“Go out and tell the old conjurer yonder; perhaps he may have a magic square of carpet in his basket,” suggested Tregarvon. Then: “Doesn’t the wild and weird atmosphere of this heritage of mine get on your nerves to the queen’s taste? Something doing all the time. I’m going to put a notice on the derrick frame: ‘Don’t shoot the stunt-setter; he is doing the best he can.’” “’Sh! what is the old ‘ghost doctor’ up to now?” The droning chant had ceased and the old negro was crouching or kneeling at one end of the oblong figure traced by the enclosing row of white objects. The silence was profound; so complete that the snapping of a twig coming suddenly shattered it like the report of a pistol. Both of the watchers started at the sound, but the kneeling negro seemed not to have heard it. “What was that?” whispered Carfax. “I’m guessing once more: the obi-devil, possibly, coming in answer to the old medicine-man’s prayers.” “Guess again!” Carfax thrust in excitedly. “Look this way--get a line on the corner of the derrick frame and follow it over into the woods. Do you see him?” Tregarvon said “Yes,” and began to grope for a weapon. A man, hatless and with a handkerchief bound about his head, was edging his way cautiously out of the undergrowth. In the hollow of his left arm he carried a gun, and his advance was like that of the deer-stalking hunter. With the derrick frame intervening it was to be inferred that he did not see the negro. “Somebody pot-hunting for us, this time?” queried Carfax, under his breath; but Tregarvon pressed his arm for silence. The cautious approach was not in the direction of the tool shanty; it was toward the engine of the drilling installation. “That is the fellow we want to surround,” Tregarvon whispered. “If he had a hat on, I’d swear he was the man I saw kneeling under the derrick--before he made his drop-out and left Hartridge to throw dust for him! By Jove! he acts as if he were scared!” The exclamation was not unwarranted. The man with the gun was creeping toward the portable engine, watchful and alert, starting at every whisper of the night air in the pines and exhibiting all the outward signs of an inward tension which was ready to snap and recoil in panic. When he passed out of sight behind the derrick, Carfax would have led the charge; but Tregarvon restrained him. “Hold on,” he advised. “We may as well wait and find out what he means to do.” The man was creeping on hands and knees when he came in sight again, and the gun had been left behind. When he stood up he was at the smoke-stack end of the engine-boiler; and a moment further along the two watchers made out that he was unscrewing the fastenings of the iron door which gave access to the smoke-box and the flues. They waited until he had the door unfastened; saw him swing it open by slow inchings; saw him thrust an arm into the sooty depths of the smoke-box.