There was a large shed attached to the mill, and entering this, the young machinist looked carefully around to see if he could find any trace of the man. But a brief search assured him that the place had not been disturbed for months.
Passing through the partly open door, he entered the lower floor of the mill, and found himself in the presence of Dennis Corrigan, Mosey’s brother-in-law.
"What do you want here?" demanded Corrigan, springing up from the bench upon which he had been seated.
Jack could hardly form a proper reply. With two men against him, he realized that he was in a bad fix.
"Why, I didn’t know that you were here, Corrigan," he began. "I thought----"
Jack never finished the sentence. He heard a noise behind him, but before he could turn to see what it was, he received a cruel blow on the head, and then all became a dark, terrible blank.
Slowly and painfully, with a dull ache in his head, and an uncertain look in his eyes, Jack returned to his senses. A thin stream of blood trickled down his neck, and putting up his hand he felt a large lump under the hair.
"It must have been Mosey who struck me," was his first thought as he gathered his scattered faculties together. "Well, thank God, he didn’t kill me."
It was some time before he felt any desire to rise, and when he finally did so, he found himself weaker than he had anticipated.
"The coward!" was the young machinist’s comment. "To strike me unawares. I knew he disliked me, but hasn’t he wronged me enough already?"
Jack did not know--nor, indeed, could he have understood--the bitter hatred the Irishman bore him.
The only pride of Andy Mosey’s life was his bull pup and his son Mike, and to have the young machinist occupying a position he thought his son should have, had always been more than this hot-tempered fellow was inclined to bear.
The place in which Jack found himself was totally dark, whether because it had no windows, or because it was night, he could not tell.
He groped around, and seeing a ray of light coming up from beneath, applied his eye to what proved to be a knot-hole in the floor.
He was surprised to find the river flowing directly below, and knew at once that he was in the lowest part of the old mill, opposite the ancient wheel.