"Yes, but aren't you afraid you will ruin the eyes of the persons you fit gla.s.ses to?" questioned Grace.

The Mystery Man smiled.

"I never heard of a person's eyes being ruined by looking through a window," he made reply, raising a merry laugh. "I'll fit you to smoked gla.s.ses to protect your eyes from the sun. They won't cost you anything.

Neither did they cost me anything. I want my wares known in every home in the mountains, and I want every man, woman and child, and babe in arms, to be seeing things through my eyes, and I'll accomplish it if the window gla.s.s holds out."

"Of course we expect to pay you," began Grace.

"Not a cent, not a cent. I should say it might be wise to have them--the gla.s.ses--well smoked up like a ham, for there may be doings up here that it were the part of wisdom for you folks not to see. Do the bows fit, Mrs. Gray?" he asked, adjusting a pair of specs to her ears.

"I--I think so."

The visitor rattled on, keeping his customers fairly convulsed with laughter, until he had equipped half the party with spectacles.

"You may pay me," he suddenly suggested, lowering his voice. "I've changed my mind. That will be two dollars apiece," he added in a loud, bl.u.s.tering tone.

The Overland Riders looked at him in amazement. Only a few moments before that he had proposed to "fit" them with gla.s.ses free of charge.

"Of course we will pay you," announced Emma Dean airily.

Elfreda and Grace, who had been eyeing Mr. Long inquiringly, saw motive in his sudden change. The quick, meaning glance he gave them convinced them that their surmise was right.

"What is it?" asked Grace, her voice down almost to a whisper.

"Yes, two dollars. Thank you. There are three men in the cornfield watching us," he added in a tone barely loud enough for the Overlanders to hear. "Don't look. If I don't run out of change I'll have you all fixed up in three shakes of a possum's tail," said Mr. Long, again boisterously.

CHAPTER XIV

ELFREDA DISTINGUISHES HERSELF

"The smoke is too thick. I can't see through the gla.s.ses. I want my money back," complained Emma.

"No extra charge for the additional soot. Who is next? Ah! Wash needs a pair of specs to tone down the whites of his eyes," cried Jeremiah.

"Never mind him. He is smoky enough as it is," returned Hippy. "If you are dead set on doing more business you might go out and put goggles on the mules. Perhaps then they might not see so much to bray at."

This badinage was kept up for some little time, so that the prowlers in the cornfield might not suspect that their presence were known to the campers.

All of the party were wondering how the Mystery Man knew that they were being watched, for none of the Overlanders had heard the slightest sound in the direction of the cornfield, and their ears, after all their campaigning, were always on the alert. Jeremiah was a man of many mysteries.

Grace invited him to share their hospitality for the night, which he acknowledged by rising and favoring them with another profound bow.

"I will sleep in the open, if I may be permitted to do so--as before,"

he murmured. In the same low tone, he added: "I don't just like the location of your camp."

"Why not, sir?" asked Miss Briggs.

"Too many ears in the cornfield, and besides--"

Emma Dean uttered a dismal groan. Her companions burst out laughing, Jeremiah regarding them with eyes that twinkled and laughed, though the face remained almost expressionless.

"Is it not true?" he asked.

"Yes. Too true! Alas, too true," murmured Hippy in an awed tone.

Grace got up laughing and went to her tent for blankets for her guest.

"By the fire as before?" she asked upon her return.

Jeremiah shook his head.

"I will place them, Mrs. Gray. Thank you."

The girls then bade their guest good-night, each one shaking hands with him, and, as Grace extended her hand, he placed in it a roll of money.

"The funds I held you folks up for," explained Mr. Long. "You can return it to them to-morrow with an explanation. Do not let the lieutenant take too many chances, is my suggestion. Good-night."

It had been decided that, so long as their guest were to sleep in the open, it would not be necessary to keep guard outside. Grace said, however, that she would stand watch in her tent part of the night, then call Elfreda, and turn in.

Mr. Long made up his bed on the cornfield side of the camp and, after listening to one of Hippy's war stories, rolled up in his blankets and went to sleep. Grace, from her tent, could faintly make out the form of the Mystery Man, and, sitting, chin in hand regarding him, she wondered, as she had done many times before, who and what the man was. That he was all he would have them believe she did not for a moment credit.

"What's that?" Grace leaned forward and peered. Mr. Long appeared to be asleep under his blankets, but, a short distance from him, she saw another figure cautiously rolling slowly towards the cornfield.

Looking more closely at the blankets, the Overland girl saw that they were folded lengthwise to make them appear something like the form of a human being, and that it was Jeremiah himself who was so cautiously rolling away.

After waiting another hour for his return she decided that their guest had left them for the night. Grace then awakened Elfreda and asked her to take the watch for a couple of hours, saying she was very tired.

Elfreda got up sleepily and, for several minutes, sat with hands clasped to her head.

"Anything stirring?" she asked, yawning.

"Nothing except the Mystery Man. He stirred himself out of camp. He rolled out. I do not believe he will return to-night."

"Queer chap, that. All right, Loyalheart. I am awake now. Tumble in and I will see if I can keep you out of trouble until daylight."

"See to it that, instead, you don't get us into a peck of it," chuckled Grace, tucking herself in under the blankets. "Thank you for getting the bed so nice and comfy for me."

"Don't tantalize me. I know how sweet that bed is, for I just got out of it myself," replied Miss Briggs sourly. Grace did not hear, for she already was sound asleep, and Elfreda, muttering to herself, straightened up and exercised her arms and shoulders more thoroughly to arouse her sleepy faculties.

"There! I think I can manage to keep awake now. I hear Hippy snoring.

Gracious! If I had a snore like that I think I should file it. Oh!"

Elfreda had seen a movement on the cornfield side of the camp. To her, it looked like a man crawling into camp.