"All got your guns?" asked Ned, as they sketched out their separate
lines of advance, and made secret marks to show the starting points.

"Yep," replied Ben Nichols, the biggest boy in all North Birchland,
whose particular "gun" was a golf driver.

So they started off. Roger insisted upon going, so Ned took him under
his protection, while Joe kept within safe distance of Don Aikins, the
young man from Bergen who claimed to be able to do anything, and any
one, in the athletic world. He swung his light stick expectantly at
the underbrush. Evidently he would be very pleased to have a swing at
the boy with the roped-on armor.

It was splendid to have something real to hunt for--what boy, or girl
either, would not have enjoyed the prospect--when there was not a
question of being held up, but of holding up?

Then they separated.

Meanwhile Dorothy was very anxious. What if the boys should really
come upon this daring young villian? What if little Roger should run
off, and be overtaken? She almost wished she had never told the whole
story, for as she believed it all a wild whim of some foolish boy, she
also felt that he would quickly see the danger of his sport. It was
the morning after her adventure, and she was able now to regard it
with less terror. Still her wrist did pain and she still trembled when
she recalled how the knife had slipped, and how easily it could have
severed her own vein, instead of severing the skin of the masked
bandit.