It was dark when he drove away, after seeing that the case lay where he had left it, and he had reached his post before he made a startling discovery.

When he carried the case into the lamplight, it looked smaller, and on hastily opening it he found it was filled with soil! He sat down and thought; though on the surface the matter was clear--he had been cleverly outwitted by somebody who had exchanged the case while he got his meal.

This, as he reflected, was not the kind of thing for which a constable got promoted; but there were other points that required attention.

The substitution had not been effected by anybody connected with the Queen's; it was, he suspected, the work of some of the frequenters of the Sachem; and he and his superiors had to contend with a well-organized gang.

News of what had happened in the bluff had obviously been transmitted to the settlement while he had rested at Lansing's homestead.