The sheriff’s seeming satisfaction with his position on the wall and his disposition to parley had begun to arouse my suspicions, and Larry several times exclaimed impatiently at the absurdity of discussing my affairs with a person whom he insisted on calling a constable, to the sheriff’s evident annoyance. The officer now turned upon him. “You, sir,—we’ve got our eye on you, and you’d better come along peaceable. Laurance Donovan—the description fits you to a ‘t’.” “You could buy a nice farm with that reward, couldn’t you—” began Larry, but at that moment Bates ran toward us calling loudly. “They’re coming across the lake, sir,” he reported, and instantly the sheriff’s head disappeared, and as we ran toward the house we heard his horse pounding down the road toward St. Agatha’s. “The law be damned. They don’t intend to come in here by the front door as a matter of law,” said Larry. “Pickering’s merely using the sheriff to give respectability to his manoeuvers for those notes and the rest of it.” It was no time for a discussion of motives. We ran across the meadow past the water tower and through the wood down to the boat-house. Far out on the lake we saw half a dozen men approaching the Glenarm grounds. They advanced steadily over the light snow that lay upon the ice, one man slightly in advance and evidently the leader. “It’s Morgan!” exclaimed Bates. “And there’s Ferguson.” Larry chuckled and slapped his thigh. “Observe that stocky little devil just behind the leader? He’s my friend from Scotland Yard. Lads! this is really an international affair.” “Bates, go back to the house and call at any sign of attack,” I ordered. “The sheriff’s loose somewhere.” “And Pickering is directing his forces from afar,” remarked Stoddard. “I count ten men in Morgan’s line,” said Larry, “and the sheriff and his deputy make two more. That’s twelve, not counting Pickering, that we know of on the other side.” “Warn them away before they get much nearer,” suggested Stoddard. “We don’t want to hurt people if we can help it,”—and at this I went to the end of the pier. Morgan and his men were now quite near, and there was no mistaking their intentions. Most of them carried guns, the others revolvers and long ice-hooks. “Morgan,” I called, holding up my hands for a truce, “we wish you no harm, but if you enter these grounds you do so at your peril.” “We’re all sworn deputy sheriffs,” called the caretaker smoothly. “We’ve got the law behind us.” “That must be why you’re coming in the back way,” I replied. The thick-set man whom Larry had identified as the English detective now came closer and addressed me in a high key. “You’re harboring a bad man, Mr. Glenarm. You’d better give him up. The American law supports me, and you’ll get yourself in trouble if you protect that man. You may not understand, sir, that he’s a very dangerous character.” “Thanks, Davidson!” called Larry. “You’d better keep out of this. You know I’m a bad man with the shillalah!”