He made good time back to Cobmore’s, drove the horse into the stable and left him to the care of the hired man. Then he darted into the woods, found the path and fairly flew along it.
His face was flushed and his eyes shining with eagerness as he hurried along. Everything was coming his way now, if he only used a few precautions.
As he came out of the woods within sight of the farmhouse, he stopped abruptly and looked sharply at the building.
“Who in thunder’s that?” he muttered.
Close against the side of the house, beside one of the windows, was a man, tall, thin, and dressed in frayed, black garments. His back was toward McCormick, and he seemed to be intent on something which he was watching through a crack in the closed blind.
As Archie watched him, not knowing quite what to do, the fellow suddenly turned and saw him. The next instant his flying coat tails were vanishing around the corner of the house.
“Must be a tramp,” the Yale man murmured uneasily.
He did not like the thought of any one spying around that house, particularly around that room. There was entirely too much at stake.
Crossing the field, he reached the front of the house. The door was closed and apparently locked. The big armchair on the veranda puzzled him for a moment, but he swiftly forgot that and everything else as his eyes fell on the partly open window near at hand.
He drew his breath sharply and his face paled.