“No.”

“All right, Tarn, you can go home now.  Here’s your money.”

“You bane want me no more?”

“No; we’ll watch here ourselves to-night.  Good night.”

“Good night,” rejoined Tam, pocketing his money and shuffling off down the street.

He had hardly gone two blocks when from the shadow of an elm-shaded yard the figure of Dan Cassell slipped out and intercepted him.

“So you’ve been fired, eh?”

He shot the question at the simple-minded Norwegian lad with vicious emphasis.

“No, I no bane fired; they bane tell me no want me more.”

“Well, isn’t that being fired?  Moreover, I can tell you that they’ve hired another fellow in your place.”

The Norwegian youth’s light blue eyes lit up with indignant fire.  Like most of his race he was keenly sensitive once aroused, and while he was quite agreeable to being dropped from his temporary job, he hated to think of being supplanted in it.  Crafty Dan Cassell was playing his cards well, for a purpose that will be seen ere long.

“So they bane fire me,” ejaculated Tam.

“That’s the size of it.  I guess you feel pretty sore, Tam, don’t you?”

“No, they bane pay me wale; but I no like being fired.”

“I should think not.  The idea of a man like you being dropped.  What did they tell you when they let you go?”

“That they bane watch place themselves.”

Dan Cassell smiled.  His crafty methods had elicited something of real value after all.

“Did they say they were going to watch all night?” he asked.

“Yes,” rejoined the Norwegian, “they ask about you, too.”

“Humph!  What did they want to know?”

“If you’d been round by stable and what I bane tale you.”

“What did you say?”

“I tale them the truth.  I say that you and your father bane by stable this evening.”

Dan’s face darkened.

“You had no business to tell them anything,” he snarled.  Then, with a sudden change of front:  “See here, Tam, do you want to make some money?”

“Sure, I bane like make money.”

“Then come into the house a minute.  Dad and I want to talk to you.”

So saying Dan took the Norwegian by the arm and led him in through a gate in a whitewashed picket fence.  Beyond the fence was a fairly prosperous looking house, on the piazza of which lounged Jim Cassell smoking a cigar.

“Well, Tam,” he said, “lost your job?”

The Norwegian replied in the affirmative.

“Well, never mind, I’ve got another for you,” replied Jim Cassell, in what was for him an unwontedly amiable tone; “can you go to work at once?”

“Ay bane work any time skol be,” spoke the Norwegian, and a puzzled expression flitted over his face as both Cassells broke into what was to him an inexplicable fit of laughter at his words.

In the meantime the boys had telephoned to the hotel that work on the aeroplanes would detain them till late.  They did not wish to inform the girls that they were undertaking a night watch, as that would have led to all sorts of questions, and if their fears proved ungrounded they felt pretty sure of coming in for a lot of “joshing.”