CHAPTER XXSAM MAKES A SPEECH
It was late in the afternoon of Sam’s visit to the Major, and the club members were gathered in their house.
Sam, silent and preoccupied, was sitting in one corner. The Shark, in another, was somewhat skeptically regarding Step Jones, who was describing, for the benefit of the assembled company, a number of big fish that day caught through the ice of the mill-pond. Step’s arms were long, and his imagination was active.
“Gee, but those pickerel were regular old granddaddies!” he averred. “Smallest was this long.” He spread his hands. “Then came two or three about this size.” Another illustration. “Then there was the biggest.” And Step’s hands were moved farther apart.
“Aw, come off!” jeered the Trojan. “You’re thinking of ’em all, put end to end.”
“I’m not,” Step insisted. “What’ll you bet ’twasn’t this long?”
“Huh! You’re dreaming!”
“Dreaming nothing! Didn’t I see the fish?”
“You didn’t see any five-foot pickerel.”
“Tell you I saw one the length I’m showing you.”
Up sprang the Shark, and strode across the room, pulling a tape-measure from his pocket as he advanced. A good deal to Step’s embarrassment, he insisted upon making careful measure of the distance between the outstretched palms.
“Four feet, three and seven-eighths inches,” he announced. “Umph! Some fish, Step; yes, some fish!”
Step lost no time in lowering his arms. “Well, you fellows can josh if you want to; but you can’t prove I’m wrong.”
There was a shout of derision.
“No, sir—I won’t take off an inch!” declared Step.
The Shark grinned. “All right, Step. Only that couldn’t have been a pickerel; it must have been a muskellunge.”
“’Longe in the mill-pond! Sure thing!” snickered Poke.
“No, no,” Herman Boyd put in. “Step’s mixed—that’s all. He’s thinking of what Sam caught—Little Perrine and Tom Orkney.”
Over in his corner Sam roused at the name. “Who’s talking about Orkney?” he called out.
“I am,” said Herman.
“Any news of him?”
“No, thank fortune!” Herman was not an especially vindictive fellow; but he had disliked Tom exceedingly.
Sam rose, and came over to the group about Step.
“Listen, you chaps; I’ve something to say about Orkney,” he began.
“Speech, speech!” shouted Poke.
“Very well; I’ll make a speech,” said Sam. “You may not agree with me, but I’m going to give you the truth as I see it. We’re wrong in this Orkney business; we’ve been wrong all along.”
There was a ripple of dissent.
“Oh, I say, Sam!” protested Poke. “That’s going too far.”
“Not at all,” Sam insisted. “We were wrong in charging Orkney with a lot of things he never did.”
“I know—you’ve harped on that before.”
“Well, I’ll harp on it again.”
“But we thought he did ’em. He was mean enough to do ’em, if they’d occurred to him.”
“Go to it, Poke!” cried Step. “Now you’re shouting!”
Sam frowned. “Here!” he said impatiently. “Do I get my chance to talk, or don’t I?”
Poke made a burlesque bow. “Sir, I yield the floor,” said he.
“I say we made a mistake, and I mean it,” Sam went on. “Not liking Orkney, we forgot the old rule that you’ve got to hold anybody innocent of a charge till he’s proved guilty. Don’t stop me! You’ll try to argue that we had evidence against him, but, as we know now, it wasn’t proof, by a long shot. There was that business of the cap. Did we investigate it? We didn’t. If any one of us had taken the trouble to ask Mrs. Benton about it at the time, there’d be another storyto tell. Then every one of us jumped to the conclusion that Orkney came near drowning Little Perrine. Evidence? We hadn’t a bit.”
“But people said——” Poke began.
“Confound what people said! They knew no more than we did. They were jumping to conclusions, too. But we were saying things on our own account. Right here, in this room, Poke told us that we were responsible for blocking Orkney’s ambitions from the first, for taking the shine off him; that the Shark eclipsed him in mathematics and Step skimmed the cream from the Greek; that the crowd of us kept him from bossing the class. And all of us chimed in, and said it was so, and patted our own backs, and——”
“Hold on, Sam!” the Shark broke in. “How’d we do that? We’re not contortionists.”
“Hang it all! Don’t interrupt! You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know; I infer,” corrected the Shark. “Be accurate, be accurate!”
Sam’s temper flared. “What’s the matter, anyway? Don’t you want to hear me?”
“I do,” said the Shark calmly. “You’re talking sense. Therefore use sensible language.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Sam promised, “but listen to me, anyway. What I’m getting at is that, as Poke had it, if Orkney was driven out of town, we had a lot to do with the driving. We called it a good job, but was it? It wasnot! We didn’t play fair; we didn’t give him a square deal. He was entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and we always counted the doubt against him. I know, I know what you’re thinking—hewasa cub, and a chronic grouch, and a trouble maker; but the ugly fact remains that we accused him of a lot of things he didn’t do, and had no intention of doing. And I say, in such a case, it’s up to us to see that, at last, he gets a square deal. I don’t say it so much for his sake as for our own.”
“Umph! Matter of self-respect?” queried the Shark.
“Just that!” said Sam emphatically.
For a moment there was silence.
“But, Sam!” ventured Herman Boyd. “Aren’t you piling it on this crowd? SupposeOrkney was—er—er—os—os—what’s that word I want?”
“Ostracized?” suggested Step.
“That’s it—ostracized. Well, suppose that was what happened to Orkney. We didn’t do it—all. The whole school had a hand.”
“That doesn’t relieve us of responsibility for our part.”
“You’re right, Sam,” said Poke very soberly; for like the others he felt the influence of Sam’s earnestness. “You’re right. We’ve got some responsibility. We were boasting of it the other day, and we can’t crawfish and shirk it now. But what’s the practical thing? What can we do about it?”
“That’s it! What can we do?” echoed Step and the Trojan.
“We can talk, argue,” Sam explained. “We can tell people Orkney has been misjudged. We can spread everywhere the truth about Little Perrine.”
“Well, I’ll go so far, gladly,” said Step.
“Same here!” cried the Trojan.
“Of course,” agreed Poke.
The Shark was frowning slightly. “If you fellows had listened to my demonstrationabout the flight of the boulder, you wouldn’t have to listen now to Sam. But it’s better late than never.”
“Oh, cut the crowing!” said Step testily.
“Might as well—it’ll be the same story over again next time I try to put anything before you in black and white.”
Step turned to Sam. “I don’t like Orkney,” he said. “I never expect to like him. But I’ll promise to help set him right with the school. If there were any way to find him and bring him back, I’d jump at the chance.”
“Guess you can make that promise for the whole club!” exclaimed Poke.
“Sure!” cried the Trojan. The others nodded, a bit solemnly.
“Then we’ll consider it a definite agreement,” said Sam. “If any of us get a clue, a tip, a hint, the whole club will pull together in whatever may be done.”
Step laughed rather vaguely and glanced at the Shark.
“What are the mathematical odds against getting a clue, old Headlights? Figure ’em out for us.”
The Shark’s lip curled. “Can’t! Problem’s all unknown quantities. But you may have bull luck. It’s always coming to blooming idiots.”
Sam interposed in the interest of peace.
“Stow the joshing, fellows! We’ve reached an understanding, anyway. It’s settled that if anybody gets news of Orkney the club is to share it. I admit I don’t know where it can come from, but I’ll hope for it, all the same.”
Sam spoke guardedly enough, and with no suspicion that at that very moment Lon Gates lay in wait for him. And Lon had news, interesting certainly, and perhaps important.