The road took a long curve at this point and while they could see the station the pursuers had the mortification of knowing that it would be some minutes before they could reach it.  As the car bounded forward, swaying like a rocking ship over the rough roads, there came a sudden sound that made Rob’s heart bound.

The long whistle of an approaching train.

Faster the machine shot onward roaring like a battery of machine guns going into action.  Its occupants leaned forward with eyes glued on the group on the platform.

The trio of whom the autoists were in pursuit had by this time realized that they were the objects of the chase and were nervously staring up the track down which was fast approaching the train by which they hoped to escape.

The auto was still a good two hundred yards from the station when the train rolled in and, hardly stopping, started to move out again.

“Stop! stop!” yelled Chief Applegate, at the top of his lungs, and the others waved their hands frantically.  The engineer looked back at them with a grin.

“Some more idiots missed their train, Jim,” he remarked to the fireman, “I might have waited for them but we’re five minutes behind schedule time now.”

The fireman nodded understandingly and as the auto, in a cloud of dust, dashed up to the little depot the train, with a screech that sounded like the last defiance of the bully, shot round a curve and vanished with a cloud of black smoke.

“Beaten!” gasped the chief.

“We can telegraph ahead and have them arrested in New York,” suggested Rob.

“No, perhaps it is all for the best,” counseled Mr. Blake, “the parents of both those boys are respected citizens, and it would be a cruel grievance to them were their boys to be publicly disgraced.  Let them work out their own salvation.”

And so Jack Curtiss, Bill Bender and Hank Handcraft vanish for a time from the ken of the Boy Scouts, leaving behind them no regrets, except it be those of their parents who were for many months bowed down with the grief and humiliation of their boys’ misdoings.

CHAPTER XXIII

SCOUTS IN NEED ARE FRIENDS INDEED

“Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta!  Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta!  Ta-ra-ta-rata!  Ta-ra-ta-a-a!”

Andy’s bugle briskly announced the last morning of the Boy Scouts’ camp on Topsail Island.  Already the first breath of autumn had begun to tint the leaves of the earlier fading trees, and the chill of the early dawn was noticeable.

During their stay in camp the lads had profited in every way.  The scout program as sent out for camps by headquarters had been gone, through with some modifications, and Sim Jeffords had qualified as a first-class scout while Martin Green, Walter Lonsdale and Joe Digby, once more as merry as ever, were all fitted for their second-class scout diplomas.  The prospect of another patrol in Hampton had been discussed and the outlook for one seemed favorable.