, and yelled, as you probably heard. Trent was assaulted
and half-killed, nursed back to life for what there was in it, and has
just come to his senses, awfully weak, but game enough to resist their
efforts to make him appeal to his father for a big ransom. That's all
I've had time to hear.'

CHAPTER XXXV.

AFTER ALL.

Trent, of course, was not strong enough to be moved, and that and the
late, or rather the early, hour, it being now almost two o'clock a.m.,
decided us to camp down in the house until morning. So the men outside
with Smug in charge were called in, and with our prisoners securely
guarded, we passed the few hours before daylight in conversation,
Dave, Jeffrys, Lossing, and myself, in Trent's room.

I was doctor enough to see that the poor fellow had been sufficiently
startled by our appearance and the events of the night, and so, eager
as we were to hear and he to tell his story, we imposed silence upon
him until he could be seen by a physician--at least comparative
silence; and as he declared himself 'all right' except for his
weakness, and finding that he was, very naturally, unable to sleep, or
even to rest quietly, we told him briefly the story of our search for
him, and in telling it led him slowly to the knowledge of his father's
presence in the city and the nearness of his betrothed.

More than once his fine eyes filled with tears and his lips trembled
as we told of his sweetheart's telegrams and his father's anxiety; and
when he had heard it all, he lay a long time silent but wakeful, and
evidently thinking, and at last, just as the first faint streak of
gray became tinged with a beam of red in the east, he fell asleep,
with a smile upon his pale lips.

When the negress had been removed from the room, she had begged to be
taken to her 'dear Missis Susie,' who, she declared, was 'sick enough
to die'; and I led her upstairs to the room where the pale, worn
woman still lay, in the room from which her husband had been removed.

As the negress entered the room the woman lifted her head, and with an
inarticulate cry threw herself into her servant's arms; there was a
moment of wild sobbing, and then, as I was about to set a guard at the
door and withdraw, the negress uttered a shrill cry, caught the
slender form in her stout arms and laid her upon the bed, and I saw a
thin stream of blood trickle from between the white lips.

Restoratives were at hand, for this was not the first attack, th