"If I hadn't been a fool by nature, I'd never lighted the thing!" he cried, in supreme self-contempt. "Your confidence in me, old man, has given me confidence in myself. This settles it! I am done with cigarettes forever. You'll never again discover me with one in my lips!"
Bart had meant to keep his pledge in the first place, but Frank's failure to reproach him for falling, and Frank's confidence in his ability to stop smoking gave him the needed confidence in himself—filled him with a determination not to be defeated. And from that hour he never again smoked a cigarette.
"Now we're all right again," said Merriwell, heartily, as Bart came back from the window. "Sit down while I relate a very interesting tale to you."
Bart sat down, and Frank told what he had seen and heard through following Snell.
"That sneak makes me sick!" cried Hodge, fiercely. "I'd like to get another chance at him! Why, he's the biggest sneak in this school!"
"That's right."
"Gage couldn't hold a candle to Snell."
"Gage was bolder; Snell is a bigger sneak."
"That's about the size of it. What are you going to do with the fellow?"
"I think it would be well to catch him in company with the man in black when they meet to-morrow night."