Connor Higgins, 14, of Athens, who won $7,000 on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."

The secret is out for Athens Middle schooler Connor Higgins, who walked off with $7,000 in winnings from “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.”

Viewers who tuned in Thursday saw Higgins wrap up his two-day episode and walk before answering the $10,000 question.

“It’s great, it’s a huge burden lifted off my shoulders,” he said. “I can live freely without secrets, which is nice.”

Higgins’ episode started Wednesday and ended with him winning $3,000, though he asked the audience early about a question regarding the spelling of the word “misspelled.”

Unfortunately, the audience didn’t know how to spell the word either.

“With the misspelled question, I saw the question and I was about 80 percent sure that ‘A’ was the correct one — with two ‘s’ and two ‘l’s — but I wasn’t 100 percent sure and I wanted that push to get me that confirmation,” he said. “Then, of course, the results came back and that kind of made me doubt everything. So, I wasn’t sure what to think anymore and I kind of entered a panic mode. When I saw I was right, it was a little reassuring but it didn’t do much to help fix my confidence.”

Higgins said he was confident in questions such as pop culture and math, but he knew he wasn’t as well versed in science or geography.

When it came time for a geography question, Higgins used his plus-one lifeline and asked his uncle for help.

“The questions was about which country is closest to the equator, and geography was one of my weakest points. So, I knew I couldn’t guess on that because I would get it wrong. So, I used my plus-one,” he said. “(Higgins’ uncle) was in the Navy for years so he’s knows all that. He came down and I asked if he had any idea and he knew it right off the bat.”

Going into the show, Higgins said he felt confident in American history after the Great Depression era. Then he got the $10,000 question about who fired the first shot in a particular war and decided to walk.

“In retrospect, I probably should’ve known this one, but I think I was so shaken up that I couldn’t make a solid decision. So, I decided to play it safe and walk away,” he said. “I would’ve been right had I guessed, but back then that guess had been a shot in the dark.”

Since the show, Higgins has brushed up on his American history but he doesn’t regret walking away.

“I think, all in all, making the decision to walk was better than guessing, though going into it that wasn’t what I wanted to do,” he said. “I walked in the studio thinking, ‘I’m going to try my best not to walk away.’ I wanted to take risks and whatever happened happened, but in the middle of that and me walking away, somewhere along the line I decided not to risk it.”

With the show over and his winnings final, Higgins said he’s satisfied with how the experience went.

“It could’ve gone better, but I’m fairly happy with my performance on the show. If I could go back, there are certainly things I would’ve done differently.”