haven't shaken them off that easily, unless they were
already winded from their chase after--

Off to the right rose a shrill whistle. From immediately to the left came
an answer. Then he understood. They were heading him off from the
railroad and the river spur.

Alex's heart sank, and momentarily he stood, in despair. Then suddenly he
thought of the old brick-yard. It lay less than a mile north, and was
full of good hiding-places! If he could reach it ahead of them, what with
the daylight now rapidly failing, he would almost certainly be safe. At
once he turned, and was off with renewed vigor.

And finally, utterly exhausted, but cheered through not having heard a
sound from his pursuers for the last quarter mile, Alex stumbled into the
clearing of the abandoned brick-works, ran low for a distance under cover
of a long drying-frame, and scrambling through the low doorway of an old
tile oven, threw himself upon the floor, done out, but confident that at
last he was safe.

As he lay panting and listening, Alex turned his thoughts again to the
train. Had the foreman made his escape? With so many promptly after him,
it seemed scarcely probable. Then the saving of Twenty was still upon his
own shoulders!

And there was little time in which to do anything, for she was due at
7:50, and it must be after 7 already!

Could he not reach the switch itself, and throw it back just before the
train was due? That would be surest. And in the rapidly growing darkness
there should be at least a fair chance of getting by any of the
foreigners who might be on the watch.

Determinedly Alex gathered himself together, and crawled back to the
entrance. Near the doorway he stumbled over something. "Oh, our old
switch lantern!" he exclaimed, holding it to the light, and momentarily
paused to examine it. For it had been placed under cover there the
previous fall by himself and some other boys, after being used in a game
of "hold-up" on the brick-yard siding.

"Just as we left it," said Alex to himself, and was about to put it
aside, when he paused with a start, studied it sharply a moment, then
uttered a cry, shook it to see that it still contained oil, and scrambled
hurriedly forth, taking it with him.

A moment he paused to listen, then set off on the run for the old yard
semaphore, dimly discernible a hundred yards distant. Reaching it, he
caught the lantern in his teeth, and ran up the ladder hand over hand,
clambered onto the lit