Finding that nothing would avail with these determined captors the ex-foreman relapsed into sulks.  However, he kept walking straight ahead, obeying every order addressed to him.

Tom stopped briefly at the cottage.  Mr. Prenter was not there, and Harry Hazelton had turned in.  Nicolas was lying on a blanket on the porch.

“You’ll have to keep awake until I get back, anyway, Nicolas, and keep your eyes open,” Tom informed the Mexican.  “Sambo is at large again, and I’m afraid he may turn up here.”

“I shall know how to take care of him, Senor,” grinned the Mexican holding up his right forefinger.

“That wouldn’t help you, this time,” Tom retorted dryly.  “Mr. Sambo Ebony has a revolver with him.  Don’t let him get a shot at you; he’d be only too glad to even the score.  Now, Dick, I guess we’d better get Evarts over to the jail.”

Away started the chums and their prisoner while Nicolas went inside to warn Harry.

Not so very much later Tom and Dick turned Evarts over to the police in Blixton.  Evarts was locked up on the new charge.  The revolver taken from him was turned over to the police as evidence.  The chums also gave their information that they had overheard the ex-foreman tell the negro that he intended to jump bail.  But the greatest of all was the news of the plot to rescue the gambler prisoners now in jail.

Then the chums started back to camp.

“I noticed,” said Lieutenant Prescott, in a low tone, “that you didn’t mention the conversation between Bascomb and Evarts.”

“I hadn’t any right to,” Tom said simply.  “If Mr. Bascomb once had trouble in his life, but is living honestly now, it would be criminal of me to expose such a secret that he wouldn’t want known.  Mr. Bascomb’s past is none of my business.”

“I’m mighty glad to hear you talk that way about it,” said Prescott, resting a hand on Reade’s shoulder.

“Why?” demanded Tom rather bluntly.  “Did you think that I could feel any other way about it?”

“But Evarts is pretty sure to talk a lot about Bascomb, now,” hinted the young army officer.

“If he does,” sighed Tom, “I don’t know that I can think of any way to stop the fellow.”

“Then you don’t believe that Mr. Bascomb’s evil record of past years affects his honesty now?” Dick went on after a long pause.

“I don’t believe it,” Tom answered with unusual emphasis.  “If I did it would be as much as if I said that a fellow who once makes a wrong step must never hope to get back into the right path again.  Mr. Prenter, I am certain, is an honest man and an unusually keen one.  He is satisfied to trust Mr. Bascomb as president of the company.  But, if Evarts is some sort of family connection of Bascomb’s, and if he has often threatened to tell all about Mr. Bascomb’s past history, you can imagine the terror that poor Mr. Bascomb has lived in for years.”