closure was as light and as safe by night as by
day, but Lossing, while recovering in the hospital, had fallen in love
with the lake, so near at hand, and his first stroll by day was in
this direction, as well as his first evening venture.

Out across the Government Plaza, along the shore to the brick gunboat,
and on northward where the lights were faint and the risk greatest, or
so it seemed to me, he went that night, and the next, and the next.

But not alone, when he took his second promenade lake-ward. The boy
Billy was at his heels unseen but watchful, and well knowing how to
act should danger threaten.

* * * * *

In the meantime, since the night of the attack upon Lossing, the
brunette, Bob, Delbras, Smug--all had vanished utterly. Neither in
Midway nor elsewhere, as Turks or gentlemen of leisure, were they seen
by Dave, myself, or the boy Billy.

'But they're here all right!' Dave declared, 'and if we don't find a
new gap in the fence somewhere soon, I don't know the gentry!'

During Lossing's confinement in the hospital, after he had begun to
mend, I had brought Dave to see him, and after that he had several
times looked in upon the invalid; sometimes at my request, and later
for his own pleasure as well.

Dave's bluff ways had made for him a friend in our guard, and so one
day, the day following that of Lossing's third lakeside promenade, I
asked Dave, who had declared himself off duty for the night, to go and
see him.

I had just received a letter from Boston which made me anxious to see
Miss Jenrys; and as I had not called upon nor met her during the day,
I decided to go to Washington Avenue that evening.

'Go early, Dave,' I said, when he had assured me of his readiness to
go, 'and ask him to put in the evening with you. I don't like these
lakeshore prowls. The fellow's a good one with his fists, but he don't
seem to realize that it's treachery, a blow in the back, that he must
guard against.'

Dave went his way, and it being rather early for my call, I sat down
to re-read Mr. Trent's letter.

It was brief and evidently penned under excitement. He had received an
anonymous letter from Chicago, proposing to open negotiations for the
ransom of his son, who, it declared, was at that moment a prisoner in
the hands of desperate men.

'In short,' Trent's letter ended, 'it's an alarming letter.
I write this in haste that it may reach you at once, and can