ays the
flyest."

It struck me suddenly that he was taking his defeat pretty easily, but
there was no time for a nice weighing of other men's motives.

"I'm fly enough to give you what's coming to you," I said; and with
that I snapped off the electric light, darted out, slammed the vault
door and shot the bolts. For a few hours at least, during the latter
part of which he might have to breathe rather bad air, the deputy was
an obstruction removed.

My hurriedly formed plan of escape would probably have made a
professional criminal weep; but it was the only one I could think of on
the spur of the moment. In the next county, at a distance of
thirty-odd miles, there was another railroad. If I could succeed in
bribing the Irish hack-driver, I might be far on my way before the bank
vault would be opened and the alarm given.

The Irishman took my money readily enough and offered no objections
when I told him what I wished to do. Also, he claimed to be familiar
with the cross-country road to Vilasville, saying that he could set me
down in the village before daylight. Oddly enough, he made no comment
on the absence of the deputy, and seemed quite as willing to haul one
passenger as two. With my liberal bribe for a stimulant he whipped up
his horses, and in a few minutes we were out of town and rolling
smoothly along the intercounty pike.

For a time the sudden break with all the well-behaved traditions kept
me awake and in a fever heat of excitement. But along in the small
hours the monotonous _clack-clack_ of the horses' hoofs on the
limestone pike and the steady rumbling of the wheels quieted me.
Reflecting that I had had little sleep the night before, and that the
way ahead would be perilous enough to ask for sharpened faculties and a
well-rested body, I braced myself in a corner of the carriage and
closed my eyes.

When I awakened, after what seemed like only the shortest hand-space of
dreamless oblivion, a misty dawn was breaking and the carriage was
stopped in a town street and in front of a brick building with barred
windows. While I was blinking and rubbing my eyes in astoundment, a
big, bearded man whose face was strangely familiar opened the door and
whipped the captured pistol from the seat.

"This was one time when the longest way 'round was the shortest way
home," chuckled the big pistol-snatcher quizzically. And then: "Old Ab
Withers seems to know you better than most of us do, Bert. He told me