“Why,” Sam answered, “he said that he wouldn’t touch it for a thousand dollars, and if ever the prisoner needed money or anything during his six months, all he needed to do was to send to him. Father was telling mother about the whole thing last night when I went home, and when I went in he jumped up and hugged me and kissed me. He hasn’t done that before since I was a little boy.”
“Now I know why Paul used to forget his game and stare at the jail windows so hard,” said Benny Mallow.
“Ye-es,” chattered Charlie Gunter, “and why he—he was al-always wh-wh-wh-whistling when he passed the jail.”
“And why he never could be happy unless a game of ball was going on in the lot by the jail,” resumed Benny. “If I’d only known all about it, I would have sweated to death on the hottest day of the summer rather than not have obliged him.”
“Some of the girls thought it was very unmannerly for Paul to have been the first to leave Benny’s party the night of the escape,” said Will Palmer. “I’m going to call specially on each one of those girls and make her take it back.”
“And if either of them refuses,” said Sam Wardwell, “just you tell me. She sha’n’t ever eat another philopena with me while she lives; not if she lives for a thousand years.”
“He begged me to tell all of you boys that he hadn’t anything to do with the catching of the prisoner,” confessed Benny, for the first time. “I wish I’d gone and done it right away! Oh dear; I do think I’m the very wickedest boy that ever lived—except Cain.”
“I wonder who told the judge so much about Paul’s father?” asked Ned Johnston.
“Why, Mr. Morton, of course,” replied Canning Forbes. “Haven’t you seen through that yet? Mr. Morton told in school one day, you know, that Paul was the son of an old friend of his.”
At least half of the boys had not put the two ends of this thread together before, but they all admitted that Canning had done it correctly.