"And what do you make out the fellow was doing in the doctor's cottage?" asked Harry.
"Putting back the manuscript he had fixed up. He had written in the lines he thought were some one else's, and then he put it back. He must have just come from taking it away when I first heard him."
"Things fit in pretty well, Art," said Harry. "Pete Herring has always had it in for Jack since he first came here. Do you remember what Jack said to him? 'What was your father?' asked Pete in that nasty way he has, when Jack told him his father was dead. 'A gentleman,' said Jack and the emphasis he put on the word just hammered home the idea that he didn't think Pete was one. It was the neatest thing I ever heard. Do you remember it?"
"Yes, and I guess Pete hasn't forgotten it either."
"Well, he was pretty sure that Jack would take the prize, as he generally does, and he fixed up this plot, never supposing that he had got hold of one of Jack's own poems."
"He always makes some stupid break like that," said Billy, "that upsets him. It takes a smart fellow to be a rogue, and Pete isn't quite smart enough. Another time when he tried to get back on Jack he made some such blunder as this, and gave himself away."
"You didn't say anything this morning?" said Arthur.
"No, for I was thinking things over. When I got to talking about it with you fellows it all came out straight."
"Well, Jack got the prize anyhow," remarked Harry, "and I don't suppose there is any use in saying anything about it. If you didn't actually catch Pete in the act and recognize him, he could easily say that he was not out of his tent that night, and Merritt would back him up."
"Yes, of course, but if he knows that I and young Smith and a lot more of the boys know it he won't put on so many frills after this;"