"They must have been joshing you, Frank!" remarked one of the other lads.
"Don't you believe it," said the head of the Columbia police force, soberly, as he stared in the sneering faces of the two prisoners; "from all accounts they're capable of doing anything along that line. It would have been a rough deal, though, and I'd got the laugh from every other police chief in the State. Frank, I owe you another bunch of thanks for this. You're a darling, for a fact!"
"'Some men are born great, and others have greatness thrust upon them.' Frank is midway between the two," remarked Molly Manners, solemnly.
"So say we all of us!" echoed the bunch in concert, raising their hands after the manner of a witness in court.
"Thanks, fellows! You overwhelm me," laughed the object of this demonstration.
"Well, boys, are you ready to turn these chaps over to the majesty of the law?" asked Chief Hogg, with a grin.
"Take them, and welcome, sir. Some of us want to chase off on our game, as we've already lost enough time. But remember that every mother's son expects to see his name chiseled in the annals of Columbia, to be handed down to posterity as shining examples of the modern hero!" cried Molly.
"Hear! hear! That's the stuff! Frank isn't going to monopolize all the glory in this affair! When he won out in that last baseball game he had eight husky fellows back of him; now he has an even dozen. Come on you hounds; let's get busy and take up the paper trail!"
And so the majority of the runners started off again. They looked back once or twice rather wistfully, and waved their hands to Frank, as though, truth to tell, all of them would much rather have given up the game for the day and accompanied the procession into town.
Boylike they sighed to be in the limelight, to hear the ejaculations of astonishment that would arise when the citizens learned what had happened, and discover the admiring eyes of the pretty girls of Columbia fastened upon them. It does not fall to the lot of the average lad to shine as a hero more than once in a lifetime; and they begrudged losing the opportunity.