“Salter,” he said, looking fixedly at the boy’s confused face, “you are keeping something back that I ought to know. What is it?”
Salter made no reply,—what reply could he make without telling the whole truth or lying?—but stared at the floor while his face burned hotter and his eyes swam, and a lump formed in his throat.
“I won’t press you,” said the Principal at last, breaking the terrible silence; “but this I want you to promise me to do: choose the best boy in school, the strongest, manliest, most honorable fellow you know; confide to him all that you won’t confide to me, and act on his advice. Will you do it?”
With the feeling that he had escaped a great peril, Salter sat down in his room and meditated on the interview. He had told no lies; he had made no confession; he had given no hint that could be so twisted as to suggest Marchmont. But how was he to fulfil his promise to seek out an adviser and follow his advice? And who was “the strongest, manliest, most honorable fellow you know”? Certain names occurred to him immediately,—names with which we are already acquainted: Poole, Laughlin, Ware, Planter. No one of these fellows had ever taken much notice of him. They had been polite to him,—all but Planter the senior, who probably didn’t know him by sight,—but in his timid soul he shrank from imposing on any of them his private troubles. Who, then, was this adviser to be? If he consulted his inclination, it would be Lindsay, with whom he had already discussed the affair of the closet, and whose later treatment of him invited confidence. And why not Lindsay, indeed? Lindsay was a gentleman, and strong and kind-hearted; had in three months won a position in the social life of the school which Salter himself could never hope to reach; knew Marchmont well, and yet was not of his sort. Lindsay it should be.
In response to a knock Wolcott looked up from his books that afternoon to see Salter standing before him.
“I want to talk with you about something,” said the visitor, timidly. “May I?”
“Sure!” returned Wolcott, encouragingly. “Sit down, won’t you? What’s up?”
“You remember what I said to you about that trap-door in my closet, that sooner or later I should be pulled up for it? Well, it came to-day.”