"I will put up a good fight!" he whispered.
Frank had spent his last evening alone, a throng of distressful thoughts crowding in on him. His father was on some official business in town and his mother had not thought it necessary to break her weekly engagement with her bridge club. Frank wandered over to the hangars but he missed Lem and Chauncey and soon returned home. He was greatly excited over the coming trip, and had other and most serious reasons for wishing to go away. So many unpleasant thoughts crowded upon him that it was not until ten o'clock that he happened to think of his watch, still in Lawton at the pawnshop. He had not redeemed it, and the twenty-five dollars reposed in the bottom of his kit bag, in an envelope that had thread wound around it.
He reflected that he could send the money and his ticket back to the pawnshop man, for it was too late to take the trip to town. His parents were apt to return at any time. They did not come very soon, however, and Frank went to bed, a lonely, unhappy and sinning boy.
The boys had so much to look at that for awhile they were quite silent. Then Bill remembered something.
"Say!" he suddenly exclaimed. "We are having the deuce of a time at the school. Right in our quarters, too. Did you hear?"
"No," said Frank, still staring out. "What was it?"
"Somebody stole six hundred dollars from Captain Jennings next door to us. It was money he had to pay the Battery, and it is gone. There is an awful fuss about it."
"Will they arrest him?" asked Frank.
"Why, no; they won't do that, of course. He didn't steal it from himself, and Dad says he has money besides what he gets as captain, but I don't suppose he likes the idea of making it good. There is going to be an awful fuss about it."
"Did he lose it out of his pocket?" asked Frank.