A SURPRISING CONFESSION. After a time Osgood and Nelson became separated from the rest of the searchers. They had come to a little opening where the moonlight shone upon a small pile of cord-wood that had been cut and left there during the past winter, and here they stopped and faced each other. “It’s worse than useless, this searching without lights of any sort save what the moon affords,” said Jack. “There are thousands of places were one could hide from searchers if he chose. It would be better to go through the woods calling to Hooker and assuring him we are friends.” “I doubt,” returned Ned, “if we’d find him then.” “What do you suppose has become of him?” “You can answer that question fully as well as I.” “Well, then,” said Jack suddenly, “what do you suppose was the cause of all this trouble, anyhow? How was Hooker hurt?” Osgood’s answer was a shrug. Motioning toward two short stumps which stood nearby, he suggested that they should sit down. “I want to talk to you, Nelson,” he said, when they were seated. “I’ve got to talk to some one, and I’d rather it would be you than any one else. We’ve never been what might be called real friendly, have we?” Surprised and wondering at his companion’s words and singular manner, Nelson replied: “I don’t know that we’ve been exactly chummy, but——” “Tell the truth,” interrupted Osgood, reaching out and putting his hand on the other boy’s knee. “We haven’t been even friendly, although you seemed willing enough to be, and I’ve put up a bluff that I was. All the same, you didn’t trust me. You knew I was bluffing.” “I—I don’t think—that I—actually knew it,” stammered Nelson, still more astonished. Osgood threw back his head and smiled. The moonlight, full on his rather handsome, aristocratic face, showed that smile to be touched with bitterness, even with self-scorn. “I’m a bluffer, Nelson—a thoroughbred bluffer,” he declared. “Intuition told you as much. All along I knew you were one fellow in Oakdale that I had not fully blinded. Piper, with all his natural shrewdness—and we’ll admit that he’s naturally shrewd—was deceived in me.” “What are you talking about, Osgood?” exclaimed Jack. “Why are you telling me this stuff, anyhow?” “I don’t know just why, but I’m telling it to relieve my mind. Perhaps it will relieve me in a measure, anyhow. I had no thought in the world of talking to you this way when we paused here a few moments ago, but suddenly an irresistible impulse came upon me. Something seemed to say, ‘You may as well tell him, for he sees through you, anyhow.’ Do you know, Nelson, I’ve hated you. Yes, that’s the word. I hated you because I couldn’t deceive you, and that’s why I longed to do something to hurt you.” “You what? Of course I know I benched you in that Wyndham game, but I had——” “You should have benched me before,” exclaimed Osgood. “You should have fired me from the nine.”