It seemed to Scott that he had scarcely closed his eyes when he heard the screen door bang and Mr. Graham was standing in the doorway.

“Well, well,” he laughed, “still pounding your ears? I guess you did not get even as much sleep as I said.”

Scott glanced curiously at his watch and then listened to see if it was running. It was three-thirty. “Thirteen hours,” he gasped in astonishment.

“Humph,” Murphy grunted, “that’s nothing. I’ll bet I could do it again right now.”

“Might as well try it if that is the way you feel about it,” Mr. Graham laughed. “It’s so late now that there is no use in our starting till morning.”

“Oh, that is not the reason,” Mr. Graham assured Scott when he noticed his crestfallen look. “I’m mean enough to have called you at five o’clock if I had been here to do it, but I just this minute got back. The sheriff was not at home and I thought I’d better escort our friend straight to the jail myself. I did not feel as though I wanted to trust anybody as slick as he has proved himself to be to any sheriff’s woodshed for safe-keeping. That is what the sheriff’s wife suggested.”

“There will not be any chance of his getting word to those other fellows, will there?” Scott asked anxiously.

“No, I think not. I impressed it on the warden pretty hard that he was not to be allowed to communicate with any one in any way. I hinted that Uncle Sam was very much interested in his guest’s welfare and he seemed to take it very seriously.”

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to go down there on the train this afternoon so that we would be on the ground early in the morning?” Scott asked. He was anxious to be doing something now that he was awake.

“I thought of that,” Mr. Graham said, “but I do not want to take the chance. They might have some spies out who would take them the news and we would find the nest empty when we got there. I am not afraid of their running away so soon as this. You said they were planning on lying low there for a couple of weeks. They did not get there till yesterday afternoon, and they would hardly be getting nervous so early. Just how far is that cabin from the railroad station?”

“Must be about seven or eight miles, isn’t it, Murphy?”

“About that, I should say. I hope our swiping that boat did not scare them out.”

“By the way, what did you do with that boat?”

“Left it on the edge of the swamp where we landed.”

“Well, it may make them suspicious, and it may possibly have been the only boat they had, but I do not think so. If they were long-headed enough to rig up that cabin in the swamp against a possible emergency like this I think they probably arranged some pretty sure way of getting to it and the loss of a boat would not be likely to stop them.”

“They had some boats over in the canal,” Scott said, “because I saw them there. They could carry them over there if they had to.”

“We cannot do anything now but hope, anyway,” Mr. Graham remarked. “There is no use in worrying about it. But if you fellows are not going back to sleep right away I wish you would explain to me the exact location of that cabin and all its surroundings so that I will be familiar with the ground when we get there. Are you sure that you will be able to find it again?”

“I don’t think there will be any trouble about that,” Scott answered confidently. “We ran a compa............