“Oh! it’s kind of you to say that to me, Dick!” he exclaimed between his sobs, for he was completely aroused and could not control himself, though he tried hard to do so. “Tell me who did take the watch, then, that Mr. Holwell, the finest man on this whole earth, thought so much of?”
Dick laughed breezily, more to cheer the poor fellow up than because he considered it a joke.
“I wish I could tell you, Asa,” he said, quickly. “But so far it’s a mystery that has yet to be solved. But I’m dead sure you hadn’t a thing to do with the robbery, if that’s what you mean.”
“There was one favor I meant to ask you, Dick, if you thought I hadn’t better leave the camp,” continued Asa, presently, when he could master his emotion.
“All right, let’s hear it,” he was told encouragingly.
“To-night, and every night after this I want you to let me sleep next to you in your tent. Yes, and Dick, if only you’d fix it with a cord of some kind so that I couldn’t move about without your knowing it I’d feel easier. Then if another robbery was committed I’d begin to understand that I couldn’t be doing these terrible things in my sleep.”
“I’ll think it over, Asa,” the other told him. “Though I’m sure nothing like that is going to be needed to prove your innocence. Besides, since we’ve heard of Nat and the other fellows meeting with some sort of strange man in the woods, Mr. Holwell, Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Rowland begin to believe the secret of the robberies will be solved when we run across the wild man.”
Asa winked hard to clear his eyes from the tears.
“You’ve made me feel a whole lot easier, I tell you, Dick,” he said, and he persisted in squeezing the other’s unwilling hand with boyish fervor. “I hope and pray that it may come out that way. I’m trying as hard as I can to keep my promise to my mother, and she knows that it would nearly kill me if I found that I was going back to those old ways in my sleep.”
“Cheer up, Asa, and don’t let any of the other fellows see you looking as if you had lost your last friend. Mr. Holwell believes in you, and so does Harry Bartlett, and so do I. You’re going to be all right and as good as the next one. Sure! you can sleep alongside of me if you feel like it. But about that cord you mentioned, I hardly think it’ll be necessary.”