“Best get out, at the double-quick, Boss!  This blaze is due to bring folks a-runnin’, an’—!”

“Well?” inquired Hade, impatiently.  “What then?  They’ll find us looking at a burning tree.  Is there any law against that?  I brought you and the crew ashore, to-night, to help shift some heavy furniture that came from up North last week.  On the way, we saw this tree and stopped to look at it.  Where’s the crime in that?  You talk like a—­”

“But if the Standishes blab—­”

“They won’t.  That Secret Service sneak has bolted.  Without him to put backbone in them, they’ll eat out of my hand.  Don’t worry.  They—­”

“Here comes some of the folks, now,” muttered Roke, as running figures began to appear from three sides.  “We’d be safer to—­”

His warning ended in a gurgle of dismay.

From three points the twenty-five or thirty new arrivals continued to run forward.  But, at a word from some one in front of them, they changed their direction, and wheeled in triple column, almost with the precision of soldiers.

The shift of direction brought them converging, not upon the tree, but upon the group of sailors that stood around Hade.  It was this odd change of course which had stricken Roke dumb.

And now he saw these oncomers were not farmhands or white-clad neighbors, and that there were no women among them.  They were men in dark clothes, they were stalwart of build and determined of aspect..  There was a certain confident teamwork and air of professionalism about them that did not please Roke at all.  Again, he caught at his master’s arm.  But he was too late.

Out of nothingness, apparently, darted a small figure, directly behind the unsuspecting Hade.  It was as though he had risen from the earth itself.

With lightning swiftness, he attached himself to Rodney’s throat and right arm, from behind.  Hade gave a convulsive start, and, with his free hand reached back for his pistol.  At the same time Roke seized the dwarfish stranger.

Then, two things happened, at once.

Roke wallowed backward, faint with pain and with one leg numb to the thigh, from an adroit smiting of his instep.  The little assailant’s heel had come down with trained force on this nerve center.  And, for the moment, Roke was not only in agony but powerless.

The second thing to happen was a deft twist from the imprisoning arm that was wrapped around Hade’s throat from behind.  At the pressure, Rodney’s groping hand fell away from his pistol pocket, and he himself toppled, powerless, toward the ground, the skilled wrench of the carotid artery and the nerves at the side of the throat paralyzing him with pain.

Roke, rolling impotently on the earth, saw the little fellow swing Hade easily over his shoulder and start for the house.  At the same time, he noted through his semi-delirium of agony that the stalwart men had borne down upon the knot of gaping sailors, and, at pistol-muzzle, had disarmed and handcuffed them.