"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. "Where you goin' to take him?" he asked of Dan; and the latter replied: "I don't know; but we've got to get him out of town by the shortest cut, an' I reckon that'll be Thirty-fourth Street Ferry. How much money you fellers got?" Master Plummer took from his pocket that which remained of the amount given him by Joe the night previous, and, after counting it twice, replied: "Here's sixteen cents what belongs to Joe, an' I've got twenty of my own." "Us fellers have anteed up a dollar an' a quarter towards seein' you through, an' here it is," Master Fernald said, as he gave Plums a handful of small coins. Joe did not so much as glance at the money, and Dan said, impatiently: "Now, don't hang 'round here any longer, you two, 'cause it's mighty near sunrise." "But what about the kid?" Plums asked, as if until that moment he had entirely forgotten the sleeping child. "I reckon she'll have to take her chances," Dan replied, carelessly. "Some one will look out for her, of course,--turn her over to McDaniels, the blacksmith." This suggestion aroused Joe very suddenly, and he glanced at each of his companions in turn, as if to read the thoughts of all, after which he said, sharply: "You fellers can believe me or not, but I haven't done anything to set the perlice after me. I can't say as I blame you for thinkin' it ain't so, 'cause there's that advertisement; but it's a fact all the same, an' I'm goin' to let the cops take me." "What?" Tim Morgan screamed. "You're goin' to jail?" "What else can I do?" "Run away, of course, the same's we're fixin' it." "In the first place, we haven't got money enough to go very far, an' then, ag'in, I won't leave the princess knockin' 'round the streets." "You'd have to if you went to jail." "I could take her with me for a spell, anyhow." Joe appeared so thoroughly determined to give himself up to the officers of the law that his comrades were seriously alarmed.