But there was one other thorn that stuck in Wilfred’s side, and now that he had his long-awaited legacy of freedom, he resolved to remove it. There was one person in camp, and only one, to whom he was willing to confide the reason of his long-standing disgrace. That was young Doctor Loquez. He believed now that the seeing of the doctor was merely perfunctory, but it was an incidental part of his promise, and he would terminate his ordeal in the way he had been instructed to. Besides, he remembered the incident of meeting the genial young doctor at the roadside and of how Doc had said, “You’ll win,” in that cheery, confident way of his. Well, he had not won, he had not even swum, or been present at the big event, and he would like this cordial young champion of his to know why. In point of fact, the young doctor had not borne the episode of their meeting in mind at all, he had told a dozen boys that they would win, and he surely had not held Wilfred to any obligation. But Wilfred, sensitive and of a delicate honor, felt that he must explain his failure to take care of this responsibility. Perhaps it was because no one ever praised him or expressed any hopes for him that he cherished the doctor’s casual compliment. Poor Wilfred, it was all he had. I am to tell you this just as it occurred, as I heard it from Uncle Jeb, and later from Tom Slade—when he was able to talk. And from Doctor Anderson, father of the Anderson boy in the Montclair outfit, who chanced to be visiting camp. I exclude the highly colored narrative of Pee-wee Harris, he being a warrior rather than a historian. It was a little after six o’clock on that tempestuous night that Wilfred strolled over to Administration Shack to see the doctor. Where he had been throughout that gloomy day of driven rain and creaking tent poles, and banging shutters, no one knew. He was certainly not with any of the groups nor in the main pavilion where the more philosophically disposed had spent the long day in reading and playing backgammon and checkers. Brent Gaylong, long, lanky, and bespectacled, who had no prejudices nor active dislikes, said afterward that he saw Wandering Willie standing in the woods during a freakish hold-up of the rain and that he had paused to speak to him. He had pulled up the boy’s shabby necktie to glance at the opal pin which seemed all out of place in Wilfred’s poor attire. And he had noticed how lustrous was the stone, darting fiery colors like something magical. “That’s some peach of a pin,” he said he had observed to Wilfred. It was not until afterwards that a scoutmaster at camp declared he had heard that an opal becomes pale and lusterless simultaneously with its owner’s ill-health or misfortune, and that it flames with glory as the soul is fired with sublime inspiration or heroism.