"Now you're talkin' through your hat. Of course you don't want to go up to Sing Sing for two or three years, an' that's what's bound to happen if them lawyers get hold of you. What's Plums snorin' away for, when things are all mixed up so bad?" Dan asked, impatiently, and without further delay he proceeded to arouse Master Plummer to a knowledge of the terrible danger that threatened Joe, by shaking him furiously.
"What do you want now,—more milk?" the fat boy asked, without opening his eyes, and Dan pulled him suddenly to his feet.
"Wake up, an' see what we want! Here's the perlice after Joe, red-hot, an' we've got to get him out'er town."
"After Joe?" Master Plummer repeated, stupidly. "What's he been doin'?"
"We don't know, an' he won't tell us."
"I haven't been doin' a thing, Plums, as true as I live; but there it all is in the paper," Master Potter replied, in a tearful voice. "Of course there's no gettin' away from that."
Not until Plums had spelled out for himself the ominous advertisement was it possible for those who would rescue Joe Potter from the impending doom to do anything towards his escape, and, once having mastered the printed lines, the fat boy gazed at his grief-stricken friend in mingled astonishment and reproach.
"Of course the perlice are goin' to know you slept here last night, an' jest as likely as not I'll be pulled for takin' you in."
"Course you will!" Jerry Hayes cried, shrilly. "You're in a pretty tight box, Plums."
Joe protested vehemently that he was innocent of any intentional wrong-doing; but with that unexplainable advertisement before him, Plums received the statement with much the same incredulity as had the others.