Strange to say, Peter Hines’s cabin was still boarded up. The morning after Oliver and Jane observed the motionless lights across the swamp, the former motored over to the shack. He was amazed to find the door and the windows nailed up securely; there was nothing to indicate that they had been opened or tampered with during the night. He went to Malone with the puzzle. The detective promptly declared that neither he nor his partner had been down at the shack the night before and could offer no explanation. The cabin was watched every night for a week, but the lights did not reappear. Oliver was astonished to find that no one in Rumley was surprised by the announcement that he and Jane were engaged to be married. Apparently the whole town knew about it weeks before he himself was aware of it! Quite a number of people seemed to be frankly annoyed because they had not announced their engagement a year ago. Meanwhile, Malone and his gang of Italian laborers were leisurely conducting the quest. The chief operative was bored. He admitted that he was bored—admitted it to Oliver and Mrs. Grimes and Lizzie Meggs and to the high heavens besides. Mid-afternoon of a windy day in October—it was the 19th to be exact—he sat in the shelter of the kitchen-wing, his chair propped against the wall, reading a book. He yawned frequently and seemed to be having great difficulty in keeping his pipe going. From time to time he dozed. Some one had told him he ought to read this book. It had been recommended to him as a rattling good detective story. The only thing that kept him awake was the thud of pick-axes under the kitchen porch just beyond where he was sitting—not that he wasn’t accustomed to the thuds and could have slept soundly in spite of them, but there was always the possibility that Lizzie Meggs might carry out her threat to “douse” everybody with hot water if the noise got to be more than she could bear. His partner, Charlie What’s-his-name, was out in the swamp directing the efforts of eight or ten men who were sounding the scattered “mudholes” with long poles or digging at random in sections where the earth was sufficiently solid to bear the weight of man or beast. These men were now far out beyond the wire fence, within a hundred yards or so of the pond. They had advanced across the dangerous terrain with the aid of planks, and they worked with such extreme caution that even Horace Gooch, on the one surreptitious visit he paid to the locality, was satisfied with the progress they were making: they could not possibly complete the job before election day. Mr. Malone’s rest was disturbed shortly before three o’clock by the arrival of Oliver October. The two had become quite good friends. “Say, Malone, would you mind calling off these gravediggers of yours for half an hour or so? I am expecting a committee here at three o’clock.”