anics'.

"Ben is right," I said to myself. "His bright mind has enabled him to
grasp the truth by intuition, as a woman sometimes does when a man has
been laboring for hours to reach the same point."

But before I could satisfy myself that the boy was right, a still
stronger conviction came to me that he was wrong. The men were not
pals--as they are called among the criminal classes--and they were not
arranging some plan of robbery.

While I was clear on this point, I was totally unable to form any theory
to take the place of the one I had demolished.

Who was the pretended John Browning, and what was the dark scheme that
was being hatched "in our midst," as the expression goes?

These were the questions which presented themselves to me, and which I
could not answer in a manner thoroughly satisfactory to myself.

"They are all wrong--everybody is wrong!" I exclaimed to myself;
"whatever it is that is in the wind, no one but the parties themselves
knows its nature."

This was the conclusion which fastened itself in my mind more firmly the
longer I thought.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and it is the only thing
which will protect us in this case--helloa!"

So rapt was I in my meditation that I had walked three squares beyond my
house before I awoke to the fact. It was something which I had never done
before in all my life.

CHAPTER XVIII

BETWEEN TWO FIRES

In the meantime, Ben Mayberry underwent an experience more peculiar than
mine.

I cannot speak of the mental problems with which he wrestled, but, as he
explained to me afterward, he had settled down to the belief that the
Mechanics' Bank was the one against which the burglars were perfecting
their plans. He was hopeful that the only outcome of the conspiracy would
be the capture of the criminals, though he felt more than one pang when
he reflected that the principal one was a relative of Dolly Willard, who
was the personification of innocence and goodness to him.

Ben had acquired the excellent habit of always being wide awake,
excepting, of course, when he lay down for real slumber. Thus it was that
he had gone but a little distance on his way home when he became aware
that someone was following him.

I doubt whether there is a more uncomfortable feeling than that caused by
such a discovery. The certainty that some unknown person, with no motive
but a sinister one, is dodging at your heels, as the mountain wolf slinks
along