As the shades of evening had drawn down two figures that had been
lurking all day in the fastnesses of Lone Valley over beyond the state
Highway, stole forth and crept stealthily under cover to Stark
Mountain.

A long time they lingered in the edge of the woods till the dark was
velvet black around them, before the moon arose. Then slowly,
cautiously they drew near the haunted house, observing it long and
silently from every possible angle, till satisfied that no enemy was
about. Yet taking no chances even then, the taller one crept forth from
shelter while the other watched. So stealthily he went that even his
companion heard no stir.

It was some ten minutes that Shorty waited there in the bushes scarcely
daring to breathe, while Link painfully quiet, inch by inch encircled
the house, and listened, trying the front door first and finding it
fast; softly testing the cellar windows one by one, beginning from the
eastern end, going toward the front first, and so missing the window by
which Billy had entered. A hundred times his operation was halted by
the sound of a rat scuttling across the floor, or racketing in the
wall, but the hollow echoes assured him over and over again that the
house was not occupied, at least not by anyone awake and in his senses.
Link had been in the business so long that he "felt" when there was an
enemy near.