“It was a dastardly piece of business!” declared Bart Hodge hotly. “The fellow ought to be hanged!”
“I think it would be a very good thing to give him a coat of tar and feathers,” grunted Browning, who was not a little aroused himself.
“Some one must have seen him do it,” said Mason. “It’s our duty to find out who it was.”
So they set out to investigate, but everybody seemed too excited to really know anything about it. Some declared no stone had been thrown, but that Starbright had fainted in the boat. Starbright’s friends, however, knew better than that.
The Chickering set was disgusted. The result had added another laurel to the cap of Frank Merriwell, they thought, and they felt very bad about it. They were among those who declared no stone had been thrown.
Perhaps the most disgusted man was Ben Snodgrass, who had found a spot on a high piece of land, not far from the finishing-point. When the race was over he vanished from that spot, and he hoped that no one had seen him there.
He encountered Arnold, who was looking miserable enough. Snodgrass was furious.
“Oh, you’re a dandy!” he grated. “You did a nice piece of business, didn’t you? I thought Earl Knight was ten miles away when the race began, safely held under lock and key!”
“So did I,” muttered Orson huskily.
“To-morrow you pay those notes, or they go to your grandmother for collection!” snarled Snodgrass, as he shook them at Arnold, having taken them from his pockets.