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Page 53
"I often wonder," he said, "how you boys learned some of the
great truths that you know."
Porky laughed. "Like not talking when you ate?" he asked. "That
was Mom. She always says that you can't expect to learn anything
from a hungry man."
"A very wise woman," the Colonel said. "She is perfectly right."
He looked at his watch.
"There is a little time, and while I smoke I will tell you all
about the little fuss we have just finished. Yes, boys, the man
you saw killed was the second mate of this ship, and a spy; a
miserable spy. No use wasting pity on him; he got what he
deserved."
The Colonel scowled.
CHAPTER XVI
SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
Porky and Beany sat perfectly still, staring with round, bulging
eyes at the Colonel. They did not speak. They just sat there
and thought and stared, and stared and thought again. This was
about the most stunning blow of all. They had known the mate
throughout the voyage as a silent, kindly man who had treated
them well but had not made the least impression on them otherwise.
A spy! It couldn't be! Porky was conscious of a wave of horror
as he told himself that there must be some mistake. Not the
second mate! Such a nice man, always pottering about, always
ready to answer questions, always interested in everything,
always and forever asking questions himself, wanting to know
everything about themselves and their home and their plans for
the future.
And he had been specially interested in the Colonel--where he was
going and what he was going to do.
Now that the boys, taking time to think about it, happened on
that thought, it was rather funny what an amount of interest the
old fellow had taken in trivial things concerning their beloved
Colonel. But it had gone over the boys' heads because they were
so accustomed to having every one think that the Colonel was
about the whole thing, and to hearing every one talk about him,
that the strange interest of the second mate did not raise a
question in their minds.
They had merely felt the flattered importance that they always
felt about anything and everything concerning the truly great and
simple-minded man whom they were so proud to know and to be with.
For Colonel Bright was a truly great man. They were to learn
that fact more and more as time went on, and as they saw him
tried by circumstances that could only bring out the best and
noblest in men. They saw troubled, perplexed, wounded and
distressed. It was their great good fortune to feel that there
were times when this great man really needed their boyish but
deeply loyal and loving support. It was just as well that the
future, so terrible and so bloodstained, was hidden from their
young eyes.
It is enough for this story that already the boys recognized the
gallant, simple courage and tenderness of the Colonel; enough
that all their lives they were to be strengthened and ennobled by
the example of his straightforward everyday life. When Porky and
Beany had themselves become great men, when, in their turn, boys
looked up to them with admiration and love, they learned to look
back with boundless gratitude to the fate that had led them,
through the Boy Scouts, into the friendship of Colonel Bright.
A faint inkling of this, passed through the minds of the twins as
they sat waiting for the Colonel to begin his story. And each
knew that the other felt it.
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