haracter," admitted Tom's cousin, "but I'm done
with that sort of life now."

"So I wrote several letters," went on Tom, "asking my cousin to come
and explain things. It was some time before one reached him, as I sent
to his last known address out West."

"But I finally got one," put in Ray, "and then I came on, as soon as I
could. It's all explained now, and Tom's name is cleared."

"How do you suppose Sam Heller saw you--or thought he saw you--with
your gay sweater on--at the barn?" asked Jack.

"Give it up," said Tom. "Maybe we'll find out that too."

They did--the next morning, when Tom and his cousin, in an interview
with Doctor Meredith, told the whole story. But it had leaked out
before that, and when Sam Heller was sent for he was not to be found.
He had left Elmwood Hall in a hurry.

In order to clear himself of any part in the unjust accusation against
Tom, Nick Johnson made a clean breast of the whole affair. To him Sam
had confided a plan of throwing suspicion, of some mean act against Mr.
Appleby, on Tom. Sam's plan was to go to the barns, and damage some
farm machinery, at the same time leaving behind some object with Tom's
name on it to implicate him. Nick would have nothing to do with this,
and Sam went off by himself.

That was the night the horses were poisoned, and Sam, seeing Crouse and
Ray about the barns, became frightened and sneaked off without playing
his mean trick. It was Ray he had seen wearing the sweater, leaving
the dormitory after Ray had borrowed it, and Sam thought it was Tom,
for the cousins were much alike. And it was Ray whom Mr. Appleby had
seen, though the empty package of poison was dropped by Crouse, and not
by Ray, so in that the farmer was mistaken. And Sam testified against
Tom, at the time believing him guilty.

Later, though, in one of the resorts of Elmwood, Sam overheard Crouse
boasting to some boon companions of what he had done, but, instead of
telling what he knew, and clearing our hero, Sam kept silent, letting
the blame rest on Tom. And it was Sam's school pin the farmer found
near the hay.

And it was also Sam and Nick who had bribed the farm boy to send Tom
and his chums on the wrong road, thus leading them into the cornfield
and causing the quarrel with Mr. Appleby.

"Well, all's well that ends well," said Tom's cousin a few days later,
when he made ready to go back to the West, where he promised to begin a
new life. "I can't tell you how so