Chapter XIV. A Night Intruder

"Tom, aren't you going to try to get a look at that German?" whispered Ned, as he and his chum came down from the elevated gallery at the conclusion of the cast. "I mean the one who tried to get in!"

"I'd like to, Ned, but I don't want to arouse any suspicion," replied Tom. "I've got to stay here a while yet, and arrange about shrinking on the jackets, after the core is rifled. I don't see how--"

"I'll slip out and see if I can get a peep at him," went on Ned. "If it's like the one Koku described, we'll know that he's still after you."

"All right, Ned. Do as you like, only be cautious."

"I will," promised Tom's chum. So, while the young inventor was busy arranging details with the steel manager, Ned slipped out of a side door of the casting shop, and looked about the yard. He saw a little group of workmen surrounding a man who appeared to be angry.

"I dell you dot is my shop!" one of the men was heard to exclaim--a man whom the others appeared to dragging away with main force.

"And I tell you, Baudermann, that you're mistaken!" insisted one, evidently a foreman. "I told you to work in the brazing department. What do you want to try to force your way into the heavy casting department for? Especially when we're doing one of the biggest jobs that we ever handled--making the new Swift cannon."

"Oh, iss dot vot vas going on in dere?" asked the man addressed as Baudermann. "Shure den, I makes a misdake. I ask your pardon, Herr Blackwell. I to mine own apartment will go. But I dinks my foreman sends me to dot place," and he indicated the casting shop from which he had just been barred.

"All right!" exclaimed the foreman. "Don't make that mistake again, or I'll dock you for lost time."

"Only just a twisted German employee, I guess," thought Ned, as he was about to turn back. "I was mistaken. He probably didn't understand where he was sent."

He passed by the group of men, who, laughing and jeering at the German, were showing him where to go. He seemed to be a new hand in the works.

But as Ned passed he got one look at the man's face. Instead of a stupid countenance, for one instant he had a glimpse of the sharpest, brightest eyes he had ever looked into. And they were hard, cruel eyes, too, with a glint of daring in them. And, as Ned glanced at his figure, he thought he detected a trace of military stiffness--none of the stoop-shouldered slouch that is always the mark of a moulder. The fellow's hands, too, though black and grimy, showed evidences of care under the dirt, and Ned was sure his uncouth language was assumed.

"I'd like to know more about you," murmured Ned, but the man, with one sharp glance at him, passed on, seemingly to his own