They had paused near the academy gate.
“Going home?” asked Ned.
“Home?” exclaimed Charley, misunderstanding him. “If I’ve got to get out of this town I’ll strike out for myself; I’ll keep away from home.”
“I mean are you going, now, to your boarding place?”
“Oh! I guess not yet. I’ll walk up with you. I want to talk this thing over a little more.”
To avoid passing through the center of the village, they crossed the yard to a field behind it, which brought them to Middle Street. As they went along, Shultz was saying:
“My people aren’t such swells as yours, Ned, though the old man is making some money. They’re German, but I was born in this country. It’s only lately that my father has been scraping together some dollars. All his life he’s had to pinch, and now he hangs on to the mazuma with a deathlike grip. It about breaks his heart when he has to send me my monthly allowance, and one reason why he put me here into this little school was because he thought it would be less expensive. Your people are different. You always have money. They might have sent you to any big school if you’d insisted on it.”
“I explained my mother’s reason for wishing me to come here. After that exposure at Hadden Hall, it seemed best that I should put in a year at some obscure school before entering an institution of importance. You see, considering our standing and family, she felt fearfully cut up over what happened at Hadden. If there’s a repetition of it here, it will make her hair turn gray. I may not betray my feelings to the extent that you do, but I’ll confess that this miserable mix-up has got me going. If you hadn’t struck that blow——”
“Oh, now you can’t blame me; you’d done the same under those circumstances. What I’d like to know is where that extra ace came from. You don’t suppose that sneak, Piper, slipped it into the pack, do you?”
Osgood shook his head. “I examined the cards after you fellows left. You know I stated at the time that I had two packs with the backs alike. Investigation showed me that the ace of spades was missing from the pack that was not in use. It got into the other pack, somehow, and that’s what makes me blame myself. You understand, Charley, that it was really through my own carelessness that this whole thing came about.”