Just terrible
things."
That deep rage against Donald Pike struggled again in the heart of the
Kansan.
"I think I know who told him. What were the things, anyway?"
He said this with a great dread, for he already knew.
"Oh, I knew you were not guilty, Buck! Never fancy for a moment that I
thought you guilty. I told him you were innocent. I knew that it
couldn't be true that you were"--she sobbed--"drunk when you went aboard
the _Crested Foam_."
Badger winced as if stabbed. The dying boat-keeper, Barney Lynn,
confessed to drugging Badger, but did not tell Winnie that Badger was
drunk at the time. The Westerner knew this, and had been, as he had
admitted to Merriwell, just coward enough to be glad that Lynn did not
tell Winnie the whole truth. Now, as the sweat of a great inward
struggle came out on his face, he wished he had been courageous enough
to inform her of the real facts, instead of sheltering himself behind
that palatial confession of the boat-keeper. It was a virtual falsehood
that was coming home to him in a most unpleasant manner.
"I have stood up for you, Buck, against everything that father could
say," Winnie artlessly and innocently continued. "When he insisted that
you were drunk at the time, I told him I knew it was not so; and I have
stood by it.
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