It was with difficulty that we were able to get the car on the track. Finally it was accomplished and we started away in the darkness. I knew nothing about the operation of a hand car, but I was quickly shown. We set out in the direction which I took to be south of the town. White and I on opposite sides pumped the car and Mooney squatted on the platform. He had under him what looked like a feed sack, filled with something that had a considerable bulk. He carried also the iron rod in his hand, but it had served his purpose. At the first stream we crossed he tossed it into the water. It was a piece of possible evidence and he did not wish it to be picked up along the track. True, it connected neither him nor White with the thing which we were undertaking, but perhaps I might be remembered by it, and it was this man’s policy to leave no point at which any one could begin with his investigation. We went on for some time into the night. Once in a while we passed a house lighted in the distance, but no village and no dwelling near the track. There was hardly any sound except that of the car on the rails. I wondered at how still the world could be. For a long time we continued to move south, White and I at the pump handles of the car and Mooney, as I have said, squatted on the platform. Suddenly in the silence he swore softly. “What’s the matter?” said White. The little nervous man replied, drawling out the words. “It’s an ax,” he said. “We ought to have an ax.” “That’s easy,” replied White. “We’ll pull up at the next house and send our young friend to borrow one.” And they followed that plan. At a turn of the road we made out a house a few hundred yards above us on the slope of the hill. The car stopped and I went to borrow an ax. I do not know how it happened that there was no dog about, for there are dogs at all these houses in the south. I looked outside, but there was no ax to be found. Then I looked in at the window. There was a wood fire dying down in the fireplace, and a ladder leading to the loft. The person who lived there was evidently in his bed above. The man’s coat and boots were on the floor by the ladder, and beside the chimney there were some tools—a mattock, a hoe, and the ax for which I was looking. It was a hinged window secured on the inside by a button. The ax was safe from any method that I knew, and I went back to the hand car. I told the men what I had found. Mooney got up from his sack on the platform. “My son,” he said, “I will show you something useful; let us go back for the ax.” As we went along he took a newspaper out of his pocket and dipped it in a ditch until it was thoroughly wet. When we reached the window he spread the wet paper against the glass and with the pressure of his hand broke the pane out. The broken glass stuck to the paper and it made almost no sound.