tlake, as they came up. "He ran
like a deer. But--great Christmas--you've had better luck, I see!"

For an instant, even in the semi-darkness, Roy saw the other's face grow
white as ashes.

"He thinks that Lieut. Bradbury has caught my impersonator," was the
thought that flashed through the boy's mind.

But the same sudden radiance that had betrayed Mortlake's agitation also
showed him that it was the real Roy Prescott he was facing. Instantly he
assumed a mask of the greatest apparent astonishment.

"Roy Prescott, I am really amazed that you should be implicated in such
a----"

"Save your breath, Mr. Mortlake," snapped out the lieutenant, and his
words came sharp as the crack of a whip; "this is the real Roy Prescott,
and he has been the victim of as foul a plot to blacken an honest lad's
name as ever came to my knowledge. The young ruffian who impersonated him
to-night has escaped."

"Escaped!" exclaimed Mortlake, but to Roy's quick ears, despite the
other's attempt to disguise his relief, it stood out boldly.

"Yes, escaped. Partly owing, I confess, to my overzealousness. There has
been foul play here somewhere, Mr. Mortlake."

The officer's voice was stern. His eye flashed ominously. Just then old
Mr. Harding came puffing up.

"Oh, so you got the boy, hey?" he cackled, but Mortlake shut him off with
a quick word.

"No. This is the real Roy Prescott. It seems that a trick has been put up
on us all. The lad we mistook for Roy Prescott was some one impersonating
him. This lad has been the victim of a vile plot. While we were watching
here for his supposed appearance and the revelation of his treachery, some
rascals had locked him in a cellar."

The lieutenant's words were hot and angry. He felt that he was facing two
clever rascals, whose cunning was too much for his straightforward
methods.

"You--you amaze me!" exclaimed old Mr. Harding, looking in the moonlight
like some hideous old ghoul. "What game of cross-purposes and crooked
answers is this?"

"That remains to be seen. I shall see to it that an investigation is made
and the guilty parties punished."

Was it fancy, or did Roy, for a second, see Mortlake quail and whiten?

But if the boy had seen such a thing, the next instant Mortlake was master
of himself.

"It seems to me to have been a plot put up by my workmen," he said. "If I
find it to be so, I shall discharge every one of them. Poor fellows, in
their mistaken loyalty to me, perhaps th