"I can hardly believe it's true," muttered Hen Condit, helplessly, as he looked around him at the beaming faces of his seven loyal chums; "just seems to me as if I'd wake up and find it only a lovely dream."
"Well, it isn't, just the same, Hen," said Lil Artha, as he wrung the other's cold hand as though it had been a pump handle, and he the honest milkman; "the money's been recovered, every cent of it, and like as not there's some sort of a reward out for the recapture of this gent here, who broke jail with a pair of handcuffs on his wrists which he filed off weeks ago up in this same swamp. And if there is, you share with us in that, Hen, remember."
"But I didn't do a single thing to get him, and that wouldn't be fair!" weakly protested the relieved boy, with his arm linked in that of Elmer, upon whom he seemed to lean in this dreadful crisis of his young life.
"Didn't hey?" snorted Toby; "I guess you lured him along; then again and helped to blind his eyes while we crept noiselessly closer and closer. Sure you deserve part of the reward, Hen, providing there is any up."
At hearing that unique remark, the prisoner burst into a hearty laugh. Evidently, "Joe," having made up his mind that he was going back to the clutches of the law, could enjoy a good joke as well as the next one; he was undoubtedly a reckless sort of fellow anyway.
"That's fine for you, son," he told Toby; "luring the rascal on is a good one. That poor kid was almost too easy for me to work, for he fell into my trap as soon as I pulled the string. Why, I felt ashamed of myself sometimes, it was so much like taking candy from the baby. But he isn't a half bad sort of a boy; and let's hope this'll be a lesson to him never again to throw stones at poor tramps. They're human as well as the rest of us, and have their feelings. That lump on his head pained Weary Willie Larkins as much as it would have done Hen here."
Having made sure that the desperate character whom they only knew as Joe could not escape, the boys built a jolly fire, and proceeded to cook something. Hen was so savagely hungry they had to lead him away while the meal was in preparation, for he vowed he was dreadfully tempted to jump in and devour his food raw.
And when a supply had been made ready, the scouts did not forget to feed their prisoner, who certainly seemed to enjoy it very much, indeed.
"You boys are a great bunch," he told Lil Artha, who was looking after his necessities in the line of food; "and after all, I'm not sorry you were the ones to get me, if it had to be. I'd never forgive myself if that fat Chief of Police down at Hickory Ridge managed to round me up, and him as ignorant about following a trail as a greenhorn."
You see, before then the man had guessed that Elmer must have spent some time Out West, from various things he heard mentioned. Indeed, he had asked plainly if such were not the case, and afterwards told the young scout-master a few interesting things connected with his own checkered career.