Bessie Bradford's Prize

by Joanna H. Mathews

"You seem to be short of breath, Flaggy; you're purring like a steam-engine. What ails you?"

"Can't a fellow take a run around the house without anything being the matter with him?" asked Lewis, sharply, but with a little nervous trepidation in his tone and manner; but the subject was now dropped, and he had more than recovered his composure and was taking an apparently interested part in the renewed discussion over Percy's loss, when the enraged Seabrooke entered the room.

"You scoundrel!" he ejaculated between his set teeth, and with his eyes actually blazing, "you stole this, did you?"—flourishing the note before the now terrified Lewis, who, taken thus by surprise, had no time to collect his wits and assume an appearance of unconcern and innocence. "You stole this, and to make it appear that I was the thief—the thief!—you put it in my trunk. Don't deny it," as Lewis endeavored to speak, "don't dare to deny it.—You were seen to do it!"

No other thought entered the head of the terrified Lewis than that Seabrooke himself had seen him at his shameful work, and that he had chosen to confront and convict him with it here in the presence of the rest of the school. He would have denied it could he have found words in which to do it, had he had time to frame a denial, but he was so entirely off his guard, so confounded by Seabrooke's sudden accusation and this evidence of the dastardly deed he had performed that he was utterly overwhelmed, and stood speechless, and the picture of detected guilt.

The doctor happened to be in one of the adjoining recitation rooms in conference with some of the other teachers over this very matter, and the raised tones—so very unusual—of Seabrooke's angry voice arrested his attention and called him into the main schoolroom.

To him Seabrooke, without waiting to be questioned, made known his complaint, and again displayed the note in proof thereof, accusing Lewis Flagg of stealing it and then placing it in his trunk for the purpose of criminating him, hoping that it might be found there before school broke up.

In this he did Flagg some partial injustice. Lewis had searched for and taken the money with the object of playing an annoying trick upon Seabrooke and Percy, but proposing, after giving both "a good fright," to put it back where he had found it, or in some other place in Seabrooke's alcove where he might be supposed to have mislaid it.

But once in his possession, the note excited his cupidity and a strong desire to keep it. If it were but his, he could easily clear off sundry debts which he had contracted, especially the remainder of that to Rice, which he had only partially satisfied. On his return to school after the Easter holidays it might well appear that he had an unusual amount of funds; a boy's relations were apt to be generous at such times, and no one need ever know the extent of his riches.

So reasoned this unprincipled boy, and he had actually made up his mind to make no attempt to restore the money to a place where it might be found, but to retain it for himself, when the doctor's address and a dread that his crime might after all be detected, decided him to return to his first intentions.

There was little time to be lost now. Seizing the first opportunity of slipping away from his schoolmates, he rushed upstairs to the dormitory with the design of throwing the note under Seabrooke's bed or bureau, where it might be supposed to have fallen; but seeing the trunk standing there ready packed, the impulse had taken him to put it in that, and without reflecting—perhaps hardly caring—that this would place Seabrooke in a still more embarrassing position, he thrust the note within, as Charlie Henderson saw, and fled from the room. He was rid of it in any event, and he cared little what the consequences might be to any one else, especially Seabrooke.