“Why don’t you deny it?”
“Bah! Would you have me pike around after those fellows who have given me the cold shoulder and meachingly protest that I wasn’t boozy last night? Why, that would rejoice certain members of the bunch who, I’m sure, have taken prime joy in spreading the yarn.”
“You know, some fellows think you peached to the professor about that hazing business, and you haven’t denied it.”
“If I started in denying the lies cooked up about me, it’s plain I’d be kept plenty busy. By and by they may get tired of it and let up.”
“Perhaps you’ve never heard just why Lander happened to leave town so suddenly two years ago?”
“No.”
“Shortly before he got out, a series of petty robberies were committed in Oakdale, rousing the people here to a state of apprehension and indignation. The worst of these was the breaking into Stickney’s store one night and the pilfering of a whole lot of provisions, tinware, cutlery, and a gun. A day or two later Bunk Lander was caught in an old camp he had built out in the swamp back of Turkey Hill, and in that camp they found the stolen goods. They were going to send him to the reform school, but he was not taken into immediate custody, and ere he could be sent away he disappeared. His father, who is a poor, hard-working man, sent him off somewhere. Since then Mr. Lander has settled with the people who were plundered, fixing it up some way so that Bunk has ventured to return. I thought you ought to know all this, Rod.”
Grant rose, walking to the door and back. Standing beside the table, he looked at Ben.
“Right serious business,” he admitted. “But possibly Bunk didn’t realize just how serious it was. When I first came to Oakdale I heard some fellows who aren’t reckoned to be particularly bad chaps joking with one another about robbing orchards and plundering somebody’s grape arbors. I wonder if they realized that they were thieves.”
“Oh, but that’s different—in a way,” Ben hastily said.