me sound within. Now and then
he bent his head forward toward the door, and once, when Jimmie snorted
out in his sleep, he darted a hand toward his hip, as if reaching for a
weapon.

"His Nobbs, or his substitute, has arrived," thought Ned.

After a moment the man left the porch, closing the outer door carefully
behind him. Ned was out of bed in an instant, following on after him. When
he gained the porch, the intruder was turning the corner of the house.

Fearful of being seen, Ned crouched in a dark corner of the porch and
waited. He could hear the fellow moving about, but could not see him, as
he kept away from the front of the cottage.

The situation did not change for five minutes. The unwelcome visitor was
still moving about outside and Ned was waiting for some decisive move to
be made. The cottage did not rest on the knoll itself, but was set up on
blocks a foot or more in height, and before long the boy heard sounds
which indicated that the man he was watching was creeping in under the
floor.

Waiting only long enough to make sure of this, Ned left the porch and hid
himself in the jungle, which, on the south, came to within a few feet of
the wall. The fellow was indeed under the house, as the boy knew by the
sounds he made. It was perfectly dark under there, so his movements could
not be observed.

In five minutes more the fellow backed out and arose to his feet. Then Ned
saw that he held something in his right hand which looked like a fuse. It
seemed that it was the man's benevolent idea to deprive the jungle of the
society of the boys by blowing up their cottage.

Ned's first impulse was to shoot the fellow where he stood. He had no
doubt that the fellow had put enough explosive under the floor to kill
every person in it. That would be murder, and the boy's impulse was to
deal out to the ruffian the fate of a murderer.

But he did not fire, for the intruder had not yet lighted the fuse. He
stood for a moment with the end in his hand and then moved toward that
part of the jungle where Ned was concealed. The boy moved cautiously
aside, but even then, as the man crouched down in the vines, he could have
touched him with a hand by crawling a yard to the front.

Deliberately the fellow lighted a match and applied it to the fuse. The
end of the cord brightened for an instant and then became black again.

"It is wet."

The words were whispered in English.

He struck another match, listened an instant to