"Yes."
The waiter brought the things ordered, and went away again.
"That Crested Foam affair is the cause, I fancy," Dunstan Kirk went on, breaking a cracker and helping himself to some cheese.
Frank Merriwell had thought the same, but he did not wish to say so.
"He hasn't acted right since then. And by right, I mean natural, you understand! I suppose it grinds him to know that such a fellow as Barney Lynn could drug and rob him in that way."
Merriwell flashed Dunstan Kirk a quick look. It was evident that the captain of the Yale baseball-team did not know that Buck Badger was intoxicated when he was lured aboard the excursion steamer, Crested Foam.
A similar imperfect knowledge of the true condition of affairs at that time had been noticed by Merriwell in the conversation of others. The newspapers in the notices of the burning of the steamer had given attention chiefly to Lynn, merely stating briefly that Badger had been drugged and robbed by the ex-boat-keeper.
"I shouldn't think it would be a pleasant reflection," Frank answered.
"Very humiliating to a man of Badger's character. And it has just taken the heart out of him. Until that time he was one of the most promising of the new pitchers at Yale. I was expecting good things from him. Now he seems to be nothing but a blighted 'has-been!'"
Merriwell smiled.