omance from
the fertile brain of Jim Langford.

The whimpering Stitchy--like most of his kind; never a hero when
alone--was secured in the same way as Red had been, then the men
hunters continued to the top of the hill, where, as soon as dawn came
up, a good view would be had of the single road as it wound,
snake-like, for half a mile on the incline.

"It is five o'clock," remarked Jim. "With no mishaps, they should be
here any time now."

The seven men distributed themselves in the ditches and bushes--three
on one side and four on the other, at intervals of ten yards, covering
a distance of seventy yards in all.

As they lay there in the ditches by the roadside, the early morning
air bit sharp and chilly, having a touch of frost in it--the harbinger
of colder weather to come--but still retaining a dampness that
searched into the marrow.

A grey light was just beginning to spear the darkness on the top of
Blue Nose Mountain away to the east. A heavy blanket of cold fog
completely enveloped the low-lying lands. Suddenly, the dark leaden
sky seemed to break up into ten thousand sections of gloomy
puff-clouds, all sailing hap-hazard inside a dome of the lightest,
brightest blue. The sun, cold to look at but shining with the light of
a blazing ball, rode up over the hills, sending great shafts of
searchlight down the sides of the hills and filling the ghostly valley
below, with its tightly-packed firs and skeleton-like pine trees, with
a warm, yellow mist, suggestive of luminous smoke rising from some
fairy cauldron of molten gold; transforming the dead, chilly night
into a crisp, living, moving, late-autumn morning.

As the mists completely melted away, Jim signalled to Phil and Phil
repeated to McLean. The sign was passed along the other side as well.

Away down the roadway, at the turn between the low-lying hills, a
heavy team appeared, struggling in front of a great wagon, piled high
with produce of some kind. Another came into view, and still another,
until eight of them, following closely on one another, crept along in
what seemed to be a caterpillar movement.

As they came unsuspectingly onward, the drivers urging their
horses--cheerful in the knowledge that the worst of their journey was
successfully over--the silent watchers crept closer to cover, fearful
that the brightening day would betray their whereabouts. But nothing
untoward happened, except that a closer view of the oncomers gave out
the fact tha