Dick.

Tag Mosher whistled softly.

"My luck is leaving me," declared Mosher ruefully. "Prescott,
when I saw you and looked you over I didn't see that you are a
cripple. I thought you were in as good shape as ever. As for
me, I can't do much to-night, I'm so weak. I thought that, if
I tried to fight, you'd handle me easily enough. If I ran, I
knew I couldn't run far, and you'd jump on my back and bear me
to the ground. So I thought it easier to let you have your own
way with me. Whee! I didn't do a thing but surrender to a cripple
that ought to be on crutches! My luck is gone!"

This last was said with an air of great dejection, as though Tag
never looked to have any further pleasure in life. Presently
he muttered, half aloud:

"And now they say that I've committed a murder! They'll prove
it on me, too. Tag Mosher, you're done for."

"Anyway, you're in a rather bad fix, young man," confirmed Deputy
Valden. "Even with the best luck you'll be locked up for some
years to come."

"That will kill me!" muttered Tag sullenly. "I can't live anywhere
outside of the big forest. In jail---why, I'd die of lack of
fresh air! My father, old Bill Mosher, can get along in jail
all right---he's used to it. But me? The first two weeks behind
bars will kill me!"

"You should have thought of that before you cracked Leigh's skull,"
retorted Deputy Valden.

"I tell you that I didn't do it, and that I never before heard
of a man of that name!" cried Tag Mosher fiercely.

"Leigh says you did," the deputy again informed the prisoner.

"Oh, well, then, we'll say that I did," agreed Tag moodily. "I'm
as good as finished, if the charge has been made. No one around
here would think of believing anything that Tag Mosher might say."

Somehow, despite the unsavory reputation of the prisoner, Dick
Prescott found himself feeling more than ordinary sympathy for
this dejected prisoner. Could it be possible that Tag really
was innocent of this last and most serious charge against him?
It didn't seem likely that the officers had gone after the wrong
young man.

"Tag is bad, and yet there's also good in him that is very close
to the surface," Prescott told himself. "It seems really too
bad to think of this young fellow being locked up, away from the
sunshine and the fresh air of the woods. And yet, if he makes
a sport of manslaughter, of course he'll have to be put away where
he can't do any harm. Oh, dear! I wond