“It’s up to you, Owen, and your duty is plain enough,” said Hugh.

“Then I ought to see the Chief, you mean?” asked the other.

“I’d advise you to do so, for your future peace of mind, if nothing else,” Hugh told the hesitating boy, who thereupon drew a long breath, and remarked: 

“I’m more than half sorry now I went back to look for this cigarette; because only for my picking up such positive evidence I needn’t get into this nasty game.  But I’m in now, and I’ll have to shoulder my share of the responsibility, I guess.  So, while the thing is still fresh in my mind, I’ll trot around to Headquarters to wake up our sleeping Chief.  Things have come to a pretty pass here in Scranton when boys have to lend a helping hand to the police force so as to nab a petty thief.”

With that Owen left them.  When he had a duty to perform, however unpleasant it might be, Owen was accustomed to grappling with it, and not compromising.

Thad looked after the other and remarked: 

“How queer things do come about, Hugh.  Just to think of Owen discovering Tip sauntering along the road and smoking one of those stolen cigarettes.  Pretty cute of him, too, sneaking back and hunting for the evidence.  I suppose it’ll wind up in Tip being locked up with Leon, and eventually going to the Reform School.”

“Few people will be sorry,” observed Hugh, although he felt a twinge when his mind reverted to the mothers of the two boys.

“I wonder what Nick thinks of it all,” mused Thad.  “He must realize that he had a narrow squeak of it; because, only for that sudden change of heart on his part, brought around by what you did about those nickeled skates, he might have been in the cooler right now, along with crafty Leon.”

As they had arrived at the point where their paths diverged, the two chums separated.  Hugh had returned home somewhat earlier than customary, as he had something to do for his mother, just as Owen had admitted was the cause of his absence from the ice that same afternoon.

Usually boys like to linger on the ice until long after the shades of night have settled down and time for supper is perilously near.  With a jolly bonfire blazing on the bank, and the skaters going and coming all the while, the prospect is so alluring that it is indeed difficult for any lad to break away.  And the father who has not forgotten his own shortcomings of long ago is apt to wisely overlook some such transgression of parental authority, when the ice beckons, and, in spite of good intentions, all outdoors seems to grip a fellow in fetters of steel.

Some little time later Hugh might have been seen in a neighbor’s family sleigh heading out of town.  There was plenty of snow for this sort of thing, though the ice had been kept well cleared through the use of brooms handled by many willing hands.  The skating had not been injured in the least, for they flooded the pond each night afresh, giving it a glittering new surface by morning.