“Five Corners is my address,” replied the deputy.  “So long, boys!  Glad to have seen you again.”

The cat-footed deputy was soon lost to sight among the trees.

Dave was the first to speak, and that was some moments later.

“Dick, you’re foolish to feel any liking for Tag Mosher.  He’s bad all the way through.  As it was he was locked up on a charge of possible manslaughter, and now he has escaped, taking with him firearms and ammunition enough to rid the county of peace and police officers.  He’ll do it, too, if he’s cornered.  Now, where’s the good in that kind of a pest?”

“I don’t know how to answer you,” sighed Dick.  “Perhaps I am foolish, but I’m not yet prepared to admit it.  Instead, I still contend that I feel a sneaking liking for poor Tag.”

“‘Poor Tag,’ indeed!” mimicked Tom Reade.  “Poor wives and kids of the deputy sheriffs whom Tag may shoot down in their tracks before he’s cornered at last!  Dick, young Mosher is a budding outlaw and a bad egg all around.”

“No decent citizen should feel any sort of sympathy for him,” affirmed Harry Hazelton.

“Let Dick alone,” objected Greg Holmes.  “Dick generally knows what he’s about, even in regard to his emotions and sympathies.”

“What do you say, Danny?” asked Dave.

“May the sheriff deliver me from Tag Mosher!” replied Danny Grin.

“You’re a prejudiced lot,” smiled Dick, as he rose from his camp stool.  “Who’ll watch camp this time while the rest of us go to swimming pool?”

“I will,” Darry volunteered.

Carrying clean underclothing, soap and towels from the tent, the other five started through the woods to a new swimming pool that had been discovered lately.

When they returned Dave went away alone for his bath.  Tom Reade, as the cook for the day, lifted the lid of the soup pot to examine the contents.

“I wish one of you fellows would go out into the woods and bring in some of that flowering savory herb for the soup,” called Tom.

“I know the kind you mean,” nodded Prescott.  “I’ll go and get it.”

He strolled off in the opposite direction from the pool.  Yet, truth to tell, his mind was very little on the herb he was seeking.  His mind dwelt almost completely on the thought of Tag Mosher, once more at large, and most likely roaming about somewhere in this vast expanse of woods.

“I don’t believe it’s so much badness in Tag, as it is that he’s just a plain, simple savage, with the instincts and the passions of the savage,” Dick reflected.  “I wonder if Tag ever did really have a chance to be decent?  Poor fellow!  If he must be caught and returned to jail, and by and by pay the penalty of his attack upon Farmer Leigh, then I don’t believe he ever will have a real chance to try to be decent again.  I wonder if I’m wrong and the other fellows are right?  Perhaps Tag would scorn a chance to be an all-around decent fellow.  I wonder.  I wonder!”