“Hold on!” gasped a breathless voice.

“Don’t stop me!” shouted Bart, trying to tear loose from a frantic grip.  “Oh, it’s you—­what do you want?”

He halted to survey the person who detained him—­the man who haunted the freight tracks—­to whom he had given money earlier in the evening.

“Come, quick!” the man panted.  “Express shed—­where your father is—­trouble.  Don’t wait—­not a minute.”

“See here,” challenged Bart, instantly startled into a new tremor of anxiety, “what do you mean?”

But the forlorn roustabout could not be coherent.  He continued to gasp and splutter out excited adjectives, fragmentary sentences.

“Plot—­get you into trouble—­father—­I heard ’em.”

Then as his glance fell upon the people coming up the hill, the officers in their lead, his eyes bulged with terror, he grasped Bart’s arm, let out an unearthly yell of fear, and by sheer force carried Bart pell-mell down the other side of the hill with him.

“See here,” panted Bart, as, still running, they were headed in the direction of the railroad, “my business is here.  Don’t you hurry me off in this fashion unless there’s something to it.”

“Told you—­express shed—­robbers!”

“Robbers?  You mean some one is stealing something there?”

“Yes!” gulped Bart’s companion.

“Who is it?”

“Don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you stop them?”

“I don’t dare do anything,” the man wailed.  “I’m a poor, miserable object, but I’m your friend.  I heard two fellows whispering on the tracks near the express shed.  Said they were going to steal some fireworks.  I ran to the shed to warn your father.  He was asleep in his chair.  They might see me—­didn’t dare do anything.”

Bart now believed there might be some basis to the man’s statements.  He plunged forward alone, not conscious that he was outdistancing his late companion.

Reaching the tracks, Bart ran down a line of freights.  The express shed was in view at last.  It was lighted up as usual, the door stood open, and nothing suggested anything out of the ordinary.

“The fellow’s cracked,” reflected Bart.  “Everything looks straight here—­no, it doesn’t!” He checked himself abruptly.  “Here! what are you at?”

Sharp and clear Bart sang out.  Approaching the express shed from the side, his glance shifted to the rear.

The little structure had one window there, lightly barred with metal strips.  Two men stood on the platform beneath it.  One of them had just pried a strip loose with some long implement he held in his hand.  The other had just pushed up the sash by reaching through the convenient aperture thus made.

Bart bounded to the platform with a nimble spring.  As his feet clamped down warningly on the boardway, the man who had pushed up the window turned sharply.

“It’s young Stirling!” Bart heard him mutter.  “Drop it, and run.”