"They didn't have any regular room," was the reply. "They slept in
the breaker whenever the watchman would permit them to do so, and when
he wouldn't, they threw stones at him and slept in the railroad yard
somewhere. But the strangest part of the whole business is the way
they disappeared from sight."

"You didn't tell us about that!" exclaimed Sandy.

"I meant to," the caretaker answered. "The last seen of them here
they were at work on the breaker. It was somewhere near the middle of
the afternoon, and the cracker boss had been particularly ugly. The
two boys were often caught whispering together, and more than once the
cracker boss had launched such trifles as half pound block of shale at
them. I happened to be on the outside just about that time."

"The boys didn't go up in the air, did they?" asked Sandy with a
chuckle. "They haven't got wings, have they?"

"To all intents and purposes, they went up into the air!" answered the
caretaker. "One moment they were on the breaker sorting slate and
stuff of that kind out of the stream of coal which was pouring down
upon them, and the next moment they were nowhere in sight!"

"Had any strangers been seen talking with them?"

"Now you come to a point that I should have mentioned before!" replied
the caretaker. "Two days before they left a strange boy came to the
mine and went to work on the breaker. He was an unusually
well-mannered, well-dressed young fellow, and so the breaker boys
called him a dude. He resented this, of course, and there was a fight