w three men standing there. Dalroy at once
wrapped the lamp in a fold of his blouse, and leaped into the black
shadow cast by the wall, which lay athwart the flood of moonlight
pouring into the open part of the station. Quick to take the cue, it
being suicidal to think of bamboozling local railway officials, Irene
followed. Kicking off the clumsy sabots, Dalroy bade his companion pick
them up, ran back some thirty yards, and placed the ladder against the
wall. Mounting swiftly, he found, to his great relief, that some sheds
with low-pitched roofs were ranged beneath; otherwise, the height of the
wall, if added to the elevation of the station generally above the
external ground level, might well have proved disastrous.

"Up you come," he said, seating himself astride the coping-stones, and
holding the top of the ladder.

Irene was soon perched there too. He pulled up the ladder, and lowered
it to a roof.

"Now, you grab hard in case it slips," he said.

Disdaining the rungs, he slid down. He had hardly gathered his poise
before the girl tumbled into his arms, one of the heavy wooden shoes she
was carrying giving him a smart tap on the head.

"These men!" she gasped. "They saw me, and shouted."

Dalroy imagined that the trio near the engine must have noted the
swinging lantern and its sudden disappearance. With the instant decision
born of polo and pig-sticking in India, he elected now not to essay the
slanting roof just where they stood. Shouldering the ladder again, he
made off toward a strip of shadow which seemed to indicate the end of a
somewhat higher shed. He was right. Irene followed, and they crouched
there in panting silence.

Nearly every German is a gymnast, and it was no surprise to Dalroy when
one of their pursuers mounted on the shoulders of a friend and gained
the top of the wall.

"There's nothing to be seen here," he announced after a brief survey.

The pair beneath must have answered, because he went on, evidently in
reply, "Oh, I saw it myself. And I'm sure there was some one up here.
There's a sentry on No. 5. Run, Fritz, and ask him if a man with a
lantern has passed recently. I'll mount guard till you return."

Happily a train approached, and, in the resultant din Dalroy was enabled
to scramble down the roof unheard.

The ladder just reached the ground; so, before Fritz and the sentry
began to suspect that some trickery was afoot in that part of the
station, the two fugitives were speed