Then Orkney intervened. “Easy there, fellows! Let’s have Sam’s notion.”
Now, Sam had done a deal of thinking about the case in all its aspects, and had tried to put to practical use some of the lessons he had learned in the school of experience.
“Well, as I see it,” he began, “there’s only one way to settle this thing, and settle it right.”
“By punching a lot of heads!” Step urged.
“Not a bit of it! Oh, I don’t mean that we mustn’t ’tend to some accounts——”
“Right! I know of one I’ll look after,” said Orkney grimly.
“I’ve made a note of one, myself,” said Sam in quite the same manner. “But it’ll have to wait, and so will yours, Tom. Something else comes first, and that’s disproving the charge that the Trojan lied about the book, and that I gave him away.... Don’t interrupt! Let me finish. The Trojan is innocent, and if he is innocent, there must be some way to prove it. I didn’t intentionally say a word to hurt him, and if we clear his record, mine’ll be cleared, too. Somebody—not the Trojan—took that book into the examination, and left it in the desk where it was found. When we can show who did that, we’re far on the right road. They say murder will out, and if that’s so, I guess crookedness will out, too. It’s what we’ve got to bank on, while we work as hard as we can to discover the truth and the whole truth. And, meanwhile, we won’t be helping anybody by fighting and making the scandal worse than it is. Our job will be to keep our heads, and have our eyes and ears open, and tutor the Trojan.”
“If the principal will agree to let him take the final and to do the square thing about term marks,” Poke supplemented.
“I’ll see the principal.”
There was a little pause. Poke rose from his ledge, and descended the slope of the council rock.