“Hum!” said the doctor.

“Well, that will do for the present, Williams.  I hope you understand that you are escaping serious trouble very easily and that you mean to be as good as you can for the rest of the time you are at the school.”

Fanner Field received Ned and Dick with an air of gruffness that was belied by twinkling blue eyes and, when Ned had finished telling his story and offered to pay for the chicken, said: 

“Did you take that chicken out of my poultry-house?”

“Not exactly, but it’s the same thing.  We knew about it and helped eat it.”

“Was it tender?” asked the farmer.

“No, sir, it was the toughest thing I ever put in my mouth.”

“I thought so.  Why, that rooster was a regular antique.  He must have been a hundred years old.  Next time you want a chicken for a late supper, better let me choose it for you.  Who helped you eat that rooster?”

“Please don’t ask us that.  We’ll tell you anything about ourselves, but we can’t give him away.”

“Wouldn’t think much of you if you did.  No need of it anyhow.  I know who it was.”

“He must have told you then, for we haven’t told anybody.”

“Do you remember that while you were cooking that rooster out in my woods, Steve Daly, your companion, said he heard somebody in the bushes and you said it was only a dog?”

“Yes, I remember it.  I did say that.”

“Well, I was that dog!”

“And you never told on us?” asked Dick.  “Then you’ve been mighty kind and I’m ashamed to look you in the face.”

“Never be ashamed to look anyone in the face, my boy.  It isn’t good to take even a little thing that doesn’t belong to you, but that won’t happen again to you.  But weren’t you playing truant when you had that tough supper in my woods?  Doesn’t your conscience trouble you at all about that?”

“Not a bit,” said Dick; “that wasn’t mean.”

It was fortunate for Dick’s peace of mind that his conscience wasn’t troubled by mischief, for he was never out of it and was at the root of about all the purely mischievous happenings at the school.

Even the lesson of the camping incident and the doctor’s kindly talk wore off in a fortnight.  Yet he was popular with teachers as well as pupils.  His head was crowned with a mass of sandy hair and his impertinent face plastered with freckles.  The boy was quick and full of grace as a wildcat and so well built and lithe that he was a terror on the football team.

Dick was often too busy to attend to his studies and fell behind in his lessons, until the good doctor sent for him and gave him an earnest but understanding talk which sent the boy back to his books, filled with remorse and determined to get to the head of his class in a hurry.  One of these resolves was usually effective for about a week.  After which Dick generally suffered a severe relapse.

During his last winter at school, he frequently took long tramps in the woods in the hours when he should have been at his books, and was finally taken to task by his chum for the bad example he was setting the younger boys by playing truant.