ce and after mailing their letters turned back
towards the hotel.

"It's taken us a little longer than I thought," remarked Jim, looking at
his watch. "We won't have any more than time to get our traps together and
get down to the train."

"This looks like a short cut," said Joe, indicating a side street which
though rather dark and deserted cut into the main thoroughfare, as they
could see by the bright lights at the further end. "We'll save something
by going this way."

They had gone perhaps a couple of blocks when they reached a part of the
street which had no dwelling houses on it. On one side was a factory, dark
and forbidding, and on the side where the young men were walking was a
high board fence enclosing a coal yard.

"Wait a minute, Jim," said Joe. "It feels as though my shoe lace had come
untied."

He stooped down to fasten the lace, and just as he did so, a jagged piece
of rock came whizzing past where his head had been a second before and
crashed against the fence.

Joe straightened up with a jerk.

"Who threw that?" he exclaimed.

Jim's face was white at the peril his friend had so narrowly escaped.

"Somebody who knew how to throw," he cried, "and I can make a guess at who
it was. There he is now!" he shouted, as he caught sight of a dim figure
slinking away in the darkness on the further side of the factory.

They darted across the street in pursuit, but when they turned the corner
there was no one to be seen. Several alleys branched off from the street,
up any one of which the fugitive might have made his escape. Although they
tried them one after the other they could find no trace of the rascal.

Baffled and chagrined, they made their way back to the scene of the
attack. Joe picked up the piece of rock and weighed it in his hand.

"About half a pound," he judged. "And look at those rough edges! It would
have been all up with me, if it had landed."

"Do you notice that that's about the weight of a baseball?" asked Jim
significantly. "And it went for your head as straight as a bullet. It
would have caught you square if you hadn't stooped just as you did. You
can thank your lucky stars that your shoelace came untied. That fellow
knew just how to throw, as I said before."

"You don't mean," replied Joe, "that Bugs----"

"Just that," affirmed Jim grimly. "Now maybe you'll believe me when I say
that I saw him to-night. That skunk thought that I had seen him, and
slipped into the saloon to