"I'm thankful you didn't catch him," quivered Miss Bentley. "He's
a terrible fellow."

"Is he?" laughed Prescott good-humoredly. "As a bad man Tag Mosher,
or young Page, as he really ought to be called, is about the biggest
bluff that I've ever heard of. Look at these weapons. Both unloaded.
Yet, when Tag broke jail, he carried away ammunition enough to
hold a company of militia at bay. Tag doesn't want to shoot anyone.
All he wants to do is to scare pursuers."

"He's a ruffian, anyway," Belle declared.

"Why? Was he very rough with you?" Dick inquired. "Did he tear
your rings off recklessly, and hurt your hands?"

"No; but be held my hand so firmly that I simply couldn't pull
it out of his clutch," Belle replied. "Then he took off my rings
as easily and in as matter-of-fact way as though they were his
own property."

"He really didn't mean to hurt you," Dick explained. "He has
been trained, from babyhood, to make his living by appropriating
other people's belongings, and he was only obeying his training.
The officers are after him, and Tag, not wishing to be caught,
wants to put considerable distance between himself and these woods.
Yet no matter what he does, or where he goes, the officers will
finally find him. Law is supreme, and triumphs in the end. No
man may defy the police and courts of a nation and get away with
it for any great length of time."

"Would you have tried to catch him, if we hadn't been with you?"
asked Laura.

"Yes," Dick admitted. "Though under the circumstances I had no
right to do anything but stay here with you and try to protect
you. Shall we go on with the collecting?"

"If the other girls want to do so," agree Susie Sharp.

"If we want to?" Laura echoed. "After the fright we've had?
All that we want to do is to-----"

"Get back to camp?" smiled Dick. "I'm wholly agreeable. Truth
to tell, I've had such a fright that my nerves are shattered."

"Your nerves shattered?" echoed Belle scornfully. "Tell that
to someone who never lived in Gridley, Dick Prescott! You flew
at that fellow like a tiger."

"But look at the magnificent help I had!" smiled Dick.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MEDICAL EXAMINER TALKS TRAINING

"Do you want a suggestion, Prescott?" inquired Dr. Bentley.

The physician and his party had been over at the high school boys'
camp for something like twenty minutes, that same afternoon, watching
the training work that the young athletes were un