Harlowe's Story
Aaron Harlowe was lying on his cot in the little rustic hospital at
Temple Camp. It was worth being sick to lie in that hospital. It was
just a log cabin. The birds sang outside of it, you could hear the
breeze blowing in the trees, you could hear the ripple of paddles on the
lake.
Tom Slade sat upon the side of the cot.
"You see when I found the map, I knew you had gone up the mountain. And
I didn't think you'd go up there unless there was some one up there that
you knew. The light was up there before you went up. Now that you tell
me you went up there to hide with that friend of yours, everything fits
together. I knew there must have been two of you up there, because I saw
your footprint. You have a patch on the sole of your shoe and the dead
man didn't. See? When I asked you to get out of the auto it was just
because I wanted to see your footprint. Your always getting over to the
left hand side of the road made me a little suspicious. Footprints don't
lie and that clinched it."
"But did you see my image in the eyes of the dead man?" Harlowe asked
weakly.
"I saw an image of a man; I couldn't tell it was you. But I knew some
one else had been there. Do you feel like telling me the rest now? Or
would you rather wait."
"You seem to know it all," Harlowe smiled. It was pleasant to see that
smile upon his pale, thin face.
"It isn't what you _know_, it's what you _do_ that counts," said Tom
softly. "And see what _you_ did. Talk about heroism!"
It was from the desultory talk which followed that Tom was able to piece
out the story, the mystery of which he had already penetrated. Harlowe,
in fear of capture after his supposed killing of the child, had sought
refuge in the hunting shack of his friend upon the mountain. There the
two had lived till the night of the storm. When Harlowe's friend had
been crushed under the tree, Harlowe had bent over him to make sure that
he was dead. It was then, in the blinding storm, that his license cards
had fallen out of his pocket and, by the merest chance, on the open coat
of the dead man.
Harlowe said that after that he had intended to give himself up, but
that when he read that _Harlowe_ had been discovered, and no doubt
buried, he had resolved to let his crime and all its consequences be
buried with the dead man, who like himself was without relations.
But Harlowe's conscience had not been buried, and it was in a kind of
mad attempt to square himself before Heaven, and still the voice of that
silent, haunting accuser, that he had performed the most signal act of
heroism and willing sacrifice ever known at Temple Camp.
As Tom Slade emerged after his daily call on the convalescent, a song
greeted his ear and he became aware of Hervey Willetts, hat, stocking
and all, coming around the edge of the cooking shack. He was caroling a
verse of his favorite ballad:
"The life of a scout is kind,
is kind,
His handbook he never can find,
can find.
He don't bother to look,
In the little handbook.
The life of a scout is kind."
"Hunting for your handbook, Hervey?"
"I should fret out my young life about the handbook."
"Walking my way?"
"Any way, I'm not particular."
"Cross come yet?"
"I haven't seen it. Do you think it would look good on my hat?"
"Why, yes," Tom laughed. "Only be sure to pin it on upside down."
"Why?"
"Why, because then when you're standing on your head, it'll be right
side up. See?"
"Good idea. I guess I will, hey?"
"Sure, I--I _double dare_ you to," said Tom.
END
End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Slade's Double Dare, by Percy Keese Fitzhugh