hem kids. So this
cop said mebbe they had better worry a little, after all, and they'd
send out two cars of their own and scour the country, and try to find
the conductor of this street car that the neighbour woman had seen the
kids get on to.

"I r'ared round that house till the auto come that I'd ordered. It was
late coming, naturally, and nearly dark when it got there; but we
covered a lot of miles while the daylight lasted, with the man looking
sharp out along the road, too, because he had three kids of his own that
would do any living thing sometimes, though safe at home and asleep at
that minute, thank God!

"It was moisting when we started, and pretty soon it clouded up and the
dark came on, and I felt beat. We got fair locoed. We'd go down one road
and then back the same way. We stopped to ask everybody. Then we found
the two autos sent out by the police. I told the cops again what would
happen to 'em from me the minute the kids was found--the kids or their
bodies. I was so despairing--what with that damned plumber and
everything! I'll bet he's the merry chatterbox in his own home. The
police said cheer up--nothing like that, with the country as safe as a
church. But we went over to this Blackhanders' construction camp, just
the same, to make sure, and none of the men was missing, the boss said,
and no children had been seen; and anyway his men was ordinary decent
wops and not Blackhanders--and blamed if about fifty of 'em didn't turn
out to help look! Yes, sir, there they was--foreigners to the last man
except the boss, who was Irish--and acting just like human beings.

"It was near ten o'clock now; so we went to a country saloon to
telephone police headquarters, and they had found the car conductor, he
remembering because he had threatened to put the boy scout off the car
if he didn't quit pointing his gun straight at an old man with gold
spectacles setting across the aisle. And finally they had got off
themselves about three miles down the road; he'd watched 'em climb over
a stone wall and start up a hill into some woods that was there. And he
was Conductor Number Twenty-seven, if we wanted to know that.

"We beat it to that spot after I'd powdered my nose and we'd had a quick
round of drinks. The policemen knew where it was. It wasn't moisting any
more--it was raining for fair; and we done some ground-and-lofty
skidding before we got there. We found the stone wall all right and the
slope leading up to th