upward click of relay and sounder. The key was
"open," ready for operation.

"Now listen. I want you to make the letter X--a dot, a dash, then two
more dots right together. And keep repeating till I stop you."

Still under the spell of the fancied revolver and the boy's unfaltering
gaze, the renegade cowman obeyed, and the telegraph instruments clicked
out a painfully deliberate, but fairly readable "X."

It was an idle half-hour, and when the despatcher at Exeter heard his
call he glanced up from a magazine, listened a moment, and impatiently
remarking, "Some idiot student!" returned to his reading.

But steadily, insistently, the repetition of X's continued, and at length
he reached forward, struck open the key, and demanded, "Who? Sign!"

Clumsily came the answer, "B."

"Bonepile! Now what's happening down there? It doesn't sound like the new
operator, either."

The wire again clicked open, and slowly, in the same heavy hand, the
mystified and then amazed despatcher read:

"H-E-L-P--H-E-L-D U-P--A-F-T-E-R G-O-L-D--T-I-E-D T-O T-A-B-L-E--G-O-T
D-R-O-P O-N H-I-M--M-A-K-I-N-G H-I-M S-E-N-D--B."

The despatcher grasped his key. "Good boy! Good boy!" he hurled back.
"Keep it up for twenty-five minutes and we'll get help to you. There's an
extra engine at H, waiting for 92. I'll start her right down." And
therewith he whirled off into an urgent succession of "H's."

But through young Jennings' strange feat in telegraphy help was nearer
even than the unexpected succor from Hillside. Despite the sleeping
draught Burns had administered to Muskoka Jones, the unaccustomed
clicking of the telegraph instruments had begun to arouse the big cowman.
When finally, in climax, came the lightning whirr of the despatcher's
excited response, he gasped into consciousness, blinked, and suddenly
found himself sitting upright, staring open-mouthed at the spectacle
before him.

The next moment, with a shout, he was on his feet in the middle of the
floor, and the nerve-strung boy had fainted.

As the lad sank forward his "pistol" fell from his hand and rolled into
the light.

From Burns came an inarticulate cry, his jaw dropped, his eyes started in
his head. Muskoka halted in his stride, wet his lips and muttered
incredulous words of admiration and amazement. Then in a moment he had
cut Wilson free, and stretched him on the floor.

It was Iowa broke the silence. Rising, with compressed lips he held
toward Muskoka the butt of hi