The town of Elton, two miles from our home, looked as though it were in a state of siege. Half its people had fled. Troops patrolled the streets. Many of the houses were closed and barred--as though that would help against a hundred-foot giant! The shops were nearly all closed; but we located several of the owners and loaded our car with provisions. On arriving, father went to bed. He was never in robust health, and the nervous excitement of all this and his loss of sleep had about done him up. He was too tired to eat the meal which Drake and I hastily prepared. But he was a fighter, every inch of him. He lay down, fully dressed, with an automatic beside his pillow. "You lads can stand guard--suit yourselves--only don't both sleep at once. Call me if anything unusual happens." Drake and I sat on guard. We were neither of us sleepy. It seemed as though there were a thousand things we wanted to talk about, but it was all so intangible. We were in what undoubtedly was the heart of the threatened area. The world believed that; and no one knew it better than ourselves. We had had the latest official reports. No other giant was seen. There had been several people killed by a sweep of the giant's arm last night, quite near here on the cliff top. Official searching parties had been over every inch of Bird's Nest Island and all the shore in this vicinity. Nothing unusual was found. They had even dragged the water between here and the island, thinking perhaps the giant's body might have sunk. There were other reports which now had come in. Gruesome things! In the back country near here a farmer had been found dead a few nights ago, and all his clothes stolen. There were several similar incidents. At sunset a destroyer steamed past, headed north on patrol. There were often airplanes passing overhead. And out at sea there was a smudge which we thought might be a battleship. With darkness came a sense of loneliness--the feeling of our isolation here in this house set close against the coast. We were in danger here, but not altogether foolhardy. We had rifles and several automatics. And the telephone would at any time bring us help from the troops stationed in the near-by village. To fight what? It would all be so useless against a hundred-foot giant! The vigil grew irksome. Would Dianne come? How? When? Tonight? Tomorrow? A week or a month from now--or never? They were such futile questions. And it seemed, as we sat there on guard, that we might be menaced not only by giants. There was father's midnight visitor in New York, just last night. Was he--or others like him--lurking about our place here? We sat, often straining our ears for every sound outside the house. Father slept soundly. The evening passed. It was a dark night; a few moving lights out at sea. We saw nothing unusual, heard nothing.