all over the big cities in bird
+stores," explained Dave. "At last I've got the hundred. They are in a
+special car down the road, and we start for the Pacific Coast to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"You certainly have had a queer experience, and you deserve a lot of
+credit," said Frank.
+
+"I feel good for meeting a square, fair fellow like you, Frank Jordan,"
+continued Dave. "I'd like to feel I had a friend in you, and if I write to
+you once in a while, will you answer my letters?"
+
+"I shall be delighted," declared Frank.
+
+"Well, I've said my say," resumed Dave in a practical way, "and I see
+you're busy about something about here, and I may be hindering you, so I'll
+say good-by."
+
+"Good-by," responded Frank, "and good luck wherever you go."
+
+"Thank you. I say, you wouldn't mind if I sent you a little present as a
+sort of reminder of what you've done for me, would you, now?" propounded
+Dave.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't think of that," objected Frank.
+
+"Do they allow pets up at the academy?"
+
+"Oh, yes,--if the fellows keep them from annoying others."
+
+"Well, you'll hear from me about to-morrow. Good-by, Frank Jordan."
+
+The strange lad waved his hand to Frank in a friendly, grateful way, and
+disappeared just as a wagon came rattling across the field toward the old
+hut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+UNDER ARREST
+
+
+"There's some one at that transom!"
+
+"Quick, see who it is?"
+
+Frank, Bob and Ned sprang to their feet as the latter gave the alarm, and
+Frank's words started them speedily into action. Bob, half crippled though
+he was, reached the door of the room first, tore it open and gained the
+corridor.
+
+"It was some one from the crowd next door," he reported. "I fancied I saw
+Gill Mace vanish into that room. It's just like him--a sneaking spy."
+
+"Ritchie said those fellows were nosing around a good deal to find out
+about my being away from the academy," observed Frank. "I suppose they're
+pretty curious."
+
+"Yes, and they're bolting away from the ball game the way you did stirs
+them up," said Bob.
+
+"Well, the transom is nailed shut, so any eavesdropper wouldn't be likely
+to hear much," declared Frank.
+
+"No, but they might see that," and Ned pointed to an object on the table,
+where they had been seated for an hour discussing Frank's circumstantial
+story of all that had happened to him from the time of his kidnaping. "I
+shouldn't suppose you would care to have that Mace fellow see it."
+
+"Oh, anybody can see it and welcome, as soon as I have a talk with the
+president," responded Frank carelessly.
+
+Frank took up from the table and pocketed the bracelet he had found on the
+floor of the old hut. It was bent and dented as though it had been handled
+roughly.
+
+Frank had just returned from the town, where he had seen to it that the man
+called Dan was placed in a comfortable room at a hotel, with a physician in
+charge of his case.
+
+The doctor told Frank that the man must have been in a terrible fight with
+some one, for he was wounded in several places and unconscious.
+
+Frank told the hotel keeper that he would be responsible for the expense
+incurred in caring for the sick man. Our hero offered to pay the farmer
+whose wagon had brought Dan to the town. The farmer refused any payment,
+but Frank made little Lem a present out of his pocket money.
+
+Now Frank and his two fast friends had gone over the details of his recent
+stirring adventures.
+
+"I think that this man Dan is the best of the crowd of plotters," said
+Frank. "There must have been a fight over the bracelet. I'm glad I've got
+it. I can prove my innocence now."
+
+"What are you going to do with it, Frank?" asked Ned.
+
+"Turn it over to Professor Elliott in the morning, and tell him the entire
+story. I am sure that Dan can be made to tell who stole it. I believe it
+was Brady."
+
+"He may tell you, too, where to find that lawyer," suggested Bob.
+
+"Grimm--yes," answered Frank. "There's something he's been up to with Brady
+that is of interest to Ned here--I am sure of that."
+
+Frank felt certain that affairs were now on a basis where a good many
+things would come to light within the next few hours.
+
+He was up bright and early the next morning, and was somewhat disappointed
+to learn that Professor Elliott had not yet returned to Bellwood School.
+
+Ritchie came up to him on the campus after breakfast and took him to one
+side.
+
+"I say, Jordan," he began in a confidential tone, "there's a good deal of
+mystery going on around these diggings."
+
+"How's that?" inquired Frank with a smile.
+
+"Banbury's crowd are up to something, and I feel sure it concerns you in
+some way."
+
+"I can't understand how that can be."
+
+"Nor can I," said Ritchie; "but one of our scouts says they were hobnobbing
+late into the night. That Gill Mace went to town last evening and sent off
+a rush telegram somewhere. This morning the crowd are buzzing like a lot of
+bees, whispering together and looking at you, and Mace walks around with
+his eye in the direction of the town, as if he expected something to
+happen. Look there, now--what's up?"
+
+Gill Mace had hurried toward the campus of the school to meet a man coming
+up the road. Accompanying the latter and acting very important and excited,
+he advanced across the campus toward the spot where Ritchie and his friends
+stood.
+
+"That's the boy," pronounced Gill Mace in a loud tone, pointing to Frank.
+
+"Is your name Jordan?" demanded the stranger of Frank.
+
+"Suppose it is?" inquired Frank.
+
+"Then I've come to arrest you, that's all," said the man. "I'm a constable,
+and the charge is stealing and having in your possession a certain diamond
+bracelet belonging to Samuel Mace of Tipton."
+
+"Yes," cried Gill Mace, "he's got it about him. I saw him with it last
+night."
+
+"Oh, then you are the sneak who was spying over our transom last night,
+eh?" said Frank, with a glance at Gill that made him quail.
+
+"Search him, officer--get that bracelet," vociferated Gill. "He stole it
+from my uncle."
+
+"Come with me, young man," ordered the officer, extending a hand to seize
+Frank's arm.
+
+"Hold on," spoke up Ritchie suddenly, stepping in between the two. "You
+don't arrest Frank Jordan until we know the particulars of this affair."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+CLEANING UP
+
+
+The constable of Bellwood drew back a trifle at the warlike demonstration
+of Dean Ritchie and his friends. He probably had heard of the treatment of
+some of his kind who had been mobbed, ducked and sent home ingloriously
+when they had tried to interfere with the sports of the students at the
+school.
+
+"Hold on, fellows," said Frank quickly, moving his champions aside. "This
+man is only doing his duty."
+
+"There's the president!" exclaimed Ned Foreman, and he ran forward to the
+front of the academy, where Professor Elliott had just been driven up in a
+carriage.
+
+"I will go with you," said Frank, ranging himself up by the side of the
+officer. "I would like to speak to Mr. Elliott first, though."
+
+"Certainly," acceded the constable willingly, awed by the crowd and pleased
+with the gentlemanly manner of his prisoner.
+
+Professor Elliott stood awaiting the approaching crowd, staring in a
+puzzled way at them through his eye glasses. Frank walked straight up to
+him.
+
+"Professor Eliott," he said, "I have just been arrested by this officer, on
+the complaint of Gill Mace, I am led to believe."
+
+The academy president stared in astonishment at Frank, and then at Gill,
+who had kept up with the coterie.
+
+"Yes, I had him arrested," proclaimed Gill.
+
+"Indeed," spoke Mr. Elliott. "Upon what charge, may I ask?"
+
+"He stole a diamond bracelet from my uncle's jewelry store at Tipton,"
+declared Gill.
+
+"There is the bracelet in question, Professor Elliott," said Frank,
+promptly placing a little parcel done up in tissue paper in the hands of
+the professor.
+
+"I told you he had it. Didn't I say so?" crowed and chuckled the triumphant
+Gill.
+
+"However, I didn't steal it," continued Frank. "There is a story I should
+like to tell you, Professor Elliott. Its telling now may save some trouble
+later on."
+
+"Yes--yes," nodded Mr. Elliott in a somewhat disturbed way. "Of course
+there is a mistake. Officer, please come with me to the library. I wish to
+look into this affair."
+
+"I would like to have Gill Mace and my friend, Ned Foreman, come with us,
+sir," suggested Frank.
+
+"Certainly, Jordan. Charged with robbery! Dear me! Officer, this is a
+pretty serious action on your part."
+
+"I'm only doing my legal duty, sir," insisted the constable.
+
+"You have a warrant for the arrest of our student, then?"
+
+"No, sir, I haven't," acknowledged the officer, "but the sheriff said I had
+a right to act in the premises."
+
+"How so?" demanded Mr. Elliott.
+
+"This lad, Mace, came to us and declared that he had seen in the possession
+of the Jordan boy a diamond bracelet stolen from his uncle at Tipton, the
+town that both of them came from."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He had telegraphed for his uncle to come on at once. He expects him on the
+eight o'clock train. The sheriff said that, in a way, the case being under
+the jurisdiction of another State, we might hold the accused as a fugitive
+from justice, pending identification."
+
+"Fugitive, nonsense! identification, fiddlesticks!" commented the old
+professor testily. "Jordan isn't going to run away. As to his
+identification, he has turned the property in question over to me, and,
+knowing him as I do, I would stake a good deal that when he comes to
+explain matters it will clear up the situation so far as he is concerned.
+You have no legal right to apprehend Jordan, officer, and we certainly will
+not allow you to disgrace him through an arrest, except by due process of
+law."
+
+"With every respect to you, sir," said the constable humbly, "what am I to
+do, then?"
+
+"Go back to town, wait till this man Mace arrives, and bring him here to
+consult with me."
+
+Frank gave the professor a grateful look. He felt at that moment that Mr.
+Elliott was indeed what Bob Upton had so enthusiastically declared him to
+be "a good old man."
+
+"Now, then," continued Professor Elliott, waving the constable away as they
+entered the library, "we will get at the bottom of this matter. This is the
+bracelet in question, is it, Jordan?" he inquired, indicating the little
+parcel Frank had given him.
+
+"I think it is, Mr. Elliott."
+
+"How did you come by it?"
+
+"If you please, Mr. Elliott," said Frank, "I would like to tell you my
+story in private. It involves another person, and also some facts about his
+relatives, which he might not be disposed to have made public property."
+
+"Very well," answered the professor, and he led the way to his private
+office at the end of the library and closed its door.
+
+Frank told his story from beginning to end, and he had an interested and
+sympathetic listener.
+
+When he had concluded, the professor extended his hand, and Frank was proud
+to grasp it.
+
+"Jordan," he said, "you are a noble fellow. I liked you from the first; I
+like you better than ever now. If every boy in the school came to me as you
+have done he would find in me a true friend. I hope you will tell the boys
+so."
+
+"I don't have to," declared Frank. "They all know you are a good old--I
+mean, their friend," stammered Frank, checking his impetuous utterance just
+in time, "but they are a little shy."
+
+Professor Elliott returned to the library and Frank accompanied him.
+
+"Mace," said the former, "you may have acted on your best convictions, but
+I am assured that you have made a great mistake."
+
+"I don't see how," muttered Gill stubbornly. "There's the bracelet. He had
+it, didn't he? So he stole it."
+
+"That does not follow--except in your perverted opinion," observed the
+professor drily. "We will move no further in this matter until your uncle
+arrives. Foreman, I wish to have a word with you."
+
+"Yes, sir," bowed Ned politely.
+
+"I will give you a note to my attorney in Bellwood. You will tell him all
+that Jordan has told you, as to his experiences with the person who visited
+us in your behalf the other day. My lawyer will ferret out this mystery
+concerning you, and I feel pretty sanguine you will discover something of
+decided interest and profit to you."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"None of you three need report for studies today, as I may desire to see
+any or all of you later on quick notice."
+
+The boys were dismissed. Gill Mace looked suspicious and mystified, Ned was
+radiant, Frank felt that his patience and loyalty to his friends were about
+to score a grand result.
+
+Just then the door opened, and a blustering and excited form burst into the
+room.
+
+It was Samuel Mace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+"Hello, Gill," said the jeweler to his nephew, and then, glaring at Frank
+and facing Professor Elliott in an insolent way, he added: "Now, what's
+doing here?"
+
+"Is this Mr. Mace?" inquired the professor, advancing courteously.
+
+"Yes, it is," retorted the jeweler in an ungracious tone, "and I want to
+know who's been interfering with my affairs, and where's the diamond
+bracelet that Jordan boy stole from me?"
+
+"This lad stole no bracelet from you, Mr. Mace," said Professor Elliott
+positively, and placing his hand on Frank's shoulder.
+
+"Hello! There's a scheme to cheat me and save him, is there?" flared out
+the jeweler. "The constable gave me to understand that. See here, Elliott--
+if that is your name----"
+
+"I am Professor Elliott, yes," interrupted the academy president.
+
+"Well, I paid my nephew's tuition to have him associate with decent boys--
+not with a thief that you seem to be shielding and harboring here."
+
+"We are not used to this kind of language at Bellwood School, Mr. Mace,"
+observed the professor with dignity and sternness. "You will kindly desist
+from using the same and act like a gentleman, or leave this room."
+
+"If I do, it will be to have that Jordan boy behind the bars mighty quick!"
+declared Mace.
+
+"It would be the mistake of your life, Mr. Mace, and a costly experiment
+for your pocket. This boy is innocent of the outrageous, and I might say
+cowardly and unfounded, charge you make against him. I shall ask you to
+remain here for about an hour, while I attend to some details of this case
+which will enable me to give you a clear statement as to who stole your
+property."
+
+"If it's no scheme to sneak Jordan away----" began Mace.
+
+"Silence, sir!" ordered the professor. "Foreman, kindly show Mr. Mace to my
+private office and get him the morning paper from the city to read."
+
+"I'll take my bracelet first, if you don't mind," said Mace, extending his
+hand.
+
+Professor Elliott took out the little packet that Frank had given him, and
+turned it over to the jeweler. Mace opened it eagerly. Then he gave a jump
+and uttered a howl that fairly electrified those about him.
+
+"What's this?" he yelled, displaying a piece of jewelry and nearly choking
+with excitement. "You're all in a scheme! You're all thieves! I'll have you
+all arrested!" and he flung the bracelet to the farther end of the room.
+
+"What's the matter, uncle Sam?" inquired Gill Mace.
+
+"Matter?" screamed the jeweler, hopping madly from foot to foot. "That
+isn't my bracelet at all."
+
+"What?" involuntarily exclaimed the startled Frank.
+
+"It's a cheap imitation affair with paste stones in it."
+
+"Is this possible?" inquired Mr. Elliott in surprise.
+
+"Yes, 'tis, and somebody knows it. Don't you crow nor laugh over me, Frank
+Jordan!" raved Mace.
+
+"We had better not talk about crowing and laughing just now, Mr. Mace,"
+said Frank seriously. "I think I understand about the bracelet, which I
+believed until this moment to be the one stolen from Tipton."
+
+"Yah! Yes, you did!" derided the jeweler.
+
+"I think I now guess out the mystery of this substitution. As that
+explanation and the fate of the real bracelet may hang on the words of a
+dying man, you had better get down from your high horse and help us reach
+the facts in the case."
+
+Then in a low tone Frank told the professor that they had better see the
+wounded man, Dan, at the village hotel at once.
+
+Mace was induced to await the movements of Professor Elliott, and within
+five minutes the latter and Frank and Ned Foreman were wending their way to
+the village.
+
+It was arranged that Frank should visit the man Dan at the hotel, while
+President Elliott went to his lawyer with Ned.
+
+It was an hour later when Frank, his mission completed, hurried his steps
+to overtake Professor Elliott and Ned, just returning to the academy from
+the lawyer's office. While in the town Frank stopped at the post-office and
+received a letter from his father, in which his parent stated that he was
+much improved in health.
+
+"That's the best news yet," said the boy to himself.
+
+"My lawyer believes that there is some plot afoot on the part of that man
+Brady to rob Foreman of some fortune," explained the school president. "He
+knows who this 'Judge' Grimm is, and will see that Foreman gets his
+rights."
+
+"Yes," said Frank, "I have learned that this is true, and a good many other
+important facts in the case."
+
+"Then the man Dan was able to see you?" inquired Ned eagerly.
+
+"Yes, and he has told me everything," replied Frank. "He explained about
+the bracelet. It seems that Dan is not as bad as Brady and Jem, who stole
+it originally, right after I had visited the jeweler's shop. It was left in
+charge of Grimm, the lawyer. It was given with a sum of money to Jem after
+he and Dan brought me, supposed to be you, Ned, to the lawyer's office.
+After they brought me back to Bellwood, Jem and Dan went to the old cabin
+to settle up. Jem had the real bracelet. He palmed off a brass one on Dan.
+The latter discovered the fraud. There was a terrible fight. Dan is getting
+better. Jem has the real bracelet."
+
+"Which Mr. Mace will have some trouble in recovering, I fancy," observed
+Ned.
+
+"That is his business," remarked Professor Elliott drily. "We can now with
+the evidence of this man Dan positively prove your innocence, Jordan."
+
+"About Ned, here," said Frank, "it seems that recently a distant relative
+left his dead stepsister a legacy consisting of some mortgages and a house
+and lot. Brady learned of this. His wife being dead, the legacy goes to
+Ned. What Brady was figuring on was to become Ned's appointed guardian so
+he could manage, or, rather, mismanage the estate until Ned was twenty-one
+years of age."
+
+"We will soon have that phase of the case adjusted," observed the professor
+in a confident and satisfied tone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Hi, fellows, look there!" shouted Bob Upton.
+
+It was two days after the arrival of Samuel Mace, the jeweler, at Bellwood
+School, and the boys were engaged in their usual late afternoon sports on
+the campus. Bob was up and around again now, not much the worse for his
+experience with the "doctored" shoes.
+
+"A fight!" exclaimed several, and there was a rush for two combatants, who
+seemed sparring in dead earnest on the outskirts of the Banbury contingent.
+
+Banbury himself had just come striding from the school building in a great
+huff. He had rushed up to Gill Mace, and pulling him away from the others
+had engaged him in combat.
+
+All the fellows knew that when Professor Elliott came home a few days
+previous quite a lot of complaints and delinquencies awaited him. Among
+these the only one very serious was the burning of a haystack belonging to
+a farmer named Wadsworth.
+
+Suspicion had pointed to the Banbury crowd. The farmer had once caught
+several members of that group smoking in his barn, and had driven them out
+violently. Banbury had threatened revenge, and the day before Frank had
+returned from his trip in the covered wagon one of Farmer Wadsworth's
+haystacks had burned to the ground.
+
+Banbury had been summoned to the office of the president. Just now
+returning from it, he had started the present fight.
+
+As Frank and his crowd reached the scene of the conflict and joined the
+ring about the combatants Banbury struck out with a blow that sent Gill
+Mace reeling to the ground with a bloody nose.
+
+"Take that, you sneak!" shouted Banbury furiously.
+
+"Hello!" exclaimed Bob Upton. "He knows his right name at last."
+
+"I'll fix you," blubbered Gill, "you great big coward!"
+
+"You shut up, or I'll give you worse," threatened Banbury. "A nice fellow
+you are! Went and peached on me about that haystack."
+
+"You lied to the professor about us, saying we had a hand in it," declared
+Gill.
+
+"Well, you've got me suspended, sent home, and I'll probably be expelled."
+
+"You ought to be!" yelled Gill, as a twinge of pain made him howl anew. "It
+was you who got me sick smoking cigarettes and thought it was funny. Yes,
+and it was you, too," blabbed the mean-spirited traitor, "who put those
+brads in Bob Upton's shoes, so he would lose the race."
+
+"What?" shouted Dean Ritchie.
+
+He made a vigorous break through the ranks of the crowd with the word. "The
+cat was out of the bag" at last, the secret told. Banbury saw the doughty
+Ritchie coming for him. He turned in a flash.
+
+It was a race to the nearest school building. Banbury reached it first. The
+other boys, running after pursued and pursuer, arrived at the spot to find
+Banbury safe within the precincts of the classic temple of learning, and
+Ritchie fuming at the open doorway.
+
+"I say, let up, Ritchie," suggested Frank. "We've had enough squabbling."
+
+"Not a bit of it," demurred Ritchie. "No, sir. I said that if ever I found
+out who played that mean, low-down trick on Upton, the culprit or I would
+leave this school."
+
+"Well, it was Banbury, and he's going to leave, isn't he?" argued Frank.
+
+"Yes; but I said that one of us would go the worst licked boy in Bellwood.
+I mean to keep my word."
+
+Remonstrances were in vain. With a grim, resolute face, Dean Ritchie took
+up his post at the entrance to the academy, pacing up and down and waiting
+for his chance to have another interview with Banbury.
+
+It never came. Some of Banbury's crowd informed their leader of what was
+waiting for him, and Banbury managed to sneak out of the school by the
+rear, and reached the depot at Bellwood and was on his way home before
+Ritchie found out that he had escaped.
+
+"Well, let him go. A good riddance," commented Ritchie, when he was
+informed of the fact. "His crowd needs a further cleaning out, though. I
+suggest a law and order vigilance committee. There's going to be a rooting
+up of all the cads and sneaks around here, if I have my way. This is a
+decent school; we've got a grand old fatherly president, and the fellow who
+can't have fun without meanness has got to leave, that's all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A box, you say?" observed Frank Jordan one day, as Bob Upton came up
+calling.
+
+"Yes," returned Bob excitedly.
+
+"Just arrived?"
+
+"While you were out on the campus. Came by express, and directed to Mr.
+Frank Jordan, as big as life. What do you suppose it is?"
+
+"Maybe some fruit from my folks in the South," suggested Frank. "What was
+in the box?"
+
+"It's light. I shook it--nothing to indicate."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"I took it up to your room. Hey, Ritchie, and you, Foreman--come and be
+witnesses before Frank sneaks a box of goodies under cover."
+
+The little group proceeded pell-mell up the stairs and were soon in Frank's
+room. Eager, curious eyes observed a box about two feet square on a little
+stand.
+
+"There's holes in the top, and--hello! there's something alive in this box,
+Frank," declared Bob.
+
+"Yes, I can hear it scratching," put in Ritchie.
+
+"Oho!" exclaimed Frank, enlightened now. "This end up--handle with care. I
+know."
+
+"Know what, Jordan?" inquired Ned.
+
+But Frank did not answer. He had detached the shipping tag, and was reading
+some words written on its reverse side.
+
+"I am sending you my special pet, Rambo," the scrawl read, "because nothing
+is too good for you. Highly educated, gentle. I know you'll be good to
+him."
+
+Frank recalled his new friend, Dave, with a smile of pleasure. He took the
+cover off the box. Nestled contentedly in some soft hay at its bottom was a
+wonder-eyed little monkey. Beside the animal was a thin, long chain.
+
+To be sure, the boys made a lot of the cute little pet during the next
+hour. The word went around, and Rambo held quite a reception. A drink of
+water and a cracker put the animal in rare good humor, and he began to show
+off.
+
+Rambo would sit in a chair and hold a book, pretending to read. He could
+whirl around, hanging by his tail from a hook in the ceiling. His agility,
+displayed in springs, curvets and climbing, was something prodigious.
+
+Frank arranged the box comfortably, and lots of fun they had with the
+clever, friendly little animal.
+
+Mace and his crowd, with their usual envy for the enjoyment of others,
+complained finally that the chattering of the monkey awakened them nights.
+This was not true, but obedient to the suggestion of the monitor, until the
+faculty could act in the affair, Frank shut Rambo up in a room in the
+unused attic nights, not wishing to trust him along with the other animals
+in the academy stables.
+
+This was a providential move, it developed later. The second night of
+Rambo's isolation, toward morning, Frank was awakened by the crash of
+glass. He got up to find that the monkey had burst in through the outside
+window. Rambo was bleeding and shivering on the floor.
+
+"Hello, this is strange!" exclaimed Bob, roused up also from sleep. "I say,
+Frank, I smell smoke!"
+
+"That's so," replied Frank quickly. "Where does it come from?"
+
+They ran out into the corridor, to quickly trace the smoke to its source.
+It evidently proceeded from the attic. Rushing there, Frank and Bob found
+some rafters on fire. They had evidently ignited near the chimney.
+
+Rambo, it seemed, frightened at his danger, had broken through the attic
+window and had reached the boys' room in time to warn them. The fire was
+soon extinguished, but it might have been serious had it not been
+discovered in time.
+
+That settled it for useful, vigilant Rambo. He was given permanent quarters
+in Frank's room, and was treated like a hero by the academy boys.
+
+Another box came to Frank a few days later--from his father in the sunny
+South. It was filled with oranges, pineapples and other luscious fruits,
+and there was a gay supper in Frank's room that night. Even Gill Mace and
+his crowd were invited, and little Rambo was an honored guest at the
+banquet.
+
+Frank felt that the disturbed air of the academy was clearing. Certainly
+his own affairs and those of Ned Foreman had come out most satisfactorily.
+
+Samuel Mace had been convinced that Frank was innocent of any connection
+with the theft of the diamond bracelet. He had started out the officers of
+Bellwood to look up the real robbers, Tim Brady and his accomplice, the man
+Jem.
+
+These two rascals had got an inkling of what was up and had fled the
+country--not, however, until they had disposed of the bracelet to an
+innocent purchaser. The jeweler had to pay out a large sum of money to
+recover it.
+
+Gill Mace was compelled to retract in public his false charge against
+Frank, and the vindication of the latter was made complete. Then, to the
+surprise of our hero, came word from Banbury that Gill had once boasted of
+cutting loose a house that was being moved up a hill, using Frank's knife
+for that purpose and thereby getting our hero in trouble. This matter was
+investigated, and in the end Samuel Mace had to pay for the wrecking of the
+old building. This angered the jeweler, and he punished his nephew severely
+for his misconduct.
+
+A pleasant position on a farm was secured for the man called Dan, who
+promised to lead an honest life in the future.
+
+As to Ned, the homeless lad felt that the greatest happiness in the world
+had come into his life. The lawyer, Grimm, had been frightened into telling
+all about Brady's plot. The estate that belonged to Ned was traced, and
+Professor Elliott was legally made the boy's guardian.
+
+The academy president called Frank, Ned and Bob to his office one evening,
+and informed them of the pleasant outcome of their affairs.
+
+"Just think of it," said Ned, with happy tears in his eyes. "I'm sure of an
+education now, and all through the loyal friendship of the best boy I ever
+knew, Frank Jordan."
+
+"I echo that sentiment," added Bob. "Why, say, I didn't know life was
+really worth living till I met Frank."
+
+"Forget it, fellows," ordered Frank modestly, though flushing with genuine
+pleasure. "You may help me to win some battles yet."
+
+"Jordan," spoke the bland old professor, handing a sealed letter to Frank,
+"you may feel very proud sending that letter to your father. It tells all
+the good things I know about a noble, honorable boy."
+
+"Well, professor," replied Frank, "we've made you a good deal of trouble.
+Now we're going to get down to good hard work."
+
+"And play," added Professor Elliott, with the kindly, earnest smile that
+made him the true friend of the boys of Bellwood School.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Boys of Bellwood School, by Frank V. Webster
+
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