"Good."

Then Gordon laughed. The last care had been banished. Now it was action. Now? Ah, now he was perfectly happy.

The night was intensely still. The last revelers in Snake's Fall had betaken themselves to their drunken slumbers. The only lights remaining were the glow of a small cluster of red lamps just outside the town at the eastern end of it, and the peeping lights behind the curtained windows of the houses to which these belonged. There was no need to question the nature of these houses. In the West they are to be found on the fringe of every young town that offers the prospect of prosperity.

There was a single light burning in the hall of McSwain's hotel. This was as usual, and would burn all night. For the rest, the house was in darkness. The last guest had retired to rest a full hour or more.

The stillness was profound. The very profundity of it was only increased by the occasional long-drawn dole of the prairie coyote, foraging somewhere out in the distance for its benighted prey.

The shadowed outbuildings behind the hotel remained for a long time as quiet as the rest of the world. The horses in the barn were sleeping peacefully. The fowls and turkeys and geese which populated the yard in daylight were as profoundly steeped with sleep as the rest of the feathered world. Even the two aged husky dogs, set there on the presumption of keeping guard, were composed for the night.

But after awhile sounds began to emanate from the dark barn. With the first sound a dog-chain rattled, and immediately a low voice spoke.

After that the dog-chain remained still. Next came the sound of hoofs on the hard sand floor of the barn. They were hasty, but swiftly passing. The last sound was heard as two horses emerged upon the open, each led by a shadowy figure quite unrecognizable in the velvety darkness of the starlit night.

The horses moved across towards the vague outline of a large hayrack which stood mounted in the running gear of a dismantled wagon, and the figures leading them began at once to hook them up in place. While this was happening two other figures were loading the rack with hay from the corral near by, in which stood a half-cut haystack. Their work seemed to be more intricate than the usual process of loading a hayrack. There seemed to be a sort of wide and long cage in the bottom of the rack, and the hay needed careful placing to leave the interior of this free, while yet surrounding it completely and rendering it absolutely obscured.

In less than half an hour the work was completed, and the four men gathered together and conversed in low voices.

After this a fresh movement took place. The group broke up, and each moved off as though to carry out affairs already agreed upon. One man mounted the rack and took up his position for driving the team.

Another stood near the rear of the wagon and remained waiting, whilst the other two moved towards the hotel.

These latter parted as they neared the building. One of them entered it through the back door, and as he came within the radiance of the solitary oil-lamp it became apparent that his face was completely masked. He moved stealthily forward, listening for any unwelcome sound, mounted the staircase, and was immediately swallowed up by the darkness of the corridor above.

Meanwhile his companion had taken another route. He had moved along the building to the left of the back door. His objective was the iron fire-escape which went up to the gallery outside the upper windows.

He found it almost at the end of the building, and began the ascent.

In a few moments he was at the top, and, moving along the narrow iron gallery, he counted the windows as he passed them. At the fifth window he paused and examined it. The blind inside was withdrawn, and he ran over in his mind the various details which had been given him. He knew that the latch inside had been carefully removed.

He tried the window cautiously. It moved easily to his pressure, and a smile stole over his masked features when he remembered that ample grease had been placed in its slipway. It was good to think that these contingencies had been so carefully provided for.

The window was sufficiently open. The process had been entirely soundless, but he bent down and listened intently. Far away, somewhere inside, he could hear the sound of deep breathing. He made his next move quickly and stealthily. One leg was raised and thrust through the opening, and, bending his great body nearly double, he made his way into the room beyond.

Pausing for a few moments to assure himself that the sleeper in the adjoining room had not been disturbed, he next made his way towards the door, aided by the light of a silent sulphur match. He quickly withdrew the bolt, and was immediately joined by the man who had entered the hotel through the back door.

Now he turned his attention to the room itself. Yes, everything was as he had been told. It was a largish room, and a small archway, hung with heavy curtains, divided it from another. The portion he had entered was furnished as a parlor, and beyond the curtains was the bedroom. Signing to his companion to remain where he was, he moved swiftly and silently to the heavy drawn curtains. For a second he listened to the breathing beyond; then he parted them and vanished within.

David Slosson awoke out of a heavy sleep with a sudden nightmarish start. He thought some one was calling him, shouting his name aloud in a terrified voice.

But now he was wide awake in the pitch-dark room: no sound broke the silence. He was on his back, and he made to turn over on to his side.

Instantly something cold and hard encountered his cheek and a whispering voice broke the silence.

"One word and you're a dead man!" said the voice. "Just keep quite still and don't speak, and you won't come to any harm."

David Slosson was no fool, nor was he a coward, but, amongst his other many experiences on the fringe of civilization, he had learned the power of a gun held right. He knew that his cheek had encountered the cold muzzle of a gun. Shocked and startled and helpless as he was, he remained perfectly still and silent, awaiting developments.

They came swiftly. The curtains parted and a man, completely masked and clad in the ordinary prairie kit of the West, and bearing a lighted lamp in his hand, entered the room. His first assailant, holding the gun only inches from his head, Slosson could not properly discern. Out of the corners of his eyes he was aware that his face was masked like that of the other, but that was all.

The newcomer set the lamp down on a table and advanced to the other side of the bed. Instantly he produced a strap, enwrapped in the folds of a thick towel.

Slosson realized what was about to happen, and contemplated resistance.

As though his thoughts had been read the man with the gun spoke again--

"Only one sound an' I'll blow your brains to glory. Ther' ain't no help around that you ken get in time. So don't worry any."

The threat of the gun was irresistible, and Slosson yielded.

The second man forced the strap gag into his mouth and buckled it tightly behind his victim's head. This done, the agent's hands were lashed fast with a rope. Then the gun was withdrawn and the wretched agent was assisted into his clothes, after the pockets had been searched for weapons.

In a quarter of an hour the whole transaction was completed, and, with hands securely fastened behind his back and the gag in his mouth fixed cruelly firmly, David Slosson stood ready to follow his captors.

During all that time he had used his eyes and all his intelligence to discover the identity of his assailants, but without avail. Even their great size afforded him no enlightenment, with their entire faces hidden under the enveloping masks.

In silence the light was extinguished. In silence they left the room and proceeded down the stairs. In silence they came to the waiting hayrack outside. Here Slosson beheld the other two masked figures, one on the wagon, and the other waiting at the rear of it. But he was given no further chance of observation. His captors seized him bodily and lifted him into the cage beneath the hay, while one of the men got in with him and now secured his feet.

After that more hay was thrown into the vehicle, till it looked like an ordinary farmer's rack, and then the horses started off, and the prisoner knew that, for some inexplicable reason, he had been kidnaped.

Mrs. Carbhoy had been concerned all day. When she was concerned about anything her temper generally gave way to a condition which her youthful daughter was pleased to describe as "gritty." Whether it really described her mother's mood or not mattered little. It certainly expressed Gracie's understanding of it.

To-day nothing the child did was right. She had called her physical culture instructress a "cat" that morning, only because she had been afraid to enter into a more drastic physical argument with her. For that her "gritty" mother had deprived her of candy for the day. She had refused to do anything right at her subsequent dancing lesson, in consequence, and for that she had had her week's pocket-money stopped.

Then at lunch she had willfully broken the peace by upsetting a glass of ice-water upon the glass-covered table, and incidentally had broken the glass. For this she was confined to her school-room for the rest of the day, and was only allowed to appear before her disturbed mother at her nine-o'clock bed hour.

When a very indignant Gracie appeared before her mother to fulfill her final duty of kissing her "good-night," that individual was more "gritty" than ever. She was in the act of opening a bulky letter addressed to her in a familiar handwriting. Gracie knew at once from whom it came. Instantly the imp of mischief stirred in her bosom.

"What nursing home will you send Gordon to when he gets back?" she inquired blandly.

Her mother eyed her coldly while she drew out the sheets of letter-paper. She pointed to a wall bell.

"Ring that bell," she ordered sharply.

Gracie obeyed, wondering what was to be the consequence of her fresh effort. She had not long to wait. Her mother's maid entered.

"Tell Huxton to pack Miss Gracie's trunks ready for Tuxedo. She will leave for Vernor Court by the midday express. Her governesses will accompany her."

The maid retired. In an instant all hope had fled, and Gracie was reduced to hasty penitence.

"Please, momma, don't send me out to the country. I'm sorry for what I've done to-day, real sorry--but I've just had the fidgets all day, what with pop going away and--and that silly Gordon never coming near us, or--or anything. True, momma, I won't be naughty ever again.

'Deed I won't. Oh, say you won't send me off by myself," she urged, coming coaxingly to her mother's side. "There's Jacky Molyneux going to take me a run in his automobile to-morrow afternoon, and we're going to Garden City, and he always gives me heaps of ice-cream. Oh, momma, don't send me off to that dreadful Tuxedo."

At all times Mrs. Carbhoy was easily cajoled, and just now she was feeling so miserable and lonely since her husband had been called away on urgent business, she knew not where. Then here was another of Gordon's troublesome letters in her lap. So in her trouble she yielded to her only remaining belonging. But she forthwith sat her long-legged daughter on a footstool at her feet, and as penance made her listen to the reading of the letter which had just arrived. Somehow, in view of the previous letters from her son, Mrs. Carbhoy felt it to be impossible to face this new one without support, even if that support were only that of her wholly inadequate thirteen-year-old daughter.

"DEAREST MUM:

"Since Cain got busy shooting up his brother Abel, since Delilah became a slave to the tonsorial art and practiced on Samson, since Jael turned her carpentering stunts to considerable account by hammering tacks into poor Sisera's head, right through the long ages down to the record-breaking achievements of the champion prevaricator Ananias, I guess the crookedness of human nature has progressed until it has reached the pitch of a fine art, such as is practiced by legislators, diplomats and New York police officers.