“The colonel’s wife is a Tartar, all right,” bluntly declared the night watchman.  “Hello! here’s somebody from Harrington’s, now.”

The same buckboard that had driven up the afternoon previous, came dashing to the platform as McCarthy spoke.

It was in charge of the same driver, who promptly hailed Bart with the words: 

“That trunk gone yet?”

“No, not yet,” answered Bart.

“Then I’m in time.  Mrs. Harrington wanted to put something else in—­this box.  Forgot it, yesterday,” and the speaker fished up an oblong package from the bottom of the wagon.

“It will have to go separate,” explained Bart.

“Can’t do that—­it’s a silk dress, and not wrapped for any hard usage.  Why, what’s happened!” pressed the colonel’s man, shrewdly scanning the disturbed countenances of Bart and the watchman.  “Door lock smashed, too, and—­say!  I don’t see the trunk!”

He had stepped to the platform and looked inside the express shed.

Bart thought it best to explain, and did so.  It made him feel more crestfallen than ever to trace in the way his auditor took it, that he anticipated some pretty lively action when Mrs. Harrington was apprised of her loss.

“You can tell Mrs. Harrington that everything possible is being done to recover the trunk,” Bart told the man as he drove off.  “Now then, Mr. McCarthy,” he continued, turning to his companion, “I am going to ask you to take charge here till I return.  I will pay you a full day’s wages, even if you have to stay only an hour.”

“You’ll pay me nothing!” declared the watchman vigorously.  “I’ll camp right in your service as soon as the seven o’clock whistle blows, and you get on the trail of that missing trunk.”

“I intend to,” said Bart.  “I will get Darry Haven to come down here.  He knows the office routine.  In the meantime, we had better not say much about the burglary.”

“Are you going on a hunt for Lem Wacker?”

“I am.”

Bart went first to the Haven home.  He found Darry Haven chopping wood, told him of the burglary, and asked him to get down to the express office as soon as he could.

“If you don’t come back by nine o’clock, I will arrange to stay all day,” promised Darry.

Then Bart went to the house where Lem Wacker lived.  It was characteristic of its proprietor—­ricketty, disorderly, the yard unkept and grown over with weeds.

Smoke was coming out of the chimney.  Someone was evidently astir within, but the shades were down, and Bart stole around to the rear.

The shed doors were open, and the wagon gone and the horse’s stall vacant.

Bart went to the back door of the house and knocked, and in a few minutes it was opened by a thin-faced, slatternly-looking woman.

Bart knew who she was, and she apparently knew him, though they had never spoken together before.  The woman’s face looked interested, and then worried.