uess all the others were, too."

The guess was a wholly correct one.

By this time the Main Street crowd, wholly over its fright, was
crowding about the police and their captives.

"Say, this seems like old times!" called Sam Foss, laughingly.
"Dick & Co. right in the thick the excitement."

"There hasn't been any," grinned Prescott.

At this instant a new actor arrived on the scene. Wild Charlie,
the Indian medicine "doctor," immaculate in black frock suit and
patent leather shoes, with a handsome sombrero spread over the
glistening black hair that hung down over his shoulders, rushed up.

"Let these people go, Chief," begged the picturesque quack doctor.
"I'll pay for any damage they've done."

Chief Simmons looked the long-haired "doctor" over with a broad grin.

"You're Wild Charlie, are you?" demanded the chief.

"Yes, partner."

"What part of Vermont do you come from! Or is Germany your hailing
place, Wild Charlie?"

"Don't josh me too hard, Chief," pleaded the medicine fakir "Will
you let my people go, if I settle?"

"These terrors," retorted Chief Simmons, "are about due for thirty
days for disturbing the peace."

"But that would bust my summer season, Chief," pleaded "Wild Charlie."

"Oh, don't run these innocents in, Chief," urged Tom Reade. "They
aren't really bad, and they admitted it as soon as we told 'em so.
These people are not dangerous---only a bit nervous."

"See here, Wild Charlie," grinned the chief of police, "I don't
want to do anything to make you wilder. I'll let these human
picture books go on condition that you take your show at once
and clear on out of town."

"I may just as well go," sighed the long-haired one. "This job
has ruined my business here. And say, Chief, won't you break the
guns and knock the cartridges out, and then let me have the guns,
too? They cost a lot of money!"

But on this point Chief Simmons was firm.

"No, sirree! You can take your infant terrors and load them on
the first train away from here. But the revolvers are confiscated,
Wild Charlie, and they'll stay here. You can try to recover the
revolvers by a civil suit, if you want to risk it in court. Otherwise,
make your get-away as fast as you can. I'll admit that your outfit
had the josh on me, and had me tickling the wire for the reserves.
But just now the town holds two West Point cadets, and two young
engineers from the real West, which makes Gridley no place to turn
a vaudevill