“Oh, it’s all right, Merriwell. Billings must have done it, for a joke, himself.”
“Not by a blamed sight!” came surlily from Billings, who seemed to have sobered up wonderfully when he realized that the watch really belonged to Gooch instead of Merriwell. “I may have taken considerable punch, but I’m no practical joker, and I won’t be called a thief by anybody. Anybody calls me a thief I’ll fight him right here and now!”
Billings seemed, in a half-drunken manner, to realize that he was suspected by some of having stolen the watch.
“Oh, I don’t think you took it, Newt,” hastily said Gooch, as the freshman glared at him.
“Well, it’s a good thing f’you that you don’t!” growled Billings.
Then he turned to another freshman and muttered plainly enough for all to hear:
“I’d punch face off’n him if he hinted anything of the sort! Dunno where the old watch came from. Took it out of Merriwell’s pocket.”
“One thing is certain——” began Harry Rattleton.
“And that one thing is that Frank Merriwell did not steal Gooch’s watch,” finished Charlie Creighton.
“Oh, I don’t want to think anything like that!” hastily exclaimed Sidney, with apparent sincerity. “As for Billings, he has not been near me this evening, so he could not be the one who took it from me.”