This much proved, Rucker went back to the tool shanty, found and lighted a lantern, and with it steered a course between the trees to the eastward point where the torch-bearer had stood. It took him several minutes to discover the exact spot; but when it was found and identified by the remains of the extinguished pine-knot torch, he whittled a small stake and with a stone for a hammer drove it to mark the place. “There, by heck!” he said, when he was once more sitting on the tool-house door-step to finish his pipe. “If I hain’t got funny business enough to keep the bosses guessin’ f’r a week ’r so, I’ll sit up a few minutes longer and pull down some more.” It was far past midnight when he found himself nodding over the smoking lantern, and got up to go and tumble sleepily into his bed. And this time neither the shrilling of the katydids and tree-toads nor the screeching of the little owl that came once more to perch upon the drill walking-beam, kept him awake. X Blind Alleys There was a council of war, held without preliminaries, to follow Rucker’s report made to his two employers on the morning after the night of mysterious alarms. The small tool shanty served as the council-chamber, and the councillors were only two, Rucker having been heard and dismissed to take his place as chief mechanician in the drilling squad. “Talk about fourteen-fifteen puzzles and the fourth dimension: this masquerade puts the kibosh on them all,” remarked Carfax, opening his pocket-case of freshly imported cigarettes. “Or are you wiping the slate clean by charging Billy Rucker with a bad supper or a drink or so too many?” Tregarvon shook his head. “It is too circumstantial to be a nightmare. Besides, there are the two sets of wheel tracks in the road, and the marks of the tripod under the oak; likewise the burnt pine torch and Rucker’s stake to mark the place of it. It’s no pipe-dream--more’s the pity.” “Then what the deuce is it?--or they?--since there seem to have been two distinct sets of phenomena.” Again the owner of the Ocoee shook his head. “I think we may safely assume that Rucker saw two acts in the same play. But what the play may have been is beyond my wildest guess. Rucker’s suggestion that we’ve dropped down into a neighborhood of crazy people seems to fit better than anything else.” Carfax was sitting on the cot with his hands locked over one knee. “It is rather pointedly our job to chase the shy guess into a corner, don’t you think? There is mischief in it. One’s bosom friends would hardly come here at night to shake their fists at things, or to run surveyors’ lines by moonlight.” Tregarvon got up to tramp the floor, but there was no room in the cluttered tool shanty and he sat down again upon a coil of rope.