Frank Merriwell's danger

by Burt L. Standish

Twice he cried out the name of the proctor. It was when the train was yet on the bridge, and then he realized that with the water-soaked blanket over his head the man could not answer if he heard.

But he felt that the ears of Digby Rudge were forever deaf to the sound of a human voice. By this time the deadly water had done its work, and the man was murdered.

Then Frank thought how four living persons besides himself had been ruined by this wild prank that had ended in a tragedy. The lives of the four fellows who had assisted in carrying out the scheme had been blighted.

“I am the one who is all to blame,” he told himself. “It was my plan. I’ll swear to that. I did the most of the work—I’ll swear to that. Perhaps it will help them.”

His mind worked strangely then, for he felt a twinge at one thought. He would make a clean breast of it—a full confession. He would try to lift as much of the burden as possible from the shoulders of the fellows with him; but he knew it would be regarded as bravado on his part. The finger of scorn would be pointed at him, and the newspapers would tell how he gloried in the deed. That thought hurt him.

“It will be part of my punishment,” he reasoned. “I shall deserve it all!”

Never before in all his life had Frank felt like a criminal, and the sensation was new to him. It was far more terrible to his sensitive nature than anything else could be. It filled him with repulsion for himself.

He did not try to make any excuses to himself by saying it was an accident. He felt that there could not be an excuse, for he had been warned by his feelings at a time when he could have stopped short of the act which brought about the tragedy.

When he remembered how he had felt, and how he had failed to stop then and there and set the proctor at liberty for all of anything his companions might say, he scorned himself as a coward. He was sure he had done one cowardly act, and this was what it had brought him to.

These thoughts raced through his mind as he floated on the surface of the river, trying to see something of the man who had been cast from the bridge. Farther and farther the current bore him, and still he peered across the dark bosom of the river in vain.