Varrell’s first impulse was to let out a yell of triumph that would make the whole dormitory entry ring; his second, to make sure that his triumph was real. There was no question of the identity of the check; he had heard too much about the details of the case to have any doubt on that score. But would not a skilled liar like Bosworth be able to squirm out of even a predicament like this?
The senior turned again to Eddy, who was now leaning upon the table, his head buried in his arms, weeping in great despairing sobs. “I see how it is,” said Varrell, sternly. “You learned the combination and induced Bosworth to steal the money; he divided it with you, and when this was spent you stole from the rooms.”
“It isn’t so!” sobbed the boy. “I never stole a cent in my life. Bosworth did it all! I told him of the combination,—and that’s all I had to do with it. I didn’t know he stole it till long after, when he told me that the money he’d lent me had come from the safe, and I’d be arrested too if he was caught. But I never stole a thing in my whole life—and I’ve paid him almost up, too. Oh, I’m so unhappy! What will my mother do, if I have to go to jail!”
Varrell laid his hand gently on the lad’s quivering shoulder. The inquisitor’s heart was touched.
“You won’t go to jail at all if you brace up and make a clean breast of the whole thing,” said the senior. “You haven’t done anything wrong, except to cover up another’s villainy.”
He waited quietly for the sobs to slacken, with his hand still on Eddy’s shoulder. And while he waited, there smote upon his ear from the direction of the campus another roar, tumultuous and long drawn out, that rose and subsided and rose again, like the howl of the northwest wind on a winter night.
“Their game is over, too,” mused Varrell. “I wonder if they have had our luck.”
CHAPTER XXVI
A DOUBLE ASSIST
And now for the finish of the game. When Dick and Varrell made their hurried exit from the field, the sixth inning was just under way, each team beginning over again at the head of its batting list. The cheering that Dick had heard while he was waiting at the steps of Carter was provoked by the successful retirement of the first three Hillbury batters. The three men who headed the Seaton list had already gone out in order. With a balance of one in the score in favor of Hillbury, and hits few and far between, the visitors’ confidence was growing. Every additional zero in the Seaton score now meant another nail in the Seaton coffin.