Sam rose, and came over to the group about Step. “Listen, you chaps; I’ve something to say about Orkney,” he began. “Speech, speech!” shouted Poke. “Very well; I’ll make a speech,” said Sam. “You may not agree with me, but I’m going to give you the truth as I see it. We’re wrong in this Orkney business; we’ve been wrong all along.” There was a ripple of dissent. “Oh, I say, Sam!” protested Poke. “That’s going too far.” “Not at all,” Sam insisted. “We were wrong in charging Orkney with a lot of things he never did.” “I know--you’ve harped on that before.” “Well, I’ll harp on it again.” “But we thought he did ’em. He was mean enough to do ’em, if they’d occurred to him.” “Go to it, Poke!” cried Step. “Now you’re shouting!” Sam frowned. “Here!” he said impatiently. “Do I get my chance to talk, or don’t I?” Poke made a burlesque bow. “Sir, I yield the floor,” said he. “I say we made a mistake, and I mean it,” Sam went on. “Not liking Orkney, we forgot the old rule that you’ve got to hold anybody innocent of a charge till he’s proved guilty. Don’t stop me! You’ll try to argue that we had evidence against him, but, as we know now, it wasn’t proof, by a long shot. There was that business of the cap. Did we investigate it? We didn’t. If any one of us had taken the trouble to ask Mrs. Benton about it at the time, there’d be another story to tell. Then every one of us jumped to the conclusion that Orkney came near drowning Little Perrine. Evidence? We hadn’t a bit.” “But people said----” Poke began. “Confound what people said! They knew no more than we did. They were jumping to conclusions, too. But we were saying things on our own account. Right here, in this room, Poke told us that we were responsible for blocking Orkney’s ambitions from the first, for taking the shine off him; that the Shark eclipsed him in mathematics and Step skimmed the cream from the Greek; that the crowd of us kept him from bossing the class. And all of us chimed in, and said it was so, and patted our own backs, and----” “Hold on, Sam!” the Shark broke in. “How’d we do that? We’re not contortionists.” “Hang it all! Don’t interrupt! You know what I mean.” “I don’t know; I infer,” corrected the Shark. “Be accurate, be accurate!” Sam’s temper flared. “What’s the matter, anyway? Don’t you want to hear me?” “I do,” said the Shark calmly. “You’re talking sense. Therefore use sensible language.”