tes must have gone by now.

Elmer was not simply guessing this, or, as Lil Artha would say, "making
a blind stab at it." He knew because, as he crouched there watching, he
was continually marking the flight of time by counting to himself.

In imagination his gaze followed the swinging pendulum of the big
grandfather clock that stood in the hall of his home.

"Tick, tick, tick!" he could see it go back and forth, each movement
marking the passing of another second of precious time.

Ah! the squirrel had ceased to work at his nut now. He even gave signs
of sudden alarm, as though his keen little ratlike ears had caught a
foreign sound indicating the coming of a human being.

And yet Elmer knew positively that he himself had not moved in the
slightest degree, so that the squirrel's panic could not be laid at his
door.

"I guess something's going to happen," he thought, "unless either Mark
or Lil Artha showed themselves recklessly; and I don't believe they'd do
it."

He continued to watch his four-footed little sentinel perched up there
in the apology for a window.

Even as he looked the timid squirrel vanished as suddenly as it had
appeared.

Elmer only silently chuckled, quite satisfied with the way things were
working.

And he somehow still continued to keep his eyes glued on that hole in
the wall, as though laboring under the impression that when the Italian
woman did come she would first of all appear in that particular quarter.

And he was right.

Even as he looked he discovered a suspicious movement in the gap. This
was brought about by the uplifting of a human hand, upon the fingers of
which he could count at least five broad rings without settings.

Perhaps the owner of that hand was on her knees, and in this manner
sought to rise up.

Elmer, still looking, saw a head presently fill part of the crude
window.

It was a woman who stared in, there could be no questioning that fact.
And so far as he could tell she seemed to be alone, for he neither saw
nor heard any sign of a second party.

Once he knew her burning gaze was fastened upon the bunch of straw which
he had arranged so as to serve as a veil, back of which he might
continue to watch what was taking place.

Elmer fairly held his breath, fearing that she might have discovered the
lurker, or at least entertained suspicions regarding his presence there.

But not so.

Her eyes, having swept back and forth until they had fairly covered the