“Then, if you are so sure you have got the right of it, what was the use of coming here to talk with me?”
Frank was nettled by the colonel’s injustice. He tried hard to restrain himself and to give the older man the respect which was rightfully his due, but a little temper flashed in his words.
“Young man,” was the icy response, “I try to be a true sportsman; and, while you and that red-headed chum of yours have made a sorry exhibition of yourselves, I have an idea as to where the cause lies. You are at fault, of course, but I do not think that you are quite as much at fault as some one else whom I could name.”
“You mean Darrel?” Frank asked quickly.
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Frank warmly, “I want to tell you that you are mistaken, and that Ellis Darrel hadn’t the first thing to do with what happened near Camp Hawtrey yesterday afternoon.”
“You are under the influence of that scapegrace nephew of mine,” stormed the colonel. “Do you think I’m not able to see it? He has set you against Jode. Do you admire a sneak, Merriwell? What, under heavens, has got into you that you can’t see through the plans of that—that young marplot?”
Here was the colonel, wrong in every way because of Lenning’s influence, accusing his other nephew of being a sneak and a marplot. Frank rallied promptly to the defense of his new chum.
“Darrel is not a sneak, sir,” said he. “I’m not under his influence, either, in forming my own estimate of Jode Lenning.”
The colonel tossed his hand deprecatingly.