the buggy and horse of farmer Curtiss and on the platform stood
three figures that the party in the auto made out at once as Jack
Curtiss, Bill Bender and their unsavory ally.

The road took a long curve at this point and while they could see the
station the pursuers had the mortification of knowing that it would be
some minutes before they could reach it. As the car bounded forward,
swaying like a rocking ship over the rough roads, there came a sudden
sound that made Rob's heart bound.

The long whistle of an approaching train.

Faster the machine shot onward roaring like a battery of machine guns
going into action. Its occupants leaned forward with eyes glued on the
group on the platform.

The trio of whom the autoists were in pursuit had by this time realized
that they were the objects of the chase and were nervously staring up
the track down which was fast approaching the train by which they hoped
to escape.

The auto was still a good two hundred yards from the station when the
train rolled in and, hardly stopping, started to move out again.

"Stop! stop!" yelled Chief Applegate, at the top of his lungs, and the
others waved their hands frantically. The engineer looked back at them
with a grin.

"Some more idiots missed their train, Jim," he remarked to the fireman,
"I might have waited for them but we're five minutes behind schedule
time now."

The fireman nodded understandingly and as the auto, in a cloud of dust,
dashed up to the little depot the train, with a screech that sounded
like the last defiance of the bully, shot round a curve and vanished
with a cloud of black smoke.

"Beaten!" gasped the chief.

"We can telegraph ahead and have them arrested in New York," suggested
Rob.

"No, perhaps it is all for the best," counseled Mr. Blake, "the parents
of both those boys are respected citizens, and it would be a cruel
grievance to them were their boys to be publicly disgraced. Let them
work out their own salvation."

And so Jack Curtiss, Bill Bender and Hank Handcraft vanish for a time
from the ken of the Boy Scouts, leaving behind them no regrets, except
it be those of their parents who were for many months bowed down with
the grief and humiliation of their boys' misdoings.

CHAPTER XXIII

SCOUTS IN NEED ARE FRIENDS INDEED

"Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta! Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta! Ta-ra-ta-rata! Ta-ra-ta-a-a!"

Andy's bugle briskly announced the last morning of the Boy Scouts' camp
on Topsail Island