the enlistment bureau on
Saturday afternoon, when they had a half holiday.

The Seacove party then wanted to go to a dining-room for dinner; but
Whistler excused himself. He was hungry enough; but he "had other fish
to fry," he whispered to Torrance.

"Come around by the Upper Road--same way we got here," directed
Whistler. "I'll meet you at the bridge. Wait if I'm not there."

"What is the matter with you, Whistler?" demanded Al.

But although Morgan went away without making answer, he knew that his
chum would do as he was asked, and bluff off the others when they asked
questions, too.

Philip Morgan hurried past the factories and the few houses which lay in
this direction. The land near the dam which had been built across the
valley was so sterile that few people lived in this neighborhood.

Up on the ridges, on either side, were farms; but this was a wild piece
of scrub at the foot of the dam. One could jump a rabbit in it, or get
up a flock of quail at almost any time during the hunting season.

Like most boys of Seacove, as well as Elmvale, Whistler was familiar
with this stretch of untamed ground and plunged into it with full
knowledge of its tangled brier patches and rough quarries. He started
diagonally for the dam, and in a brief time came to the edge of the
shallow channel, which now carried the overflow of the huge reservoir
behind the dam down to the cove.

As he followed this stream, he could not help thinking of the
possibility of a break occurring in the high wall of masonry which
loomed ahead of him. If there should be any undiscovered weakness in the
wall! Or if an enemy should sink a charge of dynamite, or some other
high explosive, at the base of the dam and blow a hole through it!

He did not see any one moving about the dam either above or below. He
knew that on the ridge, level with the top of the barrier, lived a man
they called the dam superintendent. He sometimes walked across the
embankment, from end to end; a privilege forbidden to others.

But Whistler was quite sure that this dam superintendent seldom went to
the foot of the wall, or examined the face of it for any break in the
stonework. Of course, the dam had stood secure for so many years that
it seemed improbable that it would fail in any part now.

But Whistler Morgan was not considering any leakage of the water through
the masonry which might endanger the foundation of the dam. Such seepage
must have shown itself long ago