One by one old Tom had taken the loafers with him on a long walk up the beach. He was usually gone about an hour and always came back laughing and chatting with his friend in the best of humour. Invariably the loafer went to work.
In the same way he took a walk with each one of a crowd of wild, unmannerly boys, whose rudeness at the table and whose horse-play about the building had become unendurable. The effects of these walks seemed magical. Always the pair returned in a fine humour and the most marked revolution was immediately noted in the conduct of the offender.
Norman asked the old man again and again for the secret of his power.
He replied in the most casual way:
"Just had a plain heart-to-heart talk with 'em and told 'em what had to be—that's all."
The good work had continued for a week with uninterrupted success, when a bomb was suddenly exploded in the executive council by the appearance of an irate mother leading an insolent fourteen-year-old cub, who walked rather stiffly.
Amid a silence that was painful, the mother stripped the boy to the waist, thrust him before Norman and Barbara, and said:
"Now, tell them what you've just told me."
The boy glanced cautiously around to see if his enemy were near and poured forth a tale the like of which had never been heard before.
"Old Tom asked me to take a walk with him. He got me away off in a lonely place behind the big rocks on that little island up the beach and pulled up a plank drawbridge so I couldn't get back till he wanted to let me. He stripped me like this, tied me to a whipping-post and nearly beat the life out of me. He said he'd been appointed by the council to settle with me in private so nobody would know anything about it."