the place is
surrounded. One of you has got to come up and help, and help fair, or go
to hell with a bullet in his heart. I give you one minute to choose your
man."

But in one second the man had chosen himself. Without a word, or a
glance at any of his companions, but with a face burning with
extraordinary fires, Fergus Carrick sprang for the clean edge of the
trap-door, caught it first with one hand and then with both, drew
himself up like the gymnast he had been at his Scottish school, and
found himself prone upon the floor and trap-door as the latter closed
under him on the release of the lever which Stingaree understood so
well. A yell of execration followed him into the upper air. And
Stingaree was across the counter before his new ally had picked himself
up.

"That's because this was expected of me," said Fergus, grimly, to
explain the cashier's reiterated anathemas. "I was the writer of the
registered letter that led to all this. So now I'm going the whole hog."

And the blue eyes boiled in his brick-red face.

"You mean that? No nonsense?"

"You shall see."

"I should shoot you like a native cat."

"You couldn't do me a better turn."

"Right! Swear on your knees that you won't use it against me or my mate,
and I'll trust you with this revolver. You may fire as high as you
please, but they must think we're three instead of two."

Fergus took the oath in fierce earnest upon his knees, was handed the
weapon belonging to the bank, and posted in his own bedroom window at
the rear of the building. The front was secure enough with the shutters
and bolts of the official fortress. It was to the back premises that the
attack confined itself, making all use of the admirable cover afforded
by the stables.

Carrick saw heads and shoulders hunched to aim over stable-doors as he
obeyed his orders and kept his oath. His high fire drew a deadlier upon
himself; a stream of lead from a Winchester whistled into the room past
his ear and over his ducked head. He tried firing from the floor without
showing his face. The Winchester let him alone; in a sudden sickness he
sprang up to see if anything hung sprawling over the stable-door, and
was in time to see men in retreat to right and left, the white pugarees
of the police fluttering ingloriously among them. Only one was left
upon the ground, and he could sit up to nurse a knee.

Fergus sighed relief as he sought Stingaree, and found him with a
comical face before the