“What?” Niles cried in utter amazement. “Stovebridge! The cowardly hound! But what reason——”
“I rather think it was because Hanlon found that Stovebridge was the man who ran over his sister,” Dick explained quietly. “They must have had an altercation, and this is the result.”
Overcome with amazement, Jack Niles listened to Merriwell’s brief explanation; and when the Yale man had finished the other’s face was dark with rage. Roger Clingwood had come up with Buckhart and Tucker in time to hear it.
“The scoundrel!” he exclaimed. “I’ll have him run out of the club for this.”
“Out of the club and into jail!” supplemented Niles fiercely. “The child may die at any moment, I hear.”
“The thing is to catch him,” Clingwood said anxiously. “No doubt after this, he’s run away.”
Jim Hanlon staggered to his feet with Dick supporting him.
“I think I can catch him,” the Yale man said quietly. “Look after Hanlon, will you, Brad.”
Buckhart stepped over and took the dumb boy’s arm, and without a word Merriwell turned and sprang into the woods, Niles following close at his heels.
Almost at once he found the bloody cleek and, a few feet farther on, came upon the bag of golf sticks, which Stovebridge had thrown aside in his haste. Then, with what seemed to Niles almost superhuman skill, the Yale man picked up the trail of the fleeing scoundrel, and followed it on a run. His lame ankle was forgotten; he betrayed not the slightest limp.