"I wish it was a lie!" Lee groaned.
"It is!"
"I have just come from Connelly's saloon, down in one of the worst parts of the city. I was told to go there and I would find the evidence I wanted. I went; and I have just returned. Badger was at Connelly's the night before the Crested Foam excursion. It is an all-night resort—though it professes, I believe, to close at midnight. Badger left there at about two or three o'clock, blindly intoxicated. He was simply reeling drunk. He must have gone from there to the wharf, and there he fell into the hands of Barney Lynn, who drugged him for his money. This is true, Winnie. There isn't the slightest doubt about it. I wish it were all a terrible mistake, but it isn't. And that was not the first time that Badges had reeled out of Connelly's far into the night, drunk. He is given to just such drunken debauches."
Winnie Lee's heart seemed to have turned to lead in her bosom. She was cold from head to feet, except that in her cheeks bright spots burned. Her father looked at her with anguished eyes. He noted the pallor and the hectic spots.
"Winnie, I can't let you throw yourself away on such a fellow as Buck Badger! You must put him out of your thoughts. He is unworthy of you. I thought he was an honorable young man, and now I find I was mistaken. I shall make further inquiries, but those I have made to-night are enough to condemn him. You must not see him again, and you must have nothing further to do with him. I want you to tell him just what I have said—or I shall tell him myself, and give him a piece of my mind in the bargain."
Winnie knew that she was trembling as with an ague, but she tried to hold her emotions in check that she might fight for herself and for Buck. Everything was at stake now, she felt, for she loved Badger with an absorbing love.
"You have simply been deceived, father," she insisted. "I know it. Like many Yale men, Buck has been a little wild at times. He knows it and acknowledges it But as for that night and that excursion, that isn't true, I don't care who told you. Buck has a good many enemies, and some of them have come to you with this story. Tell me who told you, in the first place."
"It wouldn't be right just now for me to give his name. And it is not needed. Connelly admitted that Badger had been there often, and had gone from there drunk the night before the steamer excursion. He remembered it, because the story of the fire and of Lynn's death, and the drugging of Badger, was in the papers, and he could not forget the time. I wish it wasn't true, Winnie; but it is true. It will be hard, perhaps, for you to give him up, but better that than for him to make you unhappy, as he is sure to do."
"Hard!" she mentally cried. "It will kill me!"
He looked at her pathetically, yet with decision and firmness.