Over in the far end of the big lumber yard a second whistle shrilled, the call of a night watchman, followed by the _crack! crack! crack!_ of an automatic pistol. Then the big mill whistle roared its warning through the town and reverberated down the river and echoed from the woods, and deafened and terrified Hitch Diamond by its sinister call to the people of Sawtown to rouse themselves. From the great number of little houses where the employees of the mill lived men issued forth, brandishing firearms and calling to each other as they ran. The electric lights in the mill flashed up, and in a brief time an immense crowd had congregated. Hitch could hear their excited questions and answers. “What’s the matter?” “Commissary store has been robbed and night watchman killed!” “Who did it?” “A nigger!” “No! Two niggers!” There was a moment of silence while the crowd considered this. Then a roar: “Find them niggers and mob ’em! Come on!” “Spread out, men! Cover the yard! Look everywhere!” Hitch Diamond turned his back on that crowd and started in the opposite direction at full speed, running in the dark, with no notion where he was going. He got an idea when he plunged into the mill-pond up to his neck. “Dis here is sloppy wuck!” he grunted as he climbed out of there. He began to skirt the edge of the pond, and found to his alarm that he was following the curve which led him back to the lighted mill. He heard the sound of running feet; a flash-light shot its rays across the mill-pond, and Hitch departed from the water’s edge with all possible speed. He found one of the long alleys between the lumber piles in the yard and sprinted down the sawdust trail at a lively gait. Glancing back over his shoulder, he found the entrance of the alley filled with men who were coming toward him with incredible swiftness. The employees of the mill were familiar with all the main thoroughfares and by-paths of the yard, while Hitch had to feel his way to some extent, and his progress was necessarily slow. A revolver spat fire and lead at him, a fusillade followed, a big lumber-stack rose like a mountain before the frightened negro, and he fell against it with both hands outspread. He found something that he had never noticed in a lumber yard before--that strips of wood were thrust between the layers of lumber to give a circulation of air and prevent the lumber from rotting. These little gaps made it possible for him to climb, and he scrambled up the pile like a big baboon and lay on the top, panting like the exhaust of an engine. His pursuers passed the pile on the path below, and Hitch began to breathe easier. In a moment a light flashed from a big lumber-pile fifty feet away and several feet higher than the pile he was on. A watchman was whipping about him with a dark lantern, searching the top of the lumber.