en on the embankment were walking slowly, bending far over, their
eyes fixed on the ground. Suddenly one of them stood erect and tossed
his arms in the air and shouted loudly. Other men ran to him, and
another far down the track repeated the shout and the gesture to another
far in his rear; this man took it up, and shouted and waved to a fourth
man, and so they passed the signal back to town. There came, almost
immediately three long, loud whistles from a mill near the station, and
the embankment grew black with people pouring out from town, while the
searchers came running from the fields and woods and underbrush on both
sides of the railway.

Briscoe paused for the last time; then he began to walk slowly toward
the embankment.

The track lay level and straight, not dimming in the middle distances,
the rails converging to points, both northwest and southeast, in
the clean-washed air, like examples of perspective in a child's
drawing-book. About seventy miles to the west and north lay Rouen; and,
in the same direction, nearly six miles from where the signal was
given, the track was crossed by a road leading directly south to
Six-Cross-Roads.

The embankment had been newly ballasted with sand. What had been
discovered was a broad brown stain on the south slope near the top.
There were smaller stains above and below; none beyond it to left or
right; and there were deep boot-prints in the sand. Men were examining
the place excitedly, talking and gesticulating. It was Lige Willetts who
had found it. His horse was tethered to a fence near by, at the end of
a lane through a cornfield. Jared Wiley, the deputy, was talking to a
group near the stain, explaining.

"You see them two must have knowed about the one-o'clock freight, and
that it was to stop here to take on the empty lumber cars. I don't know
how they knowed it, but they did. It was this way: when they dropped
from the window, they beat through the storm, straight for this
side-track. At the same time Mr. Harkless leaves Briscoes' goin'
west. It begins to rain. He cuts across to the railroad to have a sure
footing, and strikin' for the deepo for shelter--near place as any
except Briscoes' where he'd said good-night already and prob'ly don't
wish to go back, 'fear of givin' trouble or keepin' 'em up--anybody can
understand that. He comes along, and gets to where we are precisely at
the time _they_ do, them comin' from town, him strikin' for it. They run
right into