First he saw a hayrack go past.  Two horses drew it.  It was piled high with household goods, and women and children were on top of the load.  Two cows were hitched on behind.  By the time the fog had hidden this conveyance a wagon of the jigger type rumbled past.  It was as heavily loaded as the hayrack.  He heard other vehicles coming—­he heard still others far down the road on their way.

He was urged by a furious desire to shout—­to ask what all this meant.  But he did not dare to run such risks.  There was a wall between him and the rest of humanity until his sorry affairs could be straightened.

The highway gave him a clew as to his whereabouts; he had been lost in that wallow of vapor, unable to distinguish north from south.  He retreated from the wall and stooped as he ran along behind the screen of the wayside alders.  He had an affair of his own to look after, no matter what the rest of Egypt was doing.

In spite of his haste, he carefully scrutinized each item in this singular parade of the night, keeping near enough to the road for that purpose.  It seemed like some sort of a migration.  He wondered how comprehensive it was.  He wanted to be sure that nobody in whom he was especially interested passed him without his knowledge.  There was every kind of an equipage that would convey people or property.  Nobody was talking.  So far as was possible, the human beings in the procession seemed to be trying to make a secret of the affair.  Mothers hushed their children when the youngsters chattered or whimpered.  Men merely whispered commands to the horses.

All at once Vaniman beheld the van.  It was holding a place in the parade and was moving with the decorous slowness of the other vehicles.  On the driver’s seat with Wagg were the two convicts.  The comrade whom they had deserted waited until it had passed; then he ran out into the road and ducked along close to the rear of it.

They were coming away from the village of Egypt.  To what extent had they succeeded in their rascally errand?  What burden were they conveying?  Vaniman could not curb his wild desire to find out.  He had had plenty of experience in dodging into that van.  He lifted the flap and leaped in.  There was black darkness in there.  He put out his hand cautiously.  It touched a man.  The move that the man made was a sort of fruitless struggle, indicating that his limbs were secured in some way.

Vaniman, in that crisis in his affairs, was not affected by squeamishness.  He used his hands.  He immediately discovered that the man was tied up hand and foot with torn cloth, strips of sheets or something of the kind.  The man’s only apparel was a nightshirt.  Around his neck, so Vaniman’s touch told him, was a leather cord to which keys were attached.  Tasper Britt had told his cashier that he always carried his keys to bed with him in that fashion, and he had advised Vaniman to employ the same caution.