el of his coat, in which reposed safely his
heavy scout knife.

In the meantime, the French restaurant proprietor and LeBlanc carried on
a swift conversation in French, all of which, of course, Phil
understood perfectly.

"We shall take him up to the room on the third floor that we know about,
and keep him there until we shall have decided what to do with him."

Phil was unceremoniously hustled out through the rear door, and with a
couple of brutal shoves, was taken up the dark stairway. Still, a second
flight he went up, and was then drawn into a dark room. Just before they
closed the door upon him, his heart sank, as he heard LeBlanc tell the
proprietor:

"This is the fourth time that I have met this boy. He seems fated to
work me harm. Once I left him for dead in the Great Woods, but he seemed
to have a charmed life and escaped. This time, I promise you he will
not."

So saying, they slammed the door, and Phil heard the rasp of the heavy
lock being turned in the door. Groping his way about, he found that the
room was bare of all furnishing, except for a decrepit old cot, and a
rough table. Feeling for the top of the table, he discovered there was
an old bottle, with a good-size piece of candle in it. He went through
his pockets carefully to see if by chance his searchers had left behind
them a stray match, but his hunt was not rewarded.

There was nothing to do but make the best of the darkness. He groped
his way to the cot and sat down, taking stock of the situation. There
seemed to be nothing he could do except to wait for the morning,
provided that he would be allowed to see the morning come, then to look
about the room in search of some method of escaping. Thanks to his
foresightedness, he still had his knife, and this might prove to him to
be salvation as far as escape was concerned. He laid down on the cot,
thinking, and after nearly a half of an hour jumped to his feet,
inwardly calling himself names for his forgetfulness.

Not until that moment had he remembered that he generally carried
several matches, wrapped in a bit of oil silk and tucked under his hat
band. It was a trick that Garry had taught him when they first went in
the woods.

Fumbling inside of the hat band, he came upon a little package of half a
dozen matches, still securely wrapped in the oiled silk in which he had
placed them, almost a month before.

"What a fool I was," he muttered to himself. "All that time that I was
tied and c