"I'm not saying," came the gruff answer. "For one thing, it wouldn't do me a bit of good to deny it. When a fellow has a bad name everywhere any judge and jury will hang him. Now, I happen to object to being hanged, or even to being locked up for perhaps twenty or thirty years. Queer in me, isn't it?" "What you ought to do," pursued Dick, "and what you will do, if you are brave and manly, is to drop that gun, face about, and march yourself back to jail." "And be locked up some more?" quivered Tag in excitement. "If you're guilty of assaulting Mr. Leigh, you should be also brave and manly enough to walk back to jail, ready to pay the price of your act like a man. If you're not guilty, then you should be man enough to face the world and prove your innocence like a real man. Don't be a cowardly sneak, Tag!" "A coward?" blurted the other angrily. "You ought to know better'n that. And the officers know better, too; I may be only a boy, but the officers are out in packs, hunting for me. I know, for I've seen two pairs of those fellows go by on the road to-day." "Are you going to be a man, Tag, or just a sneaking coward?" asked Dick, as he rose. "Sit down!" commanded Tag sharply. "If you really want to talk with me, and will say 'please,' I'll sit down," Dick smiled back coolly at the angry boy. "But if you're just simply ordering me to sit down, then I won't do anything of the sort. Do you want to talk with me?" "Sit down!" "You didn't say 'please.'" "I'm not going to say it." "Then good-bye for a little while." Though the muzzles of the sawed-off shotgun stared wickedly at him, Dick Prescott turned on his heel, walking off. "Are you going, now, to tip the officers off that you've seen me?" called Tag. "Yes." Behind Dick, as he kept on his way back toward camp there came a snort of anger. Prescott was not quite as cool as he appeared to be. He knew there was at least a chance that savage Tag Mosher would send the contents of one or both barrels of the gun into his back. Dick, however, had mastered the first secret of bravery, which is to conceal one's fear. Again snorting, young Mosher cocked both hammers of the shotgun, Dick heard the clicks, but still walked on. "I hate to do it!" called Tag warningly. "Oh, you won't do it," Dick answered in a tone of calm self-assurance. Young Prescott kept on for another hundred yards. No sound came from behind him. Unless young Mosher were creeping upon him, Prescott knew that he was now out of range of the shotgun. Impelled by curiosity, Dick wheeled about Tag Mosher was nowhere in sight. "Either that fellow isn't half as bad as he pretends to be, or else not half as desperate as he likes to think himself," Dick chuckled. Then, remembering, in a flash, the herbs that he had come to get, the Gridley High School boy deliberately walked back to the spot where he had left this strange vagrant of the forest.