stlers red-handed."

"Or red-headed," grinned Jim. "This trip might prove the way to catch
them too."

"Do you think the same bunch is operating both jobs?" asked Howden.

"Sure!" replied Jim.

"Oh, give us a rest!" broke in Brenchfield. "A smart lot you
wise-Alicks know about it. To hear you talk, one would think you had
been raised on a detective farm."

Jim laughed good-naturedly.

"All right, old man! Don't get sore. You've been a grouch ever since
we asked you to come along. One would think you didn't have any
interests tied up in this affair."

"Then I guess that one has another think coming," answered the Mayor.

"Well,--you're devilish enthusiastic over it; that's all I've got to
say," interjected Morrison, who was simply bubbling over with
excitement and expectancy,--not so much from the thought of recovering
his stolen property as from a hope that, if the thieves were captured,
he would at last have a chance to reap the benefits of his labours,
unmolested.

"Who wants to be enthusiastic on a wild-goose chase like this?"
commented Brenchfield. "I've been on the run these last three weeks,
dancing all this evening, and now the delightful prospect of lying in
a ditch till morning, and nothing at all at the end of it but the
possibility of a rheumatic fever. You juvenile bath-tub pirates and
Sherlock Holmeses give me a pain."

"And I'll bet you a new hat we'll land the whole rotten bunch of them
before we're through," challenged Morrison.

"Forget it!" grouched Brenchfield, "I've lost as much as any man here,
but I haven't made a song and dance about it like some people I know.
I am just as anxious as any of you to see the thieves in jail."

Evidently it was not a night for pleasant conversations, and tempers
seemed to be more or less on edge, so little more was said until the
launch ran quietly alongside the old, unused wharf a quarter of a mile
east of the new one at Redmans.

The men got out, one after another, leaving Allison to make his way
back to his own side, alone; as they did not require him further.

Jim led the way through the bush and up the trail toward the main
highway.

They had not gone more than two hundred yards, when a muttered oath, a
noise of stumbling, and a crash, brought them to a stand-still. It was
Brenchfield who had stumbled into a hole or over a log. Ready hands
helped him up, but he immediately dropped back on the ground with a
groan, in evident pain from his ankl