There was no chance of escape now. The simplicity and trustfulness of Skinny's nature supervened and there, in the very presence of his wretched half-brother, he told about the whole miserable affair of Danny's masquerade at camp. Danville Bently, greatly astonished, sat on a rock listening. He did not seem to be angry, his face was a puzzle. He had picked up his dripping, muddy scarf and held it dangling in the final pause when the two half-brothers had ceased speaking. While still they talked he had glanced rather curiously from one to the other, paying to each the tribute of friendly attention. And now, when he spoke, his casual remark bore no reference to Skinny's concealment, to Danny's fraud, or to his dubious record. "You'd never guess that scarf used to be white, would you?" he asked, looking at neither Skinny nor Danny. "That was white silk. Lucky I've got a couple more of them." Then after a pause, "I'll bet you found it pretty damp in that blamed rat-hole. What did you haul the log in there for?" "So as to keep the leaves from spreading," Danny said. "I carried them in and piled them between the log and the wall." "Some bed," said Danville. "You must have got good and tired of eating fish. How'd you do, fry them?" "Yep, that's easy." "And that what's-his-name you took the blame for--Sharpe? He just let it go at that, huh!" "I don't take any credit," Danny said. "I'd have been found out when you showed up anyway. Sharpy's nothing but a flivver; let him have his fun." "Look how I can wring the water out of this darned thing," Danville said. "Lucky there was water in the cave, hey? I wish you could go back to camp with us. It's a sticker, what we're going to do now. We all came through with our lives fine and dandy, and now we don't know what to do." "You're not mad at him?" Skinny asked. "I never get mad," said Danville. "Only I don't see how he's going to go back to camp--I'm kind of mad about that. We could have some fun." "Oh I'll go back," said Danny, desperately. "I'm out of luck; what's the use trying to beat the game? You did the kid a good turn, and you did me one too; you saved the both of us. I've got the camp after me at one end and the school bunch after me at the other--I'm through. Come on, we'll go back and you can get your Gold Cross, we'll take care of that, won't we, Tiny? What do you think we are--half-baked sports? Just because I pulled a slope* on the reformatory? Hey, Tiny, tell him how I smashed Kinney, and that boy scout for what he said." * The elegant phrase meaning escaped. "I did tell him, he knows," said Skinny. "Sure, I'll go back; all they can do is give me over to that bunch of dopes at Blythedale and I'll get a couple of years extra, if I don't pull another slope on them. They sleep standing up, that menagerie of yaps. What I did for Sharpy, the boy detective, I can do for you. I may be black, but I ain't yellow."