“You did that very nicely, Merriwell; but I don’t see why you sheltered us.”
“Sheltered you?” cried Frank. “Why, what did you have to do with it? You helped me hold him.”
“Because I knew he was mad. I am his friend.”
“I have never fancied you were my friend, Skelding.”
“Yet you did not tell the truth to those fellows. Even though Defarge tried to kill you, you did not tell the truth.”
“Defarge did not know what he was doing. I feel sure of that, for I saw madness in his face and eyes.”
Skelding nodded.
“You are right. He was mad, driven so by disappointment and by the devil’s drink he has been taking of late. It was a fearful blow to him, Merriwell, when he failed to make ‘Bones.’ I do not believe you unjustly used your influence against him; perhaps you were justified in your heart in using your influence thus. But he felt that you were the cause of his failure. He brooded over it. He has been drinking absinth, and it has made him a maniac.”
“I am sorry for him,” declared Frank sincerely. “He has always been ready to do me any and every possible injury, and yet I am sorry to see any man in such shape. Even though he might have wished to kill me, he would not have tried to do it this way had he been in his right mind. He would have known it meant hanging for him, and that would have restrained him.”
Skelding nodded.