"Well, I believe I have known of a certain lot of young fellows who happen to hold forth around Riverport, and who would not be above doing a thing like that, given just half a cause," the judge replied, meaningly; and every one knew whom he had in mind, for their thoughts immediately flew to Buck Lemington and his cronies.
"But perhaps it wasn't any prank of boys at all," Bristles went on, eagerly; "Colon said the night was so bright he had half a notion to take a two mile dash out over the Grafton road, just to wind up his big day. I advised him not to think of it, but he only laughed. But he's awful set in his ways, sir, once he makes up his mind."
"He said that; did he?" asked the judge, apparently thinking that there might be something worth while taking note of in this latest assertion.
"Yes, sir, he certainly did," the boy answered. "Colon's a queer fish anyhow, and does heaps of things nobody else'd ever think of. Now, what if he did start on that run; why, something might have happened to him—perhaps he tripped, and fell, and broke a leg, so he couldn't even crawl home."
The mother started to cry again as she pictured her boy suffering all through the night as Bristles described so recklessly. And so the judge moved aside with several of the boys, the better to talk unheard by Colon's mother.
"Things are beginning to take on shape, I see," he remarked, grimly. "Possibly the boy did foolishly start on that late run by moonlight, and met with trouble. Some people with whom I talked on the way here were of the opinion he had been kidnapped by tramps, and was being held for a ransom, just as if this might be Sicily or Greece."
"I don't think that way, Judge Colon," said Fred, speaking for the first time.
"I'm pleased to hear that you have another idea, my boy; let us know its nature," said the lawyer, who had always been favorably impressed with the sterling worth of Mr. Fenton's son, and now hoped he had struck on a plausible explanation of the odd mystery.
"My idea is," Fred began, modestly, yet firmly, "that Colon has been abducted by some of those Mechanicsburg fellows, who know they haven't a ghost of a chance to win the three shorter running events on the schedule, with him in line. They've got a college man for a coach, you see, sir, and like as not he's been telling them of the tricks that are played among all the big universities; so they've just thought to spoil our game for us by holding our best man a prisoner till after the meet."