You could have heard a pin drop in the hall now.
"And one of these fellows—these scouts—suspected where I had gone and came up there after me and brought me to my senses." Roscoe's voice had grown gradually lower, and he spoke hesitatingly now, but the silence was so intense that every word was audible. "He pawned a gold medal he had to pay his way up there and he made me come back here. He missed his part in the big rally. He couldn't come back himself because he'd hurt his ankle.—He made me come back here where I belonged—to register!
"And then when he found—— No, wait a minute, I'll read you the letter!"
He was in a fine frenzy of enthusiasm again now that he had finished the recital of his own shameful part in the affair. He took out Tom's letter and read it—read every word of it—and finished it with his cheeks flushed and his voice ringing:
"... so I'm going away to help in a way I can do without breaking my word to anybody. The thing I care most about is that you got registered. And next to that I'm glad because I like you"—Roscoe shook his head hastily and stopped for a second to control his voice—"because I like you and I always did—even when you made fun of me——"
"What he liked me for, I'm hanged if I know—but that's the kind of a fellow Tom Slade is——"
"Whatever became of him?" some one on the platform whispered to some one else.
There was a slight sound back in the lobby of the hall.
"Somebody down there head him off; don't let him get away!" called Roscoe, stepping right to the front of the platform. "Start him down here! He didn't get away, did he?"
Roy Blakeley, vaulting over two rows of chairs, was in the aisle in three seconds. Everybody turned and looked toward the back of the hall. Some stood, peering cautiously into the dim lobby, where a little scuffle seemed to be going on. Then Roscoe himself leaped straight over the orchestra's space and started up the aisle.