Being unacquainted with the city, Josiah was allowed to remain with the leader of the forces; and when the scouts had set out, Bill conducted the boy from Berry’s Corner to the rendezvous.
Dick Murray, who had arrived at the dignity of owning a newsstand only a few months previous, was a friend of all those who were so eagerly searching for Sim Jones, and at once made the new-comers welcome by inviting them into the tiny apartment which he occupied during very cold weather.
“Sim Jones is goin’ to get hisself inter trouble some of these fine days,” Dick said, shaking his head sagely. “That feller’s actin’ altogether too smart.”
“In case we catch him to-night, he’ll be in trouble mighty soon,” Bill replied with a show of anger. “If he thinks he can steal things the way he did this afternoon, an’ then get off without a thump, he’s mistaken. I ain’t got much time to hunt ’round for sich as him; but I sha’n’t go to sellin’ papers agin till this thing is squared.”
“The trouble is, Bill, he’s got his gang with him, an’ you know it won’t do to have a row on the street, ’cause you wouldn’t wanter get locked up.”
“I’d like to see the cop what could catch me, if I knew he was comin’,” Master Foss replied.
Then he proceeded to tell a long yarn about an encounter he once had with some newsboys from Brooklyn, which was interrupted by the police, when only his legs saved him from arrest.
By the time this story, in which Master Foss posed as a hero of the first water, was concluded, Tom arrived, breathless from rapid running.
“All that crowd are down by the Vesey Street Market now, an’ they’ve got a good deal of the stuff with ’em. If our fellers would only come in this minute, it wouldn’t take us a great while to clean out the whole gang.”
Bill was immediately plunged into a state of the greatest excitement, and but for the fact that Sim’s party numbered five, he would have insisted on making the captures single-handed.