Hitch Diamond dropped over the side and hit the sawdust trail again. He ran down a little by-path, skinning his elbows upon the projecting planks and stubbing his bare toes against all kinds of obstacles, until he fell over something and tumbled onto something with a clatter like the roll of a snare-drum. A man loomed up before him not twenty feet away and said “Ho!” in a frightened voice. Hitch got up and went away from that place with astonishing speed. Then the watchman on the lumber-pile threw the rays of his dark lantern down into the runway just as Hitch passed, and the terrified negro ran full into the glare. Three pistol-shots splintered the wood around him as he ran on; the watchman’s sharp voice called to the man-hunters, and in a second, hundreds of men had turned and were converging toward the spot where Hitch Diamond was running around a lumber-pile like a trapped rabbit. “Guard the runways, men!” the watchman’s voice ordered sharply. “I’ll flash the light into the alleys for you!” The watchman began to leap from pile to pile, throwing the rays of his dark lantern down into each corridor, and coming constantly closer to where Hitch Diamond was hiding. “My Gawd!” Hitch chattered as he looked up at the fantastic, mountainous pile beside which he was crouched. Salvation came with the thought that the pile he stood beside was higher than the one on which the watchman stood. He began to climb, hand over hand, praying that the light would not reach him before he could attain the summit. By the mercy of Heaven he rolled onto the top of the lumber just as the watchman, on a pile twenty feet below him, flashed the glare into the corridor where Hitch had stood a moment before. Hitch was blowing like a bellows, streams of perspiration poured down his body, and his giant frame shook like the body of a man with an ague. Days of dissipation in New Orleans, a drunken spree just a few hours before, nothing to eat since breakfast, half an hour of violent exercise running and climbing lumber, and a fright which clutched at his heart, weakening and almost suffocating him--all of these things were handicaps for Hitch Diamond in the effort he was making to escape. He knew that capture meant certain death. Capture was not even necessary--a flash of light, a well-directed pistol-shot, and his career was ended. Suddenly his soul was filled with terror. Twenty men had mounted the lumber-piles and were moving across the tops, lashing the lumber with their lights, driving everything before them as a woman shoos a lot of chickens. Below him, on the ground, men were standing at the end of each main thoroughfare, and were lashing them with light, while one man was walking down each by-path! The searching party had organized, and was moving with perfect precision to cover the entire yard.