“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.

But Tag was no longer there—–­not in sight, at any rate.  Bending over, Prescott collected a goodly bunch of the herbs.  Then, after glancing at his watch, he started back to camp.

It was late when he returned.  Dave was back from his swim, the table was set, and all was in readiness to sit down.

“Too late to use the herbs to-day, I guess,” said Tom, as Dick laid them down.  “You were gone a long time, old fellow.”

“I had quite a way to go,” Dick replied quietly.  Then he cut a number of grass stalks, trimming them to different lengths.  “Fellows, I want you to draw lots.  I don’t feel any too much like a walk to Five Corners after dinner, but if I get the short straw I’ll go.”

“No; you’d better not try it,” warned Darrin.  “Your hip might begin to give you trouble before you get back.  If someone has to go, let the other five draw.”

But Dick insisted that the draw should decide it all.

“What’s the matter?” asked Tom Reade shrewdly.  “Have you found traces of Tag Mosher?”