“Arrest me!” he exclaimed. “What for?”
“You know,” declared Zeke in a mournful voice.
“Nonsense, Zeke. Nobody’s going to arrest Harry Watson any more than they are me,” interrupted Mr. Martin. “And now if you’ll just get over your desire to create a mystery and tell me what this is all about, I’ll quickly settle it—and if you don’t, I’ll ask somebody who can tell me the plain facts without any trimmings.”
Fond as he was of beating about the bush and giving vague hints and meaning glances, rather than a plain statement of facts, Zeke, however, did not wish to be deprived of exploding the bomb.
“Pud Snooks says he seen young Watson running away from the fire, and he and a lot of us smelled kerosene just as the blaze started, and Mirandy and the rest of us has been saying that there won’t be any house safe in Rivertown until that boy is fast behind lock and key.”
His son having told him during supper the trick the bully had tried to play on Harry which had come so near to resulting in the death of the little children; also about the new student’s preventing Pud from snowballing the crippled veteran, and his attempt to foul the boy during the race on the river, Mr. Martin readily realized the story was but the emanation of the bully’s brain.
Raising his voice so that it could be heard by all within a radius of fifty feet, the village Nestor exclaimed:
“That’s utter nonsense, Zeke. Harry Watson is a good boy. He comes from an honorable family, and there’s no more reason for accusing him of setting Jed Brown’s place afire than there is of accusing me!” Then the patriarchal man paused a few moments to allow the murmurs of surprise to subside before he added in a still louder voice than at first, for the greater effect:
“Besides, Harry Watson has been at my house all the evening, and came to the fire together with my boy, Paul, several of his friends, and myself.”
“But Pud said he seen him!” declared several people, evidently unwilling to accept Mr. Martin’s words.