There was a pause as Sally struggled with an obstinate latch, then she opened the door at the head of the stairs and disappeared. The removal of the light seemed to soothe the old sailor, since he lay still, while Billy stood listening—listening, for what, he did not quite know.

What he did hear was the sound that of all others he least expected. With a sharp crack that echoed throughout the frail old building, a rifle went off directly overhead. An instant later he heard Sally’s voice, upraised in the terrified screaming of a thoroughly frightened child. He forgot Captain Saulsby completely, forgot everything except that he must run to help Sally. The door on the stairs had swung shut in the draft: it had slammed and latched itself so that he had a moment’s struggle to get it open. When he did so finally and plunged into the room above, he had again to wait for the passage of a second to make out just what was there.

An oil lamp stood upon the table in the middle of the room, but its light beneath the green shade fell in a narrow circle and left all the corners in darkness. He was vaguely aware that there was a man over yonder by the window, and that he held something in his hand over which he worked and muttered. It was a rifle, in whose magazine the cartridge evidently had jammed and had prevented the immediate firing of a second shot. Yet, even as Billy realized that this must be the case, the thing snapped into place and the hammer once more was drawn back with a sharp click. Sally, standing near him, dropped her candle, which fortunately went out, put her hands to her ears, and shrieked aloud,

“Stop him, Billy; he’s going to do it again!” It was not their lives the man was threatening. He crouched over the window sill, steadied the barrel of his weapon against the ledge and took long, deliberate aim. Billy, as he ran across the room, could see over the stranger’s shoulder, down between the trees to the creek and the high rocks at the edge of the little harbour. There on the point in a patch of brilliant moonlight, stood one of the bluejackets who had landed with them. He held a flag in each hand and was spelling out some signalled message in frantic haste. The ship showed vaguely in the dark nearly half a mile away to the eastward, but the moon hung low in the west and evidently formed a sharp background against which the moving flags could be plainly read. It seemed as though the sailor must know what danger threatened to bring his message to an end for he glanced backward over his shoulder more than once, yet never failed to continue swinging his flags with steady precision.

Billy was only quick enough to jerk at the stranger’s arm just as the rifle went off again with a startling crash and a quick spurt of flame. He saw the sailor on the point stagger and drop the flag from his hand; at the same moment he felt a stunning blow upon the side of his head and his shoulder so that he seemed to see, for a second, room, lamp and Sally, all go around and around in confusing circles. He recovered himself quickly, but not in time to intercept the enemy’s next move.

It was one of retreat, for evidently discovery was the thing most dreaded by this hidden stranger of the mill. Billy had only an instant’s view of his face, but he recognized, in that instant, the narrow, black-eyed countenance that had once peered at him from behind the rocks and that had so frightened Johann Happs when it rose above the wall. The man leaped over the window sill and dropped upon the ladder-like stairs outside, but the rotten timbers gave way beneath him and he fell heavily to the ground. The thick bushes below must have broken his fall, however, for he jumped up and made off into the dense undergrowth, while shouts on either hand showed that he was being watched for, and a crashing and tearing of branches indicated that the pursuit was hot.

Billy turned back from the window and went over to Sally.

“Are you hurt?” they both asked each other in the same breath. On being assured that the glancing blow Billy had received was “nothing, just nothing at all,” Sally sighed deeply with relief and picked up her fallen candle.

“It was lucky I did not set us all on fire,” she said shamefacedly. “I—I never could abide things that go off all of a sudden like that. Oh, Billy, what about the Captain?”

This reminder sent Billy downstairs almost as rapidly as he had come up. Captain Saulsby had been struggling to leave his couch again, but so firmly had Sally wrapped him up in blankets that he had only just succeeded in getting free of them and so had managed to do himself no harm. He was very querulous in his complaints when they laid him back upon the pillows, but submitted rather more meekly than before.

There followed a wait; it would have been hard for them to tell whether it lasted the half of an hour, or for five whole ones. The black shadows outside turned slowly to grey, the moonlight faded and disappeared, a fresh wind began to blow the fog away in shore. Somewhere out yonder in the woods a bird began to sing, offering them their first hope that the night with its desperate anxieties and terrors was at last giving place to day. Billy went to the window and threw it open so that Sally too, from her place beside Captain Saulsby, might hear the promise of the dawn.

The door pushed open and there came slowly in the bluejacket whom Billy had last seen signalling on the beach, a target for the stranger’s rifle.

“Been quite a night, hasn’t it?” the man said cheerfully as he sat down on the stool and wiped his face.

“Did he hit you?” “Did he hurt you?” the two children asked in a single breath.

“Never touched me,” was the answer. “The first bullet went over my head and the second struck the staff of the flag and knocked it out of my hand—jarred my elbow something horrid, and nearly threw me down—but that’s all the harm it did. The real mischief is that I’m afraid the man has got away.”

“But he can’t get off the Island,” Billy objected.

“That is just what he has done,” the sailor answered. “He knew the paths too well and left us tangled up in the thickets. We gave him a hot chase, until he got over to a house that stands on the shore beyond the woods, helped himself to the owner’s catboat, and put off before we could get anywhere near. We have signalled to the ship, though, and they’ll see that he doesn’t get clear away. We have his friend Jarreth in jail, and this man should be joining him there before very long.”

“It was your father’s boat he got away in, Sally,” exclaimed the boy, “and she can sail pretty fast.”

“I believe Uncle Sam has something that can catch her,” the sailor said. “The fellow won’t get off so easy as all that.”

“And you have put Harvey Jarreth in jail?” Sally questioned.

“Yes; you should see him, fuming and fussing and strutting up and down like a mad turkey-cock, telling every one that ‘his friend’ will bail him out; that ‘his friend’ will make us all suffer for such insults. Much ‘his friend’ will ever help him! There really isn’t a thing to hold Jarreth for, I’m afraid, unless we catch the other one. Harvey has just been made a tool of, but he won’t believe it.”

“How did you know the man was down here at the mill?” Billy asked.

“We didn’t, for at first we had no notion that he was even on the Island. When he used to make his visits to Jarreth he always apparently came over from the mainla............