"Just a minute, Mr. Ballard: I've got a corking big rattler under this rock. Bring a stick, if you can find one."
Ballard found a stick and went to the help of the snake-catcher.
"Don't give him a chance at you, Jerry," he warned. "Where is he?"
The collegian drew him around to the farther side of the great thorough-block.
"It was only a leg-pull," was the low-toned explanation. "I've been trying all evening to get a word with you, and I had to invent the snake. Wingfield says we're all off wrong on the mystery chase--'way off. You're to watch the dam--that's what he told me to tell you; watch it close till he comes down here from Castle 'Cadia."
"Watch the dam?" queried the engineer. "What am I to look for?"
"I don't know another blessed thing about it. But there's something doing; something bigger than--'sh! Miss Elsa's asking about the snake. Cut it out--cut it all out!"
"It was a false alarm," Ballard explained, when he rejoined his companion at the derrick's foot. "Jerry has an aggravated attack of imaginationitis. You were saying----?"
"I wasn't saying anything; but I shall begin now--if you'll sit down. You must be dying to know why we came down here to-night, of all the nights that ever were; and why we are staying so long past our welcome."
"I never felt less like dying since the world began; and you couldn't outstay your welcome if you should try," he answered, out of a full heart. "My opportunities to sit quietly in blissful nearness to you haven't been so frequent that I can afford to spoil this one with foolish queryings about the whys and wherefores."
"Hush!" she broke in imperatively. "You are saying light things again in the very thick of the miseries! Have you forgotten that to-day--a few hours ago--another attempt was made upon your life?"
"Be honest with me," she insisted. "You are not as indifferent as you would like to have me believe. Do you know who made the attempt?"
"Yes." He answered without realising that the single word levelled all the carefully raised barriers of concealment; and when the realisation came, he could have bitten his tongue for its incautious slip.
"Then you doubtless know who is responsible for all the terrible happenings; the--the _crimes_?"