of them, a tall, wiry individual, whose cap visor did not wholly conceal a wide scar across his forehead, spoke impatiently, indicating the muttering peasant. "What is he saying, Lefty?"
When Lefty spoke it was in the curiously clipped phrases of an American who had lived for many years in lower New York. "He says that a devil done this; a flyin' devil that goes over the country at night. He says he's seen him once or twice and now he finds his cow here dead."
The third man, a short, thick-set individual, stirred uneasily and began digging nervously with the toe of his shoe in the turf near the edge of the yellow lane, his efforts sending up a small cloud of dry dust. The scarred man, who was obviously the leader of the other two, snorted derisively: "Nonsense! It's just heart-disease, that's all. Cows are subject to it the same as human beings. There isn't a mark or a wound on her that I can find." His speech was clipped, terse. Nothing of Manhattan here.
"It's funny, Mr. Ferris"—the "Mister", coming from Lefty, was curiously deferential to the younger man—"that she should happen to fall right here in this dead grass, ain't it? I don't suppose the grass died of heart-disease, too, did it?"
"Looky here," said the third man, who had been digging in the turf. "Here's something else that's had heart-trouble." He stooped and pulled out of the turf an object which appeared to be a rough ball of grayish lint. Looking into the ball the others saw that it was a nest of field mice. They were all quite dead.
"Just the same, I'm glad I wasn't hangin' around these parts last night, ain't you, Lefty?" said the short man to the digger.
"You said it, Spider," returned the other.
Ferris stirred impatiently. "Come on, let's get out at this," he snapped. "We didn't come up here to fiddle around with dead cows. We've been here a week and nothing done. We're going to spend another night watching the castle, and tomorrow we'll get busy making our plans to get at that villa. If we hang around here much longer people will begin to ask questions."
His comment was made well out of earshot of the peasant as they walked slowly up the hill. They did not speak again until they reached the crest, when Lefty, looking back, muttered in an undertone, "All the same I don't like this place. I'll be glad when we've pulled this job and get out. There's something queer about this air. It ain’t healthy."
The short man said nothing, but glanced nervously behind him as he followed the others over the brow of the hill.
CHAPTER 2.
CASTLE BLENNERHOP.
The smoky, purplish gloom of an autumn twilight had settled over the Blennersee. The faint breath of an autumnal breeze left a parting ripple on the dull surface of the lake and rustled its way onward through the first frost-nipped leaves of the season—leaves deep blood-red and somber black with none of the brilliant yellows and golden browns with which nature is wont to brighten the last hours of a dying summer.
In a thick copse of scrubby mountain pine growing on a small promontory overlooking the lake the three men had halted, and now they stood looking over the darkening surface of the water, their gaze absorbed not in the purple and saffron glories of the sunset on the heights above the water, but rather in the age-blackened turrets of the great castle which reared itself on a ledgelike island near the farther shore.
The last rays of the sun on the summits above them flickered and died.
