“I’ll keep on saying it as long as I have a breath in my body!” cried the boy. “If they torture me I’ll never change my mind, because I didn’t take it! I want you to believe I’m trying to live up to a scout’s vows, Hugh, sure I am!”
“Well,” said Hugh, firmly, “I do believe you, Andy. I’m going to stand by you through thick and thin, at least until they can show more proof than just the finding of an empty pocketbook in your coat would seem to be. The thief might have slipped it in my pocket just as easily; but that’s no reason people should say I stole it.”
“Everybody knows and trusts you, Hugh,” called out a man; “it’s different with him!”
“Yes,” Hugh instantly told him, with flashing eyes, “it is different with him, for he’s got a past to live down, and I honestly believe he’s doing it right well. For shame, that you’d be all the more ready to believe him guilty than any other boy. I’ve taken the trouble to test him more than once, and he proved faithful to his trust. We’re bound to believe him innocent until he’s absolutely proved guilty.”
Andy’s hand closed convulsively on Hugh’s arm when he heard him say that. No matter what might come to him in after life he would never forget how the scout master stood back of him in this, his hour of peril.
“Here comes the Chief,” said a man; “and he’s the boy’s uncle, too!”
“All the same he’s got to take him in if I prefer a charge against him, I want you to know!” cried the robbed poultry dealer, angrily. “He won’t get off easy because his uncle happens to be at the head of the Oakvale police force.”
“No danger of the Chief not doing his duty,” he was informed; “he knows his play, and if it was his own boy he’d run him in without a word.”
“And I happen to know the Chief used to be mighty sore about this nephew of his when the boy was running with that Corbley gang, and painting the town red,” another man sang out.
Hugh was in a quandary. If the little man insisted, the arrest must be made. Aside from the inconvenience it might cause poor Andy there was the disgrace attached to having a boy dressed in the khaki of a scout taken up on the Fair grounds on the charge of being a thief!