IN THE SILENT NIGHT. Dick could not take his eyes off the face of his friend, drawn, pale, stamped with the print of some vital emotion. What did it mean? What could it mean? Why had Archie stolen down here in the dead of night? Where had the money come from? These, and a dozen other questions, equally unanswerable, flashed through his half-dazed mind in the brief interval before the fellow kneeling on the hearth could move a finger. McCormick was gazing straight at the door, and Dick half expected him to call his name. It did not seem possible that the man could be so blind as not to see who was watching him through the crack. Then he saw that Archie was absolutely oblivious to his surroundings. His eyes were cloudy and unseeing. He was not walking in his sleep, but his mind was so concentrated on some problem that he was blind to all outward things. Presently he uttered a shuddering sigh and reached slowly for the stone slab which lay close at hand. Dick waited until he had replaced it over the hole and was leaning forward for a handful of ashes to dust into the cracks, and then softly made his way back to the hall and upstairs. His first impulse had been to confront Archie then and there and get the truth from him, but now he shrank from doing that until he had had time to think. He knew that appearances were often deceptive and that there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the position in which he had found McCormick; but the latter had an extremely sensitive, high-spirited nature, and Dick felt that he would be likely to resent any inquiries he himself might make which could not help but show more or less suspicion. For Merriwell was suspicious. Fight as he might against the thought, he could not help connecting what he had just seen with the robbery of the Hartford bank just twenty-four hours before. He did not wish to believe anything against Archie McCormick. He had always known him as a perfectly straightforward, truthful fellow with a very keen sense of honor. It was incredible that he could be connected in any way with the robbery, and yet facts were facts and Merriwell could not help putting two and two together. Archie had gone to Hartford two days before, ostensibly to see a friend who lived there. That was all right, but, unfortunately, he had reached there the very afternoon of the night in which the bank had been broken open. He had suddenly shown up in this deserted spot, and the man at whose invitation he was supposed to have come, had not yet appeared. Dick remembered Cobmore’s very evident doubt of the story that Barry Lawrence would think of visiting the farmhouse without giving him notice. The robbers had been tracked to Middleberry and their trail lost. Middleberry was barely twelve miles away, and it would be a very simple matter for any one to make their way unseen through the woods to the house on the shores of Cranberry Lake.