“Tell me what it is all about, Tom, won’t you?” asked Hugh, as he followed the other upstairs to his own room. Somehow, Tom seemed to feel that they ought to be alone so his mother might not overhear what passed between them.

“I’ll just close the door, Hugh, before I say anything,” remarked Tom, “though for that matter there’s no danger Benjy will interrupt us, because he’s gone off for the evening. This time I’m glad to tell you it’s to a sociable they’re having over at our church for the young people.”

His manner when saying this showed that Tom would be a happy fellow, indeed, if he could only know that every night Benjy was away from home, he was enjoying himself in similar innocent amusements as on this particular occasion.
116

“It’s this way, you see, Hugh,” he continued, after finding a seat close to his visitor, “for a little while now Benjy’s been acting mighty decent, and I’ve come to let myself take on more hope than I had the last time you and I talked it over. He seems more like his old self, and was even asking some questions about the scouts, though up to now he’s never seemed to care a thing about our organization, you remember. But it was too good to last, Hugh.”

Remembering what he had seen that afternoon, with Benjy counting silver coins he had received from the bird fancier, Hugh himself was obliged to mentally confess that it looked very much that way.

“Go on, please, Tom!” he urged when the other paused.
117

“Well, this is how it happened,” explained the other, slowly, as though he hated to talk about such a painful subject, and had to force himself to take it up only because he knew it was necessary he should enter into details. “After supper this evening, just before Benjy went out, he gave me a quick look when he thought I wasn’t paying any attention, and then slipped upstairs. I waited for a little while, and then just couldn’t stand it any longer, so I managed to leave the sitting room and go up the back stairs.

“Keeping on my tiptoes, I moved along the upper hall in the half shadows to where I could watch the door of my room. It was partly open, and there was a light inside, but I couldn’t see Benjy at all, though I could hear him moving about as if looking for something. Then the light suddenly went out, and he came out. Hugh, it made me as cold as ice when I even heard him chuckling to himself as he hurried to his own room, just as if he thought he had played a good joke on me.”

“Of course he didn’t know you were so close to him?” asked Hugh when Tom stopped talking to swallow as though something seemed to be choking him.

“No, and as soon as he disappeared in his own room I slipped downstairs again, and took up the book I had been reading. He went off a few minutes afterwards, and called out good-night to all as cheery as he used to in the old days before he got going with that tough set.”
118

“Did you come up here and look around to find out what he had been doing?” asked the scout master.

“I wanted to the worst kind, Hugh, but it seemed as if I just couldn’t. I was almost afraid to look for fear of making some more discoveries that would upset me. Why, Hugh, honest to goodness, I feel so weary this very night you would think I was an old man, and yet I’ll be sixteen to-morrow, you remember.”

“Well,” Hugh told him, “it’s always my principle, when I’ve got a disagreeable task to perform, to get at it right away. The longer you wait, Tom, the worse it gets for you. The only way is to shut your teeth hard together, and pitch in.”

“I guess you’re right, Hugh—sure you must be. I’ve been silly to hold back. No matter what I learn, the truth can’t be any worse than this terrible uncertainty that’s gripping me, and making me shiver as if I had the ague again.” He jumped from his seat as though determined to carry his words into effect.

“I suppose the first thing I ought to look at is my trunk, eh, Hugh?” he went on to say, fumbling in a pocket for his keys.
119

“Well, you know better than I do where you keep your valuables,” said the other, trying to appear merry, though somehow, Tom did not respond to any appreciable extent. “I see that since that other time I was up here you’ve changed your way of leaving your trunk unlocked.”

Tom flushed, and shook his head.

“Oh! I tell you it galled me to think I was locking it against my own brother,” he said, tremulously, “but then I remembered that it is a sin to put temptation in the path of any fellow whose weakness you know. Though for that matter a common key would unlock this trunk.”
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