“No, I don’t think so,” replied the girl addressed as Clara Eglinton, a beautiful blonde of about Dick’s own age. “He is very eccentric, though. He sometimes has business with my father. Oh, Mr. Darrell, I want to thank you ever and ever so much for your brave act. Those insulting fellows! It was just dreadful! I don’t know what Susie and I would have done if you had not come.” “I’m sure I’m most happy to have been of service to you,” replied Dick, raising his hat. “May I offer to see you to your home?” “Why, it is right here in the next house,” replied the girl. “Good night, Mr. Darrell. We must go in.” Evidently Miss Eglinton did not care to pursue the acquaintance. Dick tipped his hat again and the two girls ran up the stoop of a handsome house and vanished in an instant, leaving Dick to continue his walk. “A pretty girl!” he murmured. “A very pretty girl. I only wish I was going to stay in Washington. I might find a chance to get better acquainted, but I suppose she will forget all about me before I return.” He walked on, wholly oblivious to the fact that Mr. Martin Mudd, with rubbers on his feet, was stealing after him, staring forward with gleaming eyes. What prompted Dick to turn suddenly and look behind him just before he reached the next corner? Surely there must have been some good angel watching over the boy, for there was the man close behind him with the very knife the “lusher” had dropped clutched in his hand. “Now I’ve got you, Dick Darrell!” he hissed, and he made a desperate lunge at the boy, who dodged the stroke just in time. Martin Mudd did not attempt to repeat it. With a sharp cry he turned and ran like a deer. Dick shouted after him and followed back along the block, but the man turned the corner first and when Dick got around he had disappeared. And that was the end of the adventure. Deeply puzzled over the mysterious affair which he could only attribute to insanity on the part of the man with the muddy name, Dick went home and was soon in bed, where he lay tossing wide awake until morning. It was the tone in which Martin Mudd had spoken his name and the start he had given when Dick first introduced himself that bothered the boy. “He certainly seemed to know me,” Dick said to himself a hundred times. “What can it all mean?” He gave up thinking about it when morning came and hurried to the B. & O. station, where he met Charley all ready for the journey. The run to Chicago was made in good time and without adventure. There was no stop here, except to change cars, and the next thing the boys knew they were in Omaha, where they took the Union Pacific to Cheyenne and then ran up to Fort Fetterman, changed cars again and in due time were set down on a barren, alkali plain, where there was a station, a windmill, a water tank and a dozen houses--they had reached Node Ranch at last. The boys went at once to the Palace Hotel, which proved to be a dirty old roost of the worst kind.