“I’ve got to go out,” he said cautiously.  “Don’t you fools shoot me when I come back.”

He slipped out into what was by that time complete blackness.

Some five minutes later he came back, still noiselessly, and treading like a cat.  He could only locate the barn door by feeling for it, and above the light scraping of his fingers he could hear, inside, cautious footsteps over the board floor.  He scowled again.  Damn this country quiet, anyhow!  But he had found the doorway, and was feeling his way through when he found himself caught and violently thrown.  The fall and the surprise stunned him.  He lay still for an infuriated helpless second, with a knee on his chest and both arms tightly held, to hear one of his own men above him saying: 

“Got him, all right.  Woslosky, you’ve got the rope, haven’t you?”

“You fool!” snarled Woslosky from the floor, “let me up.  You’ve half killed me.  Didn’t I tell you I was going out?”

He scrambled to his feet, and to an astounded silence.

“But you came in a couple of minutes ago.  Somebody came in.  You heard him, Cusick, didn’t you?”

Woslosky whirled and closed and fastened the barn doors, and almost with the same movement drew a searchlight and flashed it over the place.  It was apparently empty.

The Pole burst into blasphemous anger, punctuated with sharp questions.  Both men had heard the cautious entrance they had taken for his own, both men had remained silent and unsuspicious, and both were positive whoever had come in had not gone out again.

He stationed one man at the door, and commenced a merciless search.  The summer’s hay filled one end, but it was closely packed below and offered no refuge.  Armed with the shotgun, and with the flash in his pocket, Woslosky climbed the ladder to the loft, going softly.  He listened at the top, and then searched it with the light, holding it far to the left for a possible bullet.  The loft was empty.  He climbed into it and walked over it, gun in one hand and flash in the other, searching for some buried figure.  But there was nothing.  The loft was fragrant with the newly dried hay, sweet and empty.  Woslosky descended the ladder again, the flash extinguished, and stood again on the barn floor, considering.  Cusick was a man without imagination, and he had sworn that some one had come in.  Then—­

Suddenly there was a whirr of wings outside and above, excited flutterings first, and then a general flight of the pigeons who roosted on the roof.  Woslosky listened and slowly smiled.

“We’ve got him, boys,” he said, without excitement.  “Outside, and call the others.  He’s on the roof.”

Cusick whistled shrilly, and as the Pole ran out he met the others coming pell-mell toward him.  He flung a guard of all five of them around the barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and gazed upward.  The very outline of the ridge pole was indistinguishable, and he swore softly.  In the hope of drawing an answering flash he fired, but without result.  The explosion echoed and reechoed, died away.