There they sat down and tore their skates off, asking questions all the while.

"Did you say it was just the other side of the gate?" Chet asked. "Say, if we hurry, fellows, we may have a chance to find him. Who would ever have thought of that old Codfish turning up again?"

"Don't talk--work," cried Teddy, getting rid of his skates and stamping his numbed feet to get the blood back into them. "We missed that fellow once before, and we're not going to miss him again if we can help it.

Ready, fellows?"

"You bet!" Ferd and Chet cried, and the three were off on a run, the first of the boys to start. Behind them the girls were still fumbling with numbed fingers at their skates.

CHAPTER XX

CHET PLAYS THE HERO

The boys stopped at the gate of Three Towers Hall, not knowing just what to do next. All they knew was that Miss Race had been held up and robbed only a few hundred feet from the gate and that the robber had disappeared in the bushes at the left-hand side of the road.

"We'll have to spread out," Teddy said in an excited voice. "Probably the fellow doesn't expect to be followed, because he thinks there are only women and girls around Three Towers and he's probably around near here somewhere counting over his loot.

"There are five of us," he went on quickly, noticing that two more boys had come up from the lake on a run. "And if we go in the woods one at a time and circle about we ought to find the thief."

"Don't you think we'd better get Miss Race?" asked Chet eagerly. "She'd be able to show us just where the fellow disappeared, and everything."

"But it will take too long," Ferd was objecting, when Miss Race herself, with two or three of the other teachers and Miss Walters, came hurrying toward them.

"What are you going to do, boys?" asked Miss Walters, looking worried.

The boys explained quickly, and Teddy, turning eagerly to Miss Race, asked her to go with them as far as the woods and point out the place where the thief had disappeared.

Miss Race was still white from her fright. But she was angry, too, for the pocketbook she had lost contained a good deal of money.

"Yes, I'll go," she said, then added, turning quickly to her princ.i.p.al: "That is, if you don't mind, Miss Walters."

Miss Walters still looked troubled, but she shook her head slowly.

"I think it will be all right," she said, adding as the boys started eagerly off: "Only be careful, boys, and don't get hurt. The man may be desperate if he finds himself cornered."

The girls started to follow the boys, but Miss Walters checked them.

"You can't help," she said when they looked at her reproachfully. "And since I'm responsible for you, you will stay right here."

Meanwhile, the boys and Miss Race were running down the road. Yes, even Miss Race, who was never _very_ dignified, was running.

Suddenly they came to a trampled place in the road, showing that some struggle had taken place there.

"It was right here," said Miss Race, her eyes black with excitement.

"And he ran across the road and disappeared in that thick ma.s.s of bushes. Then he covered me with his gun and told me to 'beat it while the beating was good.'"

"The rat!" cried Chet indignantly. "Come on, fellows! I want to get my hands on that rascal."

Eagerly the boys started for the woods, but Teddy turned back suddenly and called to Miss Race.

"You'd better go back now," he said, and Miss Race's eyes twinkled at his grown-up tone. "There isn't anything more you can do, and if there are any bullets flying around we don't want you to get them. Please," he added impatiently, as she did not move.

"No, I'm going to stay right here," she answered him firmly, and when Miss Race spoke in that tone everybody knew that she meant what she said. "Go along, but don't take too many risks. Remember the man is armed."

So Teddy disappeared after his comrades and Miss Race waited nervously in the road, expecting she hardly knew what.

It seemed a long time that she stood there, dreading any moment to hear a shot, blaming herself for sending the boys on such a hunt.

"I'd rather lose a hundred pocketbooks," she scolded herself, "than have a finger of one of those boys hurt. I wish I hadn't said anything about it."

As for the boys, they were beginning to despair of ever finding the thief and were calling themselves all sorts of names for ever thinking they would, when suddenly Chet walked out of the woods and almost upon him.

It was so sudden that the boy almost yelled in his surprise, but all he really did was clap his hand over his mouth and stare. For he had come so softly that the man had not even heard him.

He was crouched over something that Chet could not see--probably the stolen pocketbook. His revolver lay beside him on the ground, close to his right hand.

With his heart in his mouth--for after all, with all his courage, he was only a boy and the robber was a man, and armed at that--Chet crept forward, fearful each second of stepping on a twig and giving his presence away.

Nearer and nearer he crept, hardly daring to breathe, until he was right behind the thief and the revolver was almost under his feet.

Then with a motion as quick as a cat's, he stooped and caught tip the revolver. The next moment he stepped quickly back and covered the thief with it.

"Hands up!" he cried. "Quick there, before I shoot!"

So sudden, so noiseless, had been his action that the thief was taken completely by surprise. With an exclamation he reached his hand out for his revolver, then, not finding it, stumbled to his feet.

"Hands up!" cried Chet sharply. "Quick, now. This blamed thing might go off."

The man's hands went up, but he still kept his back to Chet, his little furtive eyes glancing about for a means of escape.

"Turn around," Chet commanded, then as the man did not move he clicked the trigger meaningly. "Say, I think you want to taste the lead in this thing," he added, and there was something in his tone, boyish though it was, that made the man turn quickly.

Chet uttered a gasp of recognition.

"So it _is_ you," he said. "I thought it was all the time, but I couldn't be sure till I'd seen the color of your eyes. So you're really the 'Codfish.' Please to meet you, old man."

"Say, cut that out," snarled the "Codfish," making as though to spring upon Chet, but the latter waved his pistol and the man evidently changed his mind, for he stood where he was, hands above his head, eyes glaring.

"And so there's the pocketbook and the nice fat roll of money you just stole from the Three Towers teacher," Chet went on, his glance shifting from the man to the pocketbook with the money stuffed hastily in it where the man had left it on the ground. "You thought it was easy, didn't you? Well, you didn't know you had me to reckon with." Chet was boy enough to want to strut a little. Never before had he had a chance to play the real hero. He probably never would have again, so he wanted to make the most of this.

"You little puppy!" the man spat out at him. "You think you can get the best of me, don't you? Let me tell you, no kid can do that."

He made a sudden lunge forward, and Chet, taken by surprise, stepped backward, caught his foot in a root and stumbled a little.

He recovered himself in a minute, but in that little s.p.a.ce of time the "Codfish" had gone, disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him up.