run their two automobiles noiselessly up the lane leading from the main
road until they were perhaps half a mile distant from the house and then
had concealed them in the woods near-by, being careful to obliterate all
traces of the wheel tracks where they had left the lane. Making a detour
among the trees they had reached their present position not more than
three hundred yards away from the buildings. They had carried the rifles
with them, and these now were close at hand, hidden under the log on
which the three of them were sitting. Carter, with the other men, under
Fleck's orders, had divided themselves into scouting parties and had
crept away through the woods to study their surroundings at still closer
range while the waning afternoon light permitted.

At first glance one might have been inclined to believe the buildings
untenanted. There seemed to be no one stirring about the place, and some
of the unshuttered windows on the second floor were broken. The only
indications of recent occupation were a pile of kegs at the rear of the
house and near-by a heap of freshly opened tin cans. Near one of the
larger outbuildings, too, was a pile of chips and sawdust.

"There does not seem to be any one about," whispered Jane. "What do you
suppose they do here?"

"I can't imagine yet," said Fleck with an impatient shake of his head.
"The fact that this house is important enough for the Hoffs to visit
once a week makes it important for us to cautiously and carefully
investigate everything about it. It may be a secret wireless plant away
off here in the woods where no one would think of looking for it. It
might be a bomb factory where their chemists manufacture the bombs and
explosives with which they are constantly trying to wreck our munition
plants and communication lines. Perhaps it is just a rendezvous where
their various agents, the important ones engaged in their damnable work
of destruction, come secretly to get their orders from the Hoffs and to
receive payment for their hellishness accomplished."

"It's all so funny, so perfectly absurd," said Jane with a nervous
little laugh.

"Absurd," cried Fleck indignantly, "what do you mean? It's frightfully
serious."

"Of course, I understand," Jane hastened to say. "I was just thinking,
though, how funny we are here in America, especially in the big cities.
We know nothing whatever about our neighbors, about the people right
next door to us. In one apartment we'll be do