“Hold on!” interrupted Fred. “Don is a friend of mine, and somehow I can’t bear to hear him abused. Besides——”
Here Fred stopped and jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the open door. The boys looked, and saw Don and Bert in the act of hitching their ponies to a tree on the opposite side of the road. They were dressed in citizens’ clothes, and although they did not walk with the regulation step, nor turn square corners, any one could see at a glance that they had been under military training, and that they had paid some attention to it.
Lester took just one look at them, and then leaned his elbow on the show-case and rested his head on his hand. He had evidently forgotten what he was going to say about Don.
“Another thing, Gordon has never said a word to my brother or me about you since he came home,” continued Fred. “He isn’t that sort. He is much too manly to try to build himself up by pulling others down, and that is more than I can say for some lads with whom I happen to be acquainted.”
“Then who told you that ridiculous tale about me?” demanded Lester, wincing a little under the covert rebuke contained in Fred’s last words.
“Our information came from a very reliable source,” was the rather unsatisfactory reply. “I know we live a good many miles from Bridgeport; but we manage to keep pretty well posted in some things that happen there.”
“His uncle told him all about it,” said Enoch, turning his back toward Fred, and speaking in a low voice. “No one else could have done it, if Don or Bert didn’t.”
The “uncle” referred to was the Mr. Packard who owned the Sylph—the yacht in which Enoch and his band of deserters made their runaway voyage. He was an old man with all a boy’s love of fun. He was very fond of his nephews, Fred and Joe, with whom he corresponded regularly, and it is reasonable to suppose that if anything amusing or exciting happened at the academy, he did not neglect to speak of it in his letters.
“And we took Mr. Packard’s relatives off the Mystery and saved them from going to the bottom of the bay with her!” exclaimed Lester, in deep disgust.
“But that was after the fight, you know,” whispered Enoch. “He wouldn’t say anything against our courage now, I’ll bet you.”