usick, didn't you?"

Woslosky whirled and closed and fastened the barn doors, and almost with
the same movement drew a searchlight and flashed it over the place. It
was apparently empty.

The Pole burst into blasphemous anger, punctuated with sharp questions.
Both men had heard the cautious entrance they had taken for his own,
both men had remained silent and unsuspicious, and both were positive
whoever had come in had not gone out again.

He stationed one man at the door, and commenced a merciless search. The
summer's hay filled one end, but it was closely packed below and offered
no refuge. Armed with the shotgun, and with the flash in his pocket,
Woslosky climbed the ladder to the loft, going softly. He listened at
the top, and then searched it with the light, holding it far to the left
for a possible bullet. The loft was empty. He climbed into it and walked
over it, gun in one hand and flash in the other, searching for some
buried figure. But there was nothing. The loft was fragrant with the
newly dried hay, sweet and empty. Woslosky descended the ladder again,
the flash extinguished, and stood again on the barn floor, considering.
Cusick was a man without imagination, and he had sworn that some one had
come in. Then--

Suddenly there was a whirr of wings outside and above, excited
flutterings first, and then a general flight of the pigeons who roosted
on the roof. Woslosky listened and slowly smiled.

"We've got him, boys," he said, without excitement. "Outside, and call
the others. He's on the roof."

Cusick whistled shrilly, and as the Pole ran out he met the others
coming pell-mell toward him. He flung a guard of all five of them around
the barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and gazed upward.
The very outline of the ridge pole was indistinguishable, and he swore
softly. In the hope of drawing an answering flash he fired, but without
result. The explosion echoed and reechoed, died away.

He called to Cusick, and had him try the same experiment, following the
line of the gutter as nearly as possible in the darkness, on that side,
and emptying his revolver. Still silence.

Woslosky began to doubt. The pigeons might have seen his flashlight,
might have heard his own stealthy movements. He was intensely irritated.
The shooting, if the alarm had been false, had ruined everything. He
saw, as in a vision, Doyle's sneering face when he told him. Beside him
Cusick was reloading his revolver in the