"You, Dick? Thank God!" cried Stepan. Then his face flushed, and he came forward, furiously. He dragged the spy out, looked at his face, and then spurned him with his foot.
"You saved my life, I think, Dick," he said, simply. "I never suspected this! Treachery in our ranks. I had not supposed that any Servian would sell his country. Mike Hallo, of course, we never trusted—but this man! Well, he will pay in one way or another."
"I knew what was going to happen. I was here and heard them talking."
"I didn't even know he had come. I had made some discoveries below, and was hard at work. I knew that Hallo would not leave without my knowledge. He would not have wanted to leave me here alone in the warehouse. But, Dick, how did you get here? How did you come to leave the boathouse? I asked you to wait there, you know."
"How did you know I had gone?"
"Vanya, the soldier, told us. I sent him to fetch you. And when we learned that you had gone, we suspected that Hallo had had some part in it, for by then I had been told that he had escaped after they had caught him. But you don't know about that—"
"Don't I though? I was there listening, while he told this other fellow all about it. He was in the boathouse when we landed, Steve!"
"Ah! I knew it! I told Milikoff so! That was how he escaped! But how did you come here—free?"
Dick told his story as quickly as he could; told of how he had escaped from detection in the boathouse because Hallo had been even more frightened than he himself, if anything, and of his wild chase after the Hungarian.
"I was afraid I had done wrong in going—afraid that I should have stayed in the boathouse and waited for you to come. Did you come here after me, Steve? Wasn't that your purpose?"