"Prescott," gasped Bob Hartwell, in a disgusted voice, "I hope you don't believe that any of our fellows, or their friends, could be guilty of such contemptible work!"
"Hartwell," Dick answered promptly, resting a hand on the arm of the Preston High School boy, "I am offended that you should believe us capable of suspecting Preston High School of anything as mean as this. Of course we don't suspect Preston High School!"
The referee himself now twisted the screw-eye out of its bed in the canoe frame. Then he gathered up the wet cord and blanket and hurled the whole mass shoreward.
"I'd pay twenty-five dollars out of my own pocket," the race official declared hotly, "for proof against the scoundrel who tried to spoil clean sport in this manner!"
Nearly all of the crowd of spectators had now surged down close to the float.
"I think we could make a pretty good guess at who is behind this contemptible business," snarled Danny Grin, his face, for once, darkened by a threatening frown.
"Who did it?" challenged Referee Tyndall. Dalzell opened his mouth, but Prescott broke in sharply with the command:
"Be silent, Dan! Don't mention a name when you haven't proof."
"Can it possibly be anyone from Preston?" asked Hartwell anxiously. "If it is, I beg you, Dalzell, to let me have the name—-privately, if need be. I'd spend the summer running down this thing."
"I know whom Dalzell has in mind, Hartwell," Dick rejoined. "It's no one from within a good many miles of Preston, either. But we have no right to make accusation without an iota of proof."