“Appleby treated us very mean—­he does that way to all his hired men, I guess, and he used to fine us if we accidentally broke any tools, or made mistakes.  In fact about all our money was eaten up in fines, so we had very little coming to us.

“Finally Jake Crouse got mad when he was heavily fined, and he said he was going to get even.  He wanted me to go in with him, but I wouldn’t, and I decided to skip out, and look for another place.  I had no money, and then, accidentally, I learned that Tom was a student at Elmwood Hall.  I heard Appleby mention his name as having gotten ten dollars from him for about a dollar’s worth of trampled-down corn.  Then I decided to appeal to Tom to help me get away.

“I sent him a note, and he came to see me.  It was in a pool room in town—­a place where I used to go for amusement, but I’ve dropped all that sort of thing now.  There Tom gave me money enough to straighten up and begin life over again.”

“Say!” interrupted Jack, “was that where you got so all smelled up with smoke, Tom?”

“I guess it was.  I know everybody in the place seemed to be smoking,” answered our hero.

“That was the night Jake Crouse set fire to the hay stacks,” went on Ray Blake.  “He fixed it so suspicion wouldn’t fall on him, as he was away from the farm at the time.  He used a sort of chemical fuse that would cause the fire several hours after it was set.

“After I met Tom, and got the money, and told him about the prospective hay fire,” said Ray, “I sneaked back to the farm to get what few clothes I owned.  Jake Crouse was waiting for me, and when he found out I was going to run away, and that I had some money, he threatened to implicate me in the burning of the hay.  He had me in his power and I didn’t dare—­or at least I thought I didn’t dare—­refuse him.  So I stayed on, and he got most of my money over cards.  He wasn’t suspected of the fire, and I never knew Tom was, or I’d have made a clean breast of everything.

“Well, things went from bad to badness.  Appleby got worse toward us instead of better, and Crouse said he’d teach him a lesson.  I suspected he would do something desperate so I made up my mind to get away.  I laid my plans carefully, and, ashamed as I was, I decided to ask Tom for more money.

“I appealed to him, and he answered.  He gave me all he could spare, and more too, I guess and I promised to reform.  I made him promise he would never say anything about me, and he didn’t.  As much on his mother’s account as mine, I guess, for my mother and his were sisters, and I knew my aunt would be broken-hearted if she knew how much I’d gone to the bad.

“Well, to make a long story short Tom fixed me up—­he even gave me his sweater when I sneaked up and called on him in this dormitory, for I was cold and hadn’t many clothes—­and I lit out.  I guess I must have made some wild threats against Appleby before I left, for he had treated me mean.”