ck struck twelve.

"No, I don't think so. I heard a slight cracking noise and looked up.
Something white appeared at the window for an instant. It looked like
the face of a child."

"Nonsense. A child couldn't look through that window. It's seven feet
from the ground."

"Well, I suppose I was mistaken. Let's hide that money and go to bed."

"Where shall we put it?"

Kit looked around the room, then smiled.

"Why, in the cubby-hole, of course. There's a safe for you. We haven't
used it for so long that I'd almost forgotten it."

"The very thing. Nobody'd find it there in a blue moon."

They crossed over to a corner of the room and threw back the corner of a
rug. Where the baseboard was mortised at the corner there appeared to
have been a patch put in. Ted placed his hand against this, near the
top, and it tipped back. It was hung on a pivot, and, as its top went in
and the bottom came out, there was revealed a boxlike receptacle about
two feet long and six inches deep.

"This is a bully place," said Ted, placing the packages of money within
it. "It is known to only five of us, and I'll bet that most of us have
forgotten its very existence."

The board was turned back into place and the rug spread out again.

"Safe as in the Strongburg Bank," said Kit. "Well, me for the feathers.
We're going to be kept humping to-morrow. _Buenas noches_."

In a few minutes the big ranch house was dark and quiet; every person
in it was sound asleep.

Ted Strong had sunk into a deep and untroubled sleep, for his day had
been very active, and he was tired when he lay down.

But he had not been sleeping more than a half hour when he found himself
sitting straight up in bed, very wide-awake, and wondering why.

"Something wrong in the house," he muttered to himself.

He sniffed the air to discover the smell of smoke. But it was not that.

Had he locked up? He went over his actions just before retiring, and was
sure that he had attended faithfully to everything.

The money! The thought came to him like a blow.

Something had happened to the money.

He was out of bed in a jiffy and slipped into his trousers, and,
grabbing his revolver from beneath his pillow, he opened the door and
walked softly along the hall in his bare feet.

The hall opened into the living room through an arch in which a
portiere, made of small pieces of bamboo strung together, was hung.

As he looked cautiously into the living room his elbow struck