button that fastened the window on the inside, and pulled the shutter
open.

Then he put one leg inside over the sill, and leaning down helped to
draw his fellow-conspirator up to a level with the window. "I feel
just like I was burglarizing a house," chuckled Gallegher, as he
dropped noiselessly to the floor below and refastened the shutter. The
barn was a large one, with a row of stalls on either side in which
horses and cows were dozing. There was a haymow over each row of
stalls, and at one end of the barn a number of fence-rails had been
thrown across from one mow to the other. These rails were covered with
hay.

[Illustration with caption: Gallegher stood upon his shoulders.]

In the middle of the floor was the ring. It was not really a ring, but
a square, with wooden posts at its four corners through which ran a
heavy rope. The space inclosed by the rope was covered with sawdust.

Gallegher could not resist stepping into the ring, and after stamping
the sawdust once or twice, as if to assure himself that he was really
there, began dancing around it, and indulging in such a remarkable
series of fistic manoeuvres with an imaginary adversary that the
unimaginative detective precipitately backed into a corner of the
barn.

"Now, then," said Gallegher, having apparently vanquished his foe,
"you come with me." His companion followed quickly as Gallegher
climbed to one of the hay-mows, and crawling carefully out on the
fence-rail, stretched himself at full length, face downward. In this