rted that two suspicious characters had called during the day and
made some inquiries about drafts on New York, and the officers, who had
spent much time in the neighborhood, were convinced that they had seen
the same individuals stealthily viewing the bank from the outside.

When Ben reached the vicinity he saw no person, although he well knew
that in almost every dark nook and hiding place, a guardian of the law
was stationed, quietly awaiting the moment when the lawbreakers would
dare show themselves. Ben knew, too, that more than one pair of eyes
carefully scrutinized him as they did every pedestrian who passed.

He continued along until he reached a point where he could stand without
being noticed by anyone. Then he stopped, and, wide awake as ever,
resolved that he would see the thing out if he was forced to stand where
he was until the rising of the sun on the morrow.

CHAPTER XXI

"LAY LOW!"

The clock in the tower of the City Hall solemnly boomed the hour of
midnight. Damietta lay wrapped in slumber--that is, so far as the
majority of her citizens were concerned. Her guardians of the peace, as a
rule, were wide awake, and the dozens stationed within the vicinity of
her three national banks were particularly so.

Ben Mayberry counted the strokes of the iron tongue, and reflected that
Thursday was gone, and Friday had begun. As yet nothing had been seen or
heard to indicate that anything unlawful was contemplated in this
immediate neighborhood. More than once he was so well convinced that my
view of the case was correct, that he was on the point of starting
homeward, but he checked himself and stayed.

At such a time the minutes drag with exceeding slowness, and it seemed to
Ben that fully a couple of hours had gone by, when the huge clock struck
one. During the interval a number of pedestrians had passed, and a party
of roystering youths rode by in a carriage, each one singing
independently of the other, and in a loud, unsteady voice, but nothing
yet had occurred on which to hang a suspicion.

The peculiar, ringing, wave-like tones, which are heard a few minutes
after the striking of a large bell, were still lingering in the air and
gradually dying out, when one of the policemen gave a guarded whistle,
which was a signal for the others to "lay low," or in better English, to
keep themselves unusually wide awake.

A minute after two men were heard approaching, and became dimly visible
in the part