The watchman upon whom devolved the responsibility of seeing that no prowling strangers walked off by night with the town of “Durfee” was meanwhile dreaming troublous dreams. From pastoral serenity these night enjoyments of his had passed through various disquieting stages into positive discord. They finally awoke him, and even assumed an air of waking reality. The queer, faint sounds which were floating through the night suggested the painful thought that somebody _was_ walking off with the town of “Durfee.” He would investigate. Slowly tiptoeing down an alleyway between two long heaps of material, the watchman settled his fingers around his heavy stick. Then he paused. The sounds were very queer indeed. He decided to drop his stick and draw his revolver. But this action, which he immediately undertook, was interrupted by a pair of strong arms which gripped him from behind. And a pair of hands at the end of two other strong arms abruptly stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth and held it in place by means of another which was tied at the back of his neck. “Bring him along, boys,” said a low voice. “All right, Mr. Carhart,” replied the owner of the first-mentioned arms,--and then could have bitten his tongue out, for the speaking eyes of the incapacitated watchman were fixed on the half-shadowed, spectacled face before him. Ten minutes more and the wagon train, now heavily laden, was starting off. The horsemen lingered until it was fairly under way, then ran back to their mounts, and hovered in a crowd about the last dozen wagons until all danger of an attack was past. And later on, when they were something more than halfway back to Mr. Flint’s camp, they released the night watchman, and started him back on foot for “Durfee,” and hurled pleasantries after him for as long as he was within earshot. * * * * * It was necessary to drop another day before occupying the knolls, and Carhart spent most of it in sleep. He was not a man of iron, and the exertions of the week had been of an exhausting nature. But Tiffany, who had slept the sleep of the righteous throughout the night of the raiding expedition, took hold of the preparations with skill and energy. And after supper he and Carhart stood together on the high ground at the eastern end of the trestle and talked it over. “Young Haddon seems to be a pretty good man to command one knoll,” said Tiffany, “but how about the other?” “Byers could do it, possibly, but not so well as Dimond. The men like him, and while he’s a little rough-handed, he’s level-headed and experienced. I’ll take Byers to Red Hills with me. We can start out at nine, say. Each party will have to make a wide circuit around the hills and cross the stream a mile or two from here. It will be two or three hours before we get around to the knolls.” “Would you use boats to ferry the boys over?”