Frank uttered an exclamation. 

 “You’ve been robbed, Ned!” he cried. “Those two fellows—I see it now! That was only a game! They—” 

 He paused, and hurriedly reached into his inside coat pocket. 

 “They robbed me, too!” he exclaimed. “They’ve taken the pocketbook and all our money! Ned, we’ve been robbed!” 

46CHAPTER VII—“LETS ENLIST”

46

 For a moment Ned stood staring at his brother as if he could not believe the words he heard. He remained holding the dangling chain, to which, only a short time before, his dead father’s valuable gold watch had been attached. 

 “Robbed! Robbed!” murmured Ned, blankly. 

 “Exactly,” answered Frank. “Why, see, they twisted the end right off your chain! That’s a regular pickpocket’s trick. And as for my wallet—well, I ought to be kicked for letting them get away with it!” 

 “But who took it?” asked Ned. 

 “Those two men, of course. They were working together!” 

 “But they didn’t know each other, Frank. Why, they were going to fight!” 

 “That was only their trick, Ned, to take our attention off what they were doing to us. It is an old trick. I ought to have known it. But they were good actors, and they got away with it. Oh, hang it all! How stupid I’ve been!” 47 

47

 “Not any more than I was, Frank. But it doesn’t seem possible that those men were friends, after the way they talked to one another. They were so—” 

 “Look!” suddenly exclaimed Frank. “Doesn’t that look as if they were friends?” 

 He pointed across Battery Park, where, walking rapidly toward the station of the elevated, were the same two men who had so nearly, apparently, come to blows in the aquarium. The men were walking along close together. 

 “They don’t seem very unfriendly now,” said Frank, bitterly. 

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