“Oh, yes.  They wouldn’t have cut it so near the village,” said Jack.  “We’ll have to follow it along for a bit, I fancy a mile or so, perhaps.  Better not talk much, either.  And, I say, hadn’t we better stay in the shadow?  They must have been watching us before —­ better not give them another chance, if we can help it,” was Jack’s very wise suggestion.  They had traveled nearly a mile when Dick suddenly noticed that the telephone wire sagged between two posts, “I think it has been.  Cut —­ and that we’re near the place, too,” he said then, “Look, Jack!  There’s probably a break not far from here,”

“Right, oh!” said Jack.  “Now we must be careful.  I’ve just thought, Dick, that they might have left someone to watch at the place where they cut the wire.”

“Why, Jack?”

“Well, they might have thought we, or someone else, might come along to find out about it, just as we’re doing.  I’m beginning to think those beggars are mightily clever, and that if they think of doing anything, they’re likely to think that we’ll think of it.  They’ve outwitted us at every point so far,”

So now, instead of staying under the hedge, but still in the road, they crept through a gap in the hedge, tearing their clothes as they did so, since it was a blackberry row, and went along still in sight of the poles and the wire, but protected by the hedge so that no one in the road could see them.

“There!” said Jack, at last.  “See?  You were right, Dick.  There’s the place —­ and the wire was cut, too!  It wasn’t an accident.  But I was sure of that as soon as I found the line wasn’t working.”

Sure enough, the wires were dangling.  And there was something else.  Just as they stopped they heard the voices of two men.

“There’s the break, Bill,” said the first voice.  “Bli’me, if she ain’t cut, too!  Now who did that?  Bringing us out of our beds at this hour to look for trouble!”

“I’d like to lay my hands on them, that’s all!” said the second voice.  “A good job they didn’t carry the wire away —­ ’twon’t take us long to repair, and that’s one precious good thing!”

“Linemen,” said Jack.  “But I wonder why they’re here?  They must have come a long way.  I shouldn’t be surprised if they’d ridden on bicycles.  And I never heard of their sending to repair a wire at night before.”

“Listen,” said Dick.  “Perhaps we will find out.”

“Well, now that we’ve found it, we might as well repair it,” said the first lineman, grumblingly.  “All comes of someone trying to get a message through to Bray and making the manager believe it was a life and death matter!”

“Harry must have tried to telephone —­ that’s why they’ve come,” said Jack.  “I was wondering how they found out about the break.  You see, as a rule, no one would try to ring up anyone in Bray after seven o’clock or so.  And of course, they couldn’t tell we were trying to ring, with the wire cut like that.”