Chapter XVII: Dick’s Promise

Dick could hardly believe his own ears when he heard Asa make this terrible confession. He gripped the other boy by the shoulder almost fiercely.

“Look here, Asa Gardner, do you mean to tell me that it was you who took those things in the night--Dan’s watch, the aluminum frying-pan, and last of all the gold watch which your best friend Mr. Holwell thinks so much of?”

Asa groaned, and drooped pitifully in his grasp.

“I don’t know for sure, Dick, but I’m awfully afraid I did,” he said, huskily.

“That’s a queer way to put it,” Dick told him, sternly. “Anybody ought to know if he were guilty of doing such a mean thing as that. You’ll have to explain yourself, Asa. Do you remember taking those things?”

“No, no, that’s the strangest part of it, you see, Dick,” pleaded the boy. “But they disappeared, and I was in the camp both nights.”

Dick began to breathe a little easier.

“But that isn’t any proof at all, Asa, that I can see,” he hurriedly remarked. “How could you take them, and not know it, tell me?”

“I wish I could, Dick, but then nobody else here would be low enough to steal except me, and so I’ve figured it out that I must have done it in my sleep, just because the old habit was so strong. While I was awake I could fight it off, but you see once I lost my senses my grip was broken, and I must have done it. Oh, I must!”

“Well, that’s a funny thing to tell me, I must say,” Dick replied. “You haven’t the least remembrance of doing it, yet you’re ready to take all the blame on your shoulders because once on a time you had a weakness that way. Brace up, Asa; you never took Mr. Holwell’s watch, I tell you.”

It was wonderful to see how new hope seemed to come immediately into the heart of the erring boy. The look of misery began to die out of his face, and through the tears gathering in his eyes Dick could see a new sparkle--that of hope.

“Oh! it’s kind of you to say that to me, Dick!” he exclaimed between his sobs, for he was completely aroused and could not control himself, though he tried hard to do so. “Tell me who did take the watch, then, that Mr. Holwell, the finest man on this whole earth, thought so much of?”

Dick laughed breezily, more to cheer the poor fellow up than because he considered it a joke.

“I wish I could tell you, Asa,” he said, quickly. “But so far it’s a mystery that has yet to be solved. But I’m dead sure you hadn’t a thing to do with the robbery, if that’s what you mean.”

“There was one favor I meant to ask you, Dick, if you thought I hadn’t better leave the camp,” continued Asa, presently, when he could master his emotion.

“All right, let’s hear it,” he was told encouragingly.

“To-night, and every night after this I want you to let me sleep next to you in your tent. Yes, and Dick, if only you’d fix it with a cord of some kind so that I couldn’t move about without your knowing it I’d feel easier. Then if another robbery was committed I’d begin to understand that I couldn’t be doing these terrible things in my sleep.”

“I’ll think it over, Asa,” the other told him. “Though I’m sure nothing like that is going to be needed to prove your innocence. Besides, since we’ve heard of Nat and the other fellows meeting with some sort of strange man in the woods, Mr. Holwell, Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Rowland begin to believe the secret of the robberies will be solved when we run across the wild man.”

Asa winked hard to clear his eyes from the tears.

“You’ve made me feel a whole lot easier, I tell you, Dick,” he said, and he persisted in squeezing the other’s unwilling hand with boyish fervor. “I hope and pray that it may come out that way. I’m trying as hard as I can to keep my promise to my mother, and she knows that it would nearly kill me if I found that I was going back to those old ways in my sleep.”

“Cheer up, Asa, and don’t let any of the other fellows see you looking as if you had lost your last friend. Mr. Holwell believes in you, and so does Harry Bartlett, and so do I. You’re going to be all right and as good as the next one. Sure! you can sleep alongside of me if you feel like it. But about that cord you mentioned, I hardly think it’ll be necessary.”

Asa wandered off until such time as he could recover from his emotion and Dick continued his examination of the boat’s bottom. After all, he was glad the other had spoken as he had, because somehow it seemed to clear the air.

“And,” he told himself, humorously, “I’m beginning to get a hunch that before a great while we’ll find some way of explaining this mystery. If that was a wild man Nat and the others saw, surely he must be a lunatic who’s escaped from some asylum. We may be the means of capturing him, and restoring him to his quarters. He’ll be frozen to death if he has to stay on Bass Island all winter.”

The idea pleased Dick exceedingly, and when he once more joined the others by the fire some of the boys wondered what could have happened to make him appear so cheerful again.

He took the first favorable opportunity that arose to get Mr. Holwell aside. Asa had not yet returned to the camp, though they could see him sitting on the end of a fallen tree that jutted out over the water, possibly a hundred yards further along the shore of the island.

“I had a pretty bad scare a short time ago, sir,” was what Dick started to say, which caused the gentleman to start, and look at him strangely.

“Have you been seeing things too, Dick?” he asked. “Would the wild man become so bold as to approach our camp in broad daylight?”

“No, but I’ve been _hearing_ things that gave me a bad turn at first, though it came around all right pretty soon,” and with that Dick repeated what Asa had said to him near the boat landing when they were alone.

Mr. Holwell was of course stunned at first, but as Dick went on with his story his eyes grew moist, and he shook his head as though he felt exceedingly sorry for the boy whose past haunted him so persistently.

“Poor Asa,” he said, later on, when he had heard all, “it must be terrible to feel as he does, and be compelled to fight so desperately to keep from doing things that other boys have no fear they will be tempted to do. I give him all credit for his gallant fight, and if he wins, as I firmly believe will be the case, I shall be proud of him. You must continue to help him in every way you can, my boy.”

“I certainly will, sir,” declared Dick, with a strong remembrance of the moist eyes Asa had turned on him when he made that humiliating confession that after all had proved to be only a dreadful suspicion, and not a reality.

That was a busy afternoon, all things considered. Some of those who had been out fishing in the morning decided they had had enough angling for one day. Besides, they knew very well that others were desirous of testing their skill against the game qualities of the black bass of Lake Russabaga.

So it came about that Dick Horner had a chance to be a member of the quartette that left camp with dark designs against the finny inhabitants of the inland sea. They carried a goodly number of live bait in a pail constructed for that purpose, and also some artificial minnows, as well as trolling spoons to fall back on in case the other supplies were exhausted.

Mr. Holwell had entered into the work with almost as much enthusiasm as any of the boys.

“To-morrow being Sunday,” he explained as he worked, “we will do just as little manual labor as possible. My flock in town will have a supply in the pulpit, for they have given me a little holiday. And if you boys care to hear it I expect to give you a sermon I wrote for some lads of my acquaintance many years ago, though it touches on truths that are just as pertinent to-day as when it was first delivered.”

Dan had not gone off with any of the others, but at the same time he failed to mingle with those in the camp. They could hear him pottering away close by, now hammering, and again coming back for bits of stout twine or rope. Nobody but Mr. Bartlett knew what Dan was about.

All this naturally aroused something akin to curiosity among the boys, and as the afternoon wore on many guesses were indulged in as to what Dan Fenwick could be doing. Finally, one of his companions, more daring than the rest, sauntered over his way to ask him pointblank what it was he kept working on so industriously. Andy Hale, for it was he who had approached Dan, presently came hurrying back, with a half grin on his face, at the same time laboring under partly repressed excitement.

“Hey! would you believe it?” he announced as he arrived near the fire. “Dan up and told me he was building a cage to trap that wild man Nat saw in the woods.”