"With a gun, eh?" Chick fiercely muttered, yanking Dalton backward into the body of the carriage. "You open your lips again for so much as a whisper, and I'll close them with six inches of cold steel." In the glare of a distant lightning flash, Dalton, though struggling furiously, caught the gleam of a polished blade at his throat, and a glimpse of the flaming eyes in the face above him. He shrank, gasping for breath, as the truth dawned upon him; and then the voice of another sounded close beside the open carriage. "Want any help, Chick?" Nick's youthful assistant, to whom a wire had been sent from the house of the snake charmer, had appeared like an apparition out of the roadside gloom. "Ah! you're here, Patsy!" muttered Chick. "Yes. Clap a gag into this cur's mouth. We'll choke off his pipes first of all." Dalton uttered a vicious growl, then felt the point of the knife pierce the skin at his throat, and he wisely relapsed into silence. For Patsy to fish out a gag, and bind it securely in the scoundrel's mouth, was the work of a few moments only. Then Chick jerked Dalton up from the rear cushion and out into the road, in far less time than is taken to record it. "Off with his coat and hat, Patsy," he hurriedly commanded. "Now the false beard, my lad. Now get into them yourself, as quickly as you can." "I'm all in, Chick," chuckled Patsy, working like a trooper. "Got all the traps with you?" "Sure!" "Clap the bracelets on him, then. Now give me a second pair, and a strip of line. That's the stuff." "Oh, I brought the whole shooting match," laughed Patsy. "Good for you! Now mount to the box, and leave this dog to me. I'll return in half a minute." Patsy climbed up to the seat from which Dalton had been so speedily snatched and overcome, and Chick now ran the rascal a rod or more into the woodland on the opposite side of the road. There he threw him to the ground beside a small oak, around the trunk of which he quickly twined Dalton's legs, and then fastened them at the ankles with a pair of irons. "I reckon you'll stay there quietly until I want you, barring that you pull up the tree," he grimly remarked, as he turned to hasten back to the carriage, in which he quickly resumed his seat. A moment later Venner peered from the distant window--and was satisfied with what he saw. Five minutes later he came striding down the walk and approached the carriage. Without a word to the driver, whom he supposed to be Dalton, he opened the carriage door and laid his hand on Chick's arm, at the same time pointing toward the house. Chick signified that he understood, and held out both hands, as if he wished to be helped to the sidewalk. Venner promptly raised both of his--only to suddenly hear a quick, metallic snap, and feel links of cold steel confining his wrists. Their icy chill went through him like a knife, and he reeled as if stricken a blow. "Good God!" he gasped, hoarsely. "What's this?"