nd it necessary to stop
talking if he wanted to keep in the van with several of the swiftest
runners among the scouts.

It was true that they were rapidly overtaking Jud, who ran in a
strange zigzag fashion like one who was dizzy. He kept up until the
leaders among his pursuers came alongside; then he stopped short, and,
panting for breath, squared off, striking viciously at them.

Jack and two other scouts closed in on him, regardless of blows, and
Jud was made a prisoner. He ceased struggling when he found it could
avail him nothing, but glared at his captors as an Indian warrior
might have done.

"Huh! think you're smart, don't you, overhaulin' me so easy," he told
them disdainfully. "But if I hadn't been knocked dizzy when I fell you
never would a got me. Now what're you meanin' to do about it? Ain't a
feller got a right to walk the public streets of this here town
without bein' grabbed by a pack of cowards in soldier suits, and
treated rough-house way?"

"That doesn't go with us, Jud Mabley," said Bobolink, indignantly.
"You were playing the spy on us, you know it, trying to listen to all
we were saying."

"So as to tell that Lawson crowd, and get them to start some mean
trick on us in the bargain," added Tom Betts.

"O-ho! ain't a feller a right to stop alongside of a church to strike
a match for his pipe?" jeered the prisoner, defiantly. "How was I to
know your crowd was inside there? The streets are free to any one,
man, woman or boy, I take it."

"How about the broken window, Jud?" demanded Bobolink, triumphantly.

"Yes! did you smash that pane of glass when you threw your match away,
Jud," asked another boy, with a laugh.

"He was caught in the act, fellows," asserted Frank Savage, "and the
next question with us is what ought we to do to punish a sneak and a
spy?"

"I said it before--ride him on a rail around town so people can see
how scouts stand up for their own rights!" came a voice from the group
of excited boys.

"Oh! that would be letting him off too easy," Tom Betts affirmed.
"'Twould serve him just about right if we ducked him a few times in
the river."

"All we need is an axe to cut a hole through the ice," another lad
went on to say, showing that the suggestion rather caught his fancy as
the appropriate thing to do--making the punishment fit the crime, as
it were.

"Keep it goin'," sneered the defiant Jud, not showing any signs of
quailing under this bombardment. "Try and think up