"Do you suppose it could have been Tip Scammon?" asked Dave, shrewdly.
"Is Tip Scammon back from the penitentiary?"
"Got back this afternoon, and has been showing himself around town this evening," nodded Dave. "Say, I wonder if he could have been the one who ambushed you?"
"I don't like to throw suspicion on anyone," Dick replied. "Still, I can't imagine anyone else who would have as much temptation to try to lay me up. Tip Scammon acted as Fred Ripley's tool, last year, in trying to make me out a High School thief. Tip was sent away, and Fred didn't have to suffer at all, because Tip wouldn't betray his employer. But Tip must have felt sore at me many a time when he was breaking rock at the penitentiary."
The two chums walked slowly back to Main Street, still talking.
"I saw you ahead of me, on the street," Dave rattled on. "I was trying to overtake you, without calling, when that thing came whizzing by your head. Say, Dick, I wonder—-"
"What?" demanded Prescott.
"Oh, of course, it's a crazy notion. But I was wondering if Mr. Cantwell could have it in for you so hard that he'd put anyone up to lying in ambush for you."
Dick started, then thought a few moments. "No," he decided. "Cantwell may be erratic, and he certainly has a treacherous temper, and some mean ways. But this was hardly the sort of trick he'd go in for."
"Then it was Tip Scammon, all by himself," declared Darrin, with great conviction.