"So there is," assented Fogg, peering ahead. "Guess I'll see what it means." Ralph did not have to let down speed to accommodate his expert helper. Fogg was as much at home on the running board with the train going a mile a minute pace as a house painter on a first-floor scaffold. He crept out through his window. Ralph lost sight of him beyond the bulge of the boiler and while watching ahead from his own side of the cab. Fogg was nearly three minutes on his tour of investigation. "There's something to think about," he declared emphatically as he dropped two objects on the floor of the cab. "What is it?" inquired Ralph with a curious stare. "Wait till I mend the fire and I'll show you something," said the fireman. Then, this duty attended to, he took from the floor a long piece of wire wound around a part of a device that resembled a telegraph instrument. "See here," explained the fireman excitedly, "I've got it in a word." "And what is that, Mr. Fogg?" "Wire tappers." "Or line repairers," suggested Ralph. "I said wire tappers," insisted Fogg convincedly, "and I stick to it. They were at work back there in the cut. Their line must have sagged where they strung it too low. Our smokestack struck it, whipped the outfit free, stand and all, and that metal jigger there swung around and struck the headlight." "What stand--was there a stand, then?" inquired Ralph. "Must have been, for pieces of it are out on the pilot. Say, something else, too! The whole business came that way. Look at that." Fogg lifted a small strap satchel from the floor of the cab as he spoke. This was pretty well riddled. In the general swing of the outfit its side must have come in contact with some sharp edged projection of the locomotive. Then, one side torn open from which there protruded some article of wearing apparel, it had landed on the pilot where Fogg had found it. "Line repairers do not carry little dinky reticules like that," scornfully declaimed the fireman. "There's a dress shirt, a fancy vest and a pair of kid gloves in it. The old man at terminus was right. Some one is trying to do up the Great Northern." "Put these things away carefully," directed Ralph, his face thoughtful, and as they ran on it grew anxious and serious. When they passed the scene of the freight wreck three days previous, they found the debris cleared away and no sign of the boy and old man who had interested them. A wrecking crew had men at work and only a litter of kindling wood marked the scene of the tumble down the embankment. When they reached their destination Ralph made a package of the articles Fogg had found on the pilot and proceeded to the office of the general superintendent. That functuary he found to be absent. He followed the promptings of his own mind and proceeded to the office of the road detective, Bob Adair. A bright young fellow named Dayton, the stenographer of the road detective, announced that Mr. Adair was off duty away from Stanley Junction.