"That's the one wot carried the bag!" whispered the boy, excitedly. "Who's the feller that made you cut an' run?"
"The detective what arrested me—I don't know his name."
"The deuce? Well, you don't want him to see you, and there's no danger of it. I can give him the slip twenty times in this neighborhood—never you fear. If yer a-goin' to give yerself up you' better do it. Don't let that fellow take you in, or they won't believe a word you say."
But the detective on whom their eyes were fixed from around the corner of the building by the side of which they stood, showed no disposition to follow.
On the contrary.
He remained stooping over the basket dropped by the flying man in the snow.
As the boys watched him there emerged from the alley at the side of the Donegal Shades two men, who, moving unobserved through the crowd which had now gathered about the building, hurried up Catherine street, passed within two feet of the spot where the boys now were.
"I know the big fellow," whispered Jerry Buck, seizing Frank by the arm. "That's another of them—that's the fellow who carried the carpet-bag away from the bank."
But Frank Mansfield made no response.
He stood staring at the vanishing forms like one in a trance.