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 saw a small white object like a little ball shoot upward from the courtyard towards this south window, strike against the wall of the house just below the window sill and drop back into the yard.

Lachlan halted, instantly alert. A high fence separated the courtyard from the street; but his ears were the ears of an Indian hunter, and presently he heard faintly, yet so distinctly that there could be no mistake, the sound of someone moving in the courtyard. He knew then what was coming moments before it happened.

This man, whoever he was, who lurked in the darkness of the inn yard, was searching in the grass that grew there for the little white ball which he had tried to throw into Falcon's window. Presently he would find it; and when he found it, he would throw it a second time.

Some minutes passed. Then upward into the moonlight soared the little white ball again. This time the thrower had evidently stationed himself directly below the window; and this time his aim was better. The white ball soared a little above the window sill, then dropped upon it and rolled inward.

Lachlan, from his watching place in the street, could see what the thrower of that mysterious missile could not see. To the latter, peering straight up at the window above him, it must have appeared that the white ball had dropped from the sill into the room; but Lachlan knew that it had not fallen into the room—that it still rested on the sill some inches