"With pleasure. I am Jeremiah Long, the Mystery Man, and spectacles is my line. All hay is grass and grass is hay. I'm here to-morrow and gone to-day." His voice seemed to fade away in the darkness, the last words sounding far away and barely heard. The Overland Riders did not know whether he had gone out or plunged deeper into the cave, to emerge from some exit the existence of which they were unaware. "What a queer man," murmured Anne Nesbit. "He almost gives one the creeps. I wish we knew who and what he is." "I think Tom knows," spoke up Grace. "Let's get out of this horrid place." "Yes, I do know. To-night he expects to accomplish what he has been working towards for many months, a round-up of the leading moonshiners of this district. I have seen Long before I came up here, and he confided in me, because I possessed some information, gleaned from hiking over this property of yours, which he wished to have, and that he could not very well ask for without giving me some information in return. Long is Dick Whitfield, the head of a corps of mountain sleuths, probably the shrewdest man in his line of work who ever came into the Kentucky hills. It was he who wounded the mountaineer in the bushes that night by your camp. It was he who protected you in many tight places, including some that you did not know about." "And shot Lum Bangs through the wrist at the dance," suggested Nora. "No, that was Jim Townsend, his principal assistant." "That's the fellow I want to know about--the fellow who ought to be the proudest man in the world because he looks like me," cried Hippy Wingate. As the party strolled out towards the mouth of the tunnel, Tom Gray told his companions that Hippy's resemblance to Townsend had been quickly seized upon by the Mystery Man, Jeremiah Long, and used as a cloak to cover the operations of the real Townsend, trusting to their skill and watchfulness to keep the moonshiners from collecting the reward that had been offered for Townsend. Either Townsend or the Spectacle Man had kept the Overland Riders under observation a good part of the time. It was Townsend who rescued Hippy from the Spurgeon gang, who conducted Hippy back to his camp, and who left the mysterious notes for the Overlanders. "Yes. But why did they mark me for the slaughter?" demanded Hippy. "Don't you understand? They thought you were Jim Townsend. In fact, the mountain men had been informed that Townsend was on his way here as a member of the Overland Riders, to get evidence against the moonshiners. As a matter of fact, Townsend was already here and had been, in disguise, for some time. That belief involved our entire party, you see, and it is a wonder that the mountaineers did not get one of you, at least. When they caught me, knowing that I was in Government service, I thought it was all up with me, but I believe they thought best first to settle their feud with Thompson.