The race was an exciting one. The people who crowded the platform of the station looked on with interest, supposing that both boys were running to catch the train.

At the edge of the platform Brede tripped and fell, with Brightly so close behind that he stumbled involuntarily over the captain’s prostrate body. In an instant both boys were up and facing each other, Brightly’s face pale with excitement and determination, and Brede’s distorted with fear and anger.

“You coward!” exclaimed Brightly, his breast heaving with exhaustion and indignation. “You coward, give back that money!”

For an instant Brede glared defiantly at his captor; then, as the conductor shouted “All aboard!” and the engine gave its first long puff at starting, he plunged his hand into his pocket, held out a handful of small coin and paper currency, and turned again toward the cars.

“Stop!” said Brightly, looking the money over rapidly. “Wait! This isn’t all of it; I want the rest.”

“I’ll keep my part,” replied Brede, darting suddenly in among the people. Before he could escape, Brightly’s hand was on his shoulder, and the demand was repeated. The fugitive turned, almost crying in his rage, and flung a few pieces of paper money into his captor’s face. Then, grasping the rail of the last car as it passed rapidly by him, he swung himself to the step. Some one helped him up to the platform, and he looked back with a curse on his white lips as the train bore him swiftly out of sight. By this time the entire party had disembarked, and were hurrying toward the station. Brightly, after a few words of explanation to the men who gathered about him on the platform, turned back to meet his companions. They had all witnessed Brede’s treachery, and were all excited and indignant to the last degree. They crowded around Brightly, asking all sorts of questions: “Why didn’t you knock ’im down, Bright?” “Why didn’t you kick ’im?” “Why didn’t you hold ’im so’t he couldn’t go?”

Brightly turned on the last questioner.

“We’re lucky to get rid of him,” he replied. “We don’t want him with us.”

“That’s so!” came the response from a dozen voices at once, and the party went down again to the dock.

“Did you ketch ’im?” asked the ferryman.

“We did,” was the reply.

“Git the money?”

“Yes; you shall have your pay as soon as you land us on the other side.”

Once more the company embarked. The sky was heavily overcast, and the south wind that had sprung up during the afternoon had increased almost to a gale. The tide was setting strongly northward; the white caps were riding the crests of the waves; and when they were fairly out into the stream, the boats rocked and plunged violently. The timid ones clung to the sides and the benches in fear, and the rowers labored strenuously to push the heavily laden vessels through the beating waves. Once the rear boat, by some mischance, shipped a heavy sea, and the drenched lads cried out in terror.

The river is narrow at this point, and the time occupied in crossing would not have been very great if the water had been smooth. As it was, darkness was settling down when both boats reached the western shore; and besides being hungry and excessively fatigued, many of the lads were weak from fright after the terrors of the rough passage.

Brightly paid the boatman the fee agreed upon, and, with GlÜck leading, the party turned again to the south, and soon began to wind up the hill to the tableland back from the river.

It was nearly two miles to GlÜck’s uncle’s farm, and long before they reached the place thick darkness had fallen on them from a starless sky. They said little as they toiled up the long stretches of hilly road; the time for song and jest and play was long past; the only words that escaped their lips now were words of suffering.

To all of them the physical discomforts resulting from hunger and fatigue were extreme; and for many of them, especially the smaller boys, the strangeness of the situation and the darkness of the night added a touch of terror. Patchy was crying softly as he stumbled on, holding fast to Brightly’s hand, and it would have taken but slight provocation to bring tears to the eyes of many others.

Finally lights were seen gleaming through the trees a little distance away, and GlÜck declared that they were approaching the house. He had spent a month there during the preceding summer vacation, and knew the place well. The party waited outside by the gate while GlÜck went in to acquaint his uncle with the situation, and to bespeak his kind offices. It seemed to the weary lads, who had only to stand in the darkness and listen to the barking and the growling of the dogs, that their spokesman was a long time gone.

GlÜck told them afterward that he had great difficulty in making the honest German farmer believe that his tale was true. But the door was opened at last, the light shone out cheerily from it, and GlÜck’s voice was heard saying, “It’s all right boys! You’re to come in.”

They entered the house, and were greeted good-naturedly by the astonished farmer and his still more astonished wife. Places to sit were found for the exhausted lads in the sitting-room and kitchen, and the German host moved around among them smoking a drooping pipe, and exclaiming,—

“Vell! vell! Uf I don’t see it myself, I don’t haf pelieved it! Heinrich,” turning to his nephew, “was ist los’ mit der schule, ha? Vell! vell!”

In the mean time the good wife, with the help of a rosy-cheeked girl, was stirring up flour and grinding coffee in the pantry; and almost before they could realize it, the boys in the kitchen saw the biscuits browning in the sloping pan of the Dutch oven, and caught the fragrant fumes of the boiling beverage.

As soon as each boy had finished washing his face and hands in the basin at the sink, a thick slice of bread and a piece of cold sausage were given to him, and later on, when appetites were well sharpened, hot biscuits and coffee were added to the repast. Every one was satisfied at last; every one declared it the best meal he had ever eaten, and every one blessed GlÜck and praised GlÜck’s uncle and aunt without stint.

But no sooner had the food been disposed of and the plates and crumbs cleared away, than many of the boys, especially the younger ones, began to grow sleepy, and wide yawns were visible in almost every direction.

The good farmer and his wife had been consulting together on the practical question of what was to be done with the party for the night. There were but five beds in the house. Quarters on the floor were proposed, but young GlÜck interposed with another suggestion.

“There’s the barn, Uncle Carl. We could all sleep there on the haymow.”

“Yes,” replied Brightly, “that would do very nicely. We should be glad to sleep there, shouldn’t we, boys?”

“Yes! yes!” was the hearty response. “Indeed we should!” added Drake.

In spite of their weariness, there was something in the thought of sleeping on a haymow in a country barn that appealed to the love of the romantic in these boys, and they caught at the suggestion with great eagerness. GlÜck’s uncle left the room with a puzzled expression on his face; but returning in a few moments with a lighted lantern, he beckoned to the boys to follow him out into the yard.

GlÜck arose to go with the rest; but his aunt went up to him, put her hand on his arm, and asked him if he would not sleep in the house.

“No, auntie,” he replied, “I will go with the boys. We must all fare alike to-night.”

“So?”

“Yes. Good-night, auntie.”

“Gute nacht!”

The other boys said good-night to their hostess as they passed out of the door, and then, in single file, they followed the farmer across the wide barn-yard. They entered the building by a low door at one corner, went along a narrow aisle between two high board partitions, and came in finally on the wide threshing-floor between the bays. This floor extended the entire length of the barn, and on each side of it, about midway, a narrow vertical ladder ran up between fixed posts, by which one could reach the top of the mow at whatever height it might be.

At this season of the year the hay was greatly reduced in quantity. The bay on one side of the threshing-floor, was quite empty; on the other side the mow reached to a height of only eight or ten feet from the floor. The farmer pointed to the ladder on this side, and said smiling, “You must dees latter goen oop, und you vill de bett finden.”

Drake was the first to mount.

“It’s splendid up here!” he cried. “Oceans an’ oceans o’ room!”

So, one by one, the boys climbed to their strange quarters on the haymow. The last one to go up was Plumpy the Freak. GlÜck’s uncle looked in amused astonishment at the ponderous, awkward figure, with its masses of moving flesh, as the fat boy slowly worked his way upward.

“Vell! vell!” he exclaimed, holding his lantern high, in order to see the more clearly, “uf I don’t see it myself, I don’t haf pelieved it.”

Hanging the lantern on a wooden pin in the framework, and cautioning the boys not to disturb it, and not to strike a match nor make a fire of any kind in the barn, the farmer responded to the chorus of good-nights from the mow, and made his way through the darkness, back across the barnyard to his house. On almost any other occasion there would have been an unlimited amount of horse-play, before these boys could have settled themselves for the night and gone to sleep. But now all the boys were too weary to be gay, and in less than twenty minutes from the time of the mounting of the ladder the whole company was asleep.

Yet not the whole company. Brightly closed his eyes, but sleep would not come to him. In this strange place, in this hour of quiet, with only the heavy breathing around him to break the stillness; with only the dim light of the lantern to make partly visible and wholly weird the huge timbers and vast spaces of the great barn’s interior,—thought took possession of his mind and drove slumber from his eyelids. Regret assailed him; conscience awakened, and began again her vigorous reproach.

He lay staring into the deep shadows among the tie-beams and rafters until it became impossible for him longer to remain quiet. Gently disengaging himself from Patchy’s arm, which the child had thrown across his protector’s breast at the very moment when sleep conquered him, Brightly arose from his bed of hay, slid softly to the ladder, and crept down it to the floor of the barn.

The carpet of straw that covered the floor-planks deadened the sound of his footsteps, and he was able to walk up and down the entire length of the building without in any way disturbing the sleepers on the mow. Thus walking, he gave himself up to thought,—bitter, laborious, regretful thought.

He went back over the entire history of his troubles at Riverpark, beginning with the appointments six months before, and culminating in this night of adventure and suffering.

With that brief review he recognized his error,—an error founded on jealousy, nurtured in selfish pride, and fed and fostered with a lie. Colonel Silsbee had sought to make it plain to him, but without success; Harple, with all the earnestness of friendship, had brought it up in vain before his mind and conscience.

But now, this night, in this strange place, his eyes were opened, and he saw. One sweep of his own hand at last had brushed away the clinging cobwebs, and the full extent of his folly and guilt lay bare before him.

But it was of no use now to think of what might have been. The past was beyond recall. It would lie forever behind him, a great shadow of disgrace and humiliation, which only the long years could lessen.

It was the future of which he must now think. What should that be? What should he do to-morrow, next day, next week? Could he ever retrieve the disasters he had brought upon himself? Was it possible for him to begin again at the lowest round of the ladder and toil back up into manhood?

Back and forth the young penitent walked, up and down, dashing a tear from his face now and then, never halting in his march. The minutes grew into hours; but the sleepers on the mow slept on, unconscious of the agony below them, knowing nothing of the storm that raged in their companion’s heart. But when the storm passed, the atmosphere it left was clean and pure; and when, in the small hours of the morning, the lad climbed up again to his bed of hay, his mind was fixed, and his heart was set. After that, no power could be strong enough to move him from the path that he had marked out for his feet to follow.

It was late on the following morning before the guests at the farmer’s barn descended the vertical ladder to the floor. They brushed the hay-seed from their clothing and the hay-dust from their eyes, and went over, in little groups, to the farm-house. GlÜck’s aunt had prepared for them a breakfast similar to the supper of the night before, only a little better and in greater variety, and they partook of it heartily and thankfully.

The strong south wind had brought up, during the night, a storm of rain, and as soon as the lads had done eating, they retired again to the shelter of the barn.

Brightly was the last to return from breakfast, and when he entered the barn he found that the boys were all waiting for him.

“We’ve agreed to leave it to you, Bright,” said one, “what we shall do. We’ve got to do something, that’s certain. To my mind we’re in a pretty bad fix.”

Brightly stood with his back to the doorpost, facing the assembly.

“I’ve been thinking the matter over a little, boys,” he replied, “and talking with GlÜck’s uncle about it. We’ve got to get back to Riverpark to-day some way; that’s plain, isn’t it?”

They all assented.

“Well, we couldn’t find wagons enough here to carry us back if we had the money to hire them; we couldn’t pay our way on the cars if we were to cross the river; so I don’t know of any better plan than to go as we came,—on foot. We have enough money to pay our passage across the river, and once on the other side we can get up to Riverpark easily enough. It will be a long march and a tiresome one, and will take the better part of the day; but it’s the best plan I can think of. If anybody has a better one, let’s have it.”

No one could suggest anything better; and, after a minute’s awkward pause, Brightly continued, somewhat hesitatingly at first, but with increasing firmness and earnestness,—

“Now that I’m talking, I may as well tell you what I think of this whole business. I think not only that we’ve made fools of ourselves, but that it’s a good deal worse than that; and I believe we’ve got some pretty serious matters to face when we get back. I don’t know what the colonel will do. I shouldn’t be surprised at anything in the way of punishment; I’m sure we deserve all that we shall get. But if he lets us stay at Riverpark, I think we ought to be very thankful, and very humble, too, and take whatever comes to us, and bear it like men. We’ve treated the colonel very shabbily; now let’s try and make it up to him as fast and as far as we can.”

Everybody looked a little ashamed when the speaker stopped, but no one said a word.

“And before we go,” continued Brightly, “I think it’s due to these kind people who have fed and sheltered us, that we should express our thanks to them in some formal way. They’ve certainly treated us very kindly indeed.”

“That’s so,” said Drake, earnestly; “and I move that Bright and GlÜck go over to the house an’ tell ’em so, as the opinion of the crowd.”

The motion was unanimously carried.

“You can’t make it any too strong, fellows,” said one of the party; “tell ’em we’ll never forget it of ’em, never.”

When the two boys came back there were traces of tears in their eyes. Something that the good people had said or done had made them cry.

After a little GlÜck’s uncle came out with the basket of sandwiches that they were to carry with them for their lunch. The rain had ceased falling for a time, and they thought it best to start.

Brightly formed them in ranks, assigning to places of command such officers as were in the party.

“We can do better in marching order, boys,” he said; “we can make better time, and keep together better. Now, then, are you all ready? Forward, march!”

They moved out into the road in good form and with soldierly precision; but when they came in front of the large white farm-house, the command was given to them to halt.

“Right face!”

They turned as one man.

“Three cheers for GlÜck’s uncle and aunt!”

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

They were given with a will, and a rousing tiger added.

“Left face! Forward, march!”

The farmer gazed after the retreating column in open-mouthed wonder and admiration.

“Vell! vell!” he exclaimed to his wife, as the company vanished from his sight around a curve in the road, “ven somepody told me dees I don’t haf pelieved it.”

But it was a sorry band of soldiers. The first mile of muddy road wearied them, the second was discouraging, the third brought suffering. They stopped by the roadside many times to rest. Once they took refuge in an open barn from the pelting rain. They were drenched, ragged, splashed with mud, footsore, weak from hunger and fatigue. It took all of Brightly’s powers of command, of logic, of entreaty, of encouragement, to hold them to their places and keep them moving.

But he did it. The hours passed, the wind grew chill, the weariness increased; but every step brought them nearer and yet nearer to the longed for destination,—the home they had so lightly and recklessly left in the sunshine of the day before.