peak.

"I don't know," Joe replied, sadly, and added, in a more hopeful tone,
"If you fellers would look after the little thing, she might--"

"We'll have all we can do keepin' you out of jail, without bein'
bothered by a kid taggin' everywhere we go. You don't seem to
understand, Joe, that it's goin' to take mighty sharp work, an' most
likely every feller that ever knew you will be watched by the perlice
from this time out."

"But I can't leave her here alone," Master Potter wailed.

"Why not take her down where Plums used to live? Mis' Carter's got a
reg'lar raft of kids, an' ought'er know how to take care of another."

"It would jest 'bout break the little thing's heart to put her in with
that Carter gang, an' I can't do it. I'd sooner the perlice nabbed me."

"Now you're talkin' through your hat. Of course you don't want to go up
to Sing Sing for two or three years, an' that's what's bound to happen
if them lawyers get hold of you. What's Plums snorin' away for, when
things are all mixed up so bad?" Dan asked, impatiently, and without
further delay he proceeded to arouse Master Plummer to a knowledge of
the terrible danger that threatened Joe, by shaking him furiously.

"What do you want now,--more milk?" the fat boy asked, without opening
his eyes, and Dan pulled him suddenly to his feet.

"Wake up, an' see what we want! Here's the perlice after Joe, red-hot,
an' we've got to get him out'er town."

"After Joe?" Master Plummer repeated, stupidly. "What's he been doin'?"

"We don't know, an' he won't tell us."

"I haven't been doin' a thing, Plums, as true as I live; but there it
all is in the paper," Master Potter replied, in a tearful voice. "Of
course there's no gettin' away from that."

Not until Plums had spelled out for himself the ominous advertisement
was it possible for those who would rescue Joe Potter from the impending
doom to do anything towards his escape, and, once having mastered the
printed lines, the fat boy gazed at his grief-stricken friend in mingled
astonishment and reproach.

"Of course the perlice are goin' to know you slept here last night, an'
jest as likely as not I'll be pulled for takin' you in."

"Course you will!" Jerry Hayes cried, shrilly. "You're in a pretty tight
box, Plums."

Joe protested vehemently that he was innocent of any intentional
wrong-doing; but with that unexplainable advertisement before him, Plums
received the statement with much the same incredulity