“Things fit in pretty well, Art,” said Harry.  “Pete Herring has always had it in for Jack since he first came here.  Do you remember what Jack said to him?  ‘What was your father?’ asked Pete in that nasty way he has, when Jack told him his father was dead.  ‘A gentleman,’ said Jack and the emphasis he put on the word just hammered home the idea that he didn’t think Pete was one.  It was the neatest thing I ever heard.  Do you remember it?”

“Yes, and I guess Pete hasn’t forgotten it either.”

“Well, he was pretty sure that Jack would take the prize, as he generally does, and he fixed up this plot, never supposing that he had got hold of one of Jack’s own poems.”

“He always makes some stupid break like that,” said Billy, “that upsets him.  It takes a smart fellow to be a rogue, and Pete isn’t quite smart enough.  Another time when he tried to get back on Jack he made some such blunder as this, and gave himself away.”

“You didn’t say anything this morning?” said Arthur.

“No, for I was thinking things over.  When I got to talking about it with you fellows it all came out straight.”

“Well, Jack got the prize anyhow,” remarked Harry, “and I don’t suppose there is any use in saying anything about it.  If you didn’t actually catch Pete in the act and recognize him, he could easily say that he was not out of his tent that night, and Merritt would back him up.”

“Yes, of course, but if he knows that I and young Smith and a lot more of the boys know it he won’t put on so many frills after this;”

“No, he won’t, but we don’t go with him anyhow, and he bullies his own set into doing just what he wants, so that he never wants for company.  You can’t send him to Coventry very well, so I don’t know that it will do much good to let him know that we know all about it.”

“It will take down his conceit, Hal,” said Arthur, “and that is one of his biggest assets.  A bit of ridicule of his fine plot will take the starch out of him, and that’s what he needs.”

“Yes, to be sure.”

The boys were in sight of the Van der Donk house by this time, but as they had no intention of calling they turned around and went back to the camp where they met Jack and his two friends just coming ashore.

“I have just heard how you got your black eye the other night, Billy,” laughed Jack.  “J.W., here, said he was not to tell, but we excused him under the circumstances.  We came to the conclusion that you got your black eye in trying to stop Herring when he was getting out of the window of the doctor’s cottage after he had put back the manuscript he had been ‘fixing,’ as he called it.”

“That’s what we think,” said Harry.  “Billy has just been telling us about it.  We laughed at him that night, but he was cute enough to keep the thing quiet until he found out more about it.”

“Harry thinks it won’t do any good to expose Herring,” said Arthur, “but I think it will.”