“And now they say that I’ve committed a murder!  They’ll prove it on me, too.  Tag Mosher, you’re done for.”

“Anyway, you’re in a rather bad fix, young man,” confirmed Deputy Valden.  “Even with the best luck you’ll be locked up for some years to come.”

“That will kill me!” muttered Tag sullenly.  “I can’t live anywhere outside of the big forest.  In jail—–­why, I’d die of lack of fresh air!  My father, old Bill Mosher, can get along in jail all right—–­he’s used to it.  But me?  The first two weeks behind bars will kill me!”

“You should have thought of that before you cracked Leigh’s skull,” retorted Deputy Valden.

“I tell you that I didn’t do it, and that I never before heard of a man of that name!” cried Tag Mosher fiercely.

“Leigh says you did,” the deputy again informed the prisoner.

“Oh, well, then, we’ll say that I did,” agreed Tag moodily.  “I’m as good as finished, if the charge has been made.  No one around here would think of believing anything that Tag Mosher might say.”

Somehow, despite the unsavory reputation of the prisoner, Dick Prescott found himself feeling more than ordinary sympathy for this dejected prisoner.  Could it be possible that Tag really was innocent of this last and most serious charge against him?  It didn’t seem likely that the officers had gone after the wrong young man.

“Tag is bad, and yet there’s also good in him that is very close to the surface,” Prescott told himself.  “It seems really too bad to think of this young fellow being locked up, away from the sunshine and the fresh air of the woods.  And yet, if he makes a sport of manslaughter, of course he’ll have to be put away where he can’t do any harm.  Oh, dear!  I wonder why I feel so much sympathy for a fellow of this kind?”

They were at the broken bridge, now, with the wreck of the automobile lying in the creek.

“Mosher,” said the deputy sternly, “Officer Simmons suspects that you believed we’d be after you, and that you tore up some of the planks from this crazy old bridge, so that our car would be wrecked.  Did you do that?”

“Oh, I suppose I must have,” replied Tag, with the air of one who feels it fruitless to deny what peace officers were prepared to charge against one of his bad reputation.

“Then you admit damaging the bridge?” asked Valden.

“I admit nothing of the kind,” Tag retorted.

“Who ripped the boards up?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll prove it against you,” declared Valden positively.

“Oh, I s’pose you will,” grumbled Tag.  “It’s easy to prove anything against old Bill Mosher’s son.  My dad’s where he can’t help me.”

“Are you going to play the baby act?” asked the deputy, half-sneeringly.

“Wait until I’ve had a week of good eating and sound sleeping, and then see if you can find anything babyish about me,” snapped the prisoner.