“Ever since he started going with the set that trains with the newcomer in Oakvale, Park Norris,” commenced Tom, “Benjy seems to have changed ever so much, and all for the worse. It worries me heaps, and I don’t know how I’m to get him back again. He seems to listen, with a curl to his lip, whenever I speak about it, and I’m sure I try to act the big brother to him, with my arm about his shoulders.”
“Tell me what’s happened since I saw you last, Tom,” urged the scout master, desirous of getting at the “meat in the cocoanut” as quickly as possible, for he had an hour or so to put in at studying, and, besides, was pretty tired after a strenuous day.
“I will, Hugh. That was what brought me here to see you. When we talked matters over before, you promised to help me.”
“I repeat that promise, Tom. As the temporary head of the troop, I could do no less; and as your old chum I’d go far out of my way to give a helping hand to Tom Sherwood.”
The other heaved a sigh, and his eyes glistened with a sudden moisture.
“Thank you, Hugh,” he managed to say, half steadily. “I knew I could depend on you. I wanted to keep these things from our mother as long as I could. She doesn’t suspect anything like the truth, for I heard her say only the other day when Benjy had been rather irritable that she feared he must be unwell, and perhaps she ought to have Doctor Kane drop in to look him over.”
“There may be a little truth in that, Tom, don’t you know!” suggested Hugh, but the other boy shook his head ominously in the negative.
“I’d like to believe it, Hugh,” he said. “It would be only a matter of a dose of calomel or some other medicine that old Doc Kane likes to give, and my brother would be himself again. But there’s something more than that the matter. However, I said I’d start in and tell what happened, and so here goes, Hugh.”
“Please get to the facts as soon as you can, Tom,” requested the other.
“It happened this very afternoon,” began Tom. “I came home, and started up to my room to get something or other, when in the glass at the end of the hall I happened to see something move through the open door. You know, Hugh, I have a little room all my own at our house, and Benjy’s is at the other end of the hall. When I saw that it was my brother in my room I was surprised, for of late he hasn’t bothered dropping in to visit with me like he used to be so fond of doing.