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 sound of another movement crept in to her straining ears. She took up the heavy revolver as McKinnon had warned her to do, and crouched back into the remotest corner of the cabin, listening and waiting.

The girl's heart stood still as McKinnon himself quietly swung back the cabin door, dodged inside, and as quickly closed and locked the door behind him. He stood there with his back to her, listening, without so much as a glance in her direction. He heard the pacing steps pass and die away, and pass still again. Then he murmured a grateful "Thank Heaven!" took a deep breath, and turned slowly about to the waiting girl. His gaze was impersonal and abstracted; he scarcely seemed conscious of her presence as he stood there, deep in troubled thought.

"Well?" she whispered at last, struggling to keep some tremour of dread from her voice.

"I was right," he said, with the look of perplexity still in his studious eyes. "Eighty-eight boxes of fluxing-slag have been passed out from the hold and piled along the pier. They've been standing there covered with a tarpaulin."

"Is any one there?" she asked.

"Five of De Brigard's men—four men and an officer. The four men are moving these boxes now. They are lifting them in through the east door of the weigh-scales shed. The south door