companions called him, were taken away under charge of Dave Brainerd
and Jeffrys, to be locked up and safely kept until Jeffrys should take
Delbras to New York, and thence to France. The others would await our
appearance against them.

When the physician came, I took him from young Trent's bedside to that
of 'Missis Susie.'

Of Trent he had spoken only words of cheer. His wounds were healing,
had healed in fact healthily, and with no danger of after-trouble,
mental or other; and now he needed only good nursing, good food,
tonics, stimulants, and for a little longer quiet and not too much
company. He might be moved, he told us, upon a cot, and for a short
distance, that afternoon; and he commended us for our wisdom in not
following up the excitement of the previous hours with an instant
meeting between the invalid and his father and sweetheart. Now, 'after
a light breakfast and good nerve tonic,' he might see his friends,
when they had been prepared and warned against unduly taxing the
patient's nerves and strength.

Of the sick woman above stairs there was a different tale to tell. She
might linger for weeks, but for her there was no recovery.

When the negress--Hat, her mistress called her--heard this she was
inconsolable, and when I had promised her that, if possible, she
should remain with her mistress to the end, she was ready to be my
slave; and knowing that nothing could help or hurt her mistress more,
she was willing to tell me what she could about the gang and their
methods.

She had no love for her mistress's husband, and she seemed to have
remembered against him every unkind deed or word spoken or done to her
'Missis Susie.' Delbras she had ever feared and hated, and Smug she
despised as the coward decoy of the gang. For Harry she expressed a
liking. 'He was bad, that's true,' she declared; 'sharp as you please
and tricky; but he was good to my mistress when the others forgot her.
He was good to her always, and he bought her books and fruit. When he
dressed in woman's clothes she would help him, and he never forgot to
thank her. But they quarrelled, Harry and Bob and the Frenchman, and
he left night before last.'

I told her of Harry's fate, and she cursed his slayers with oaths like
a man's; and after that her testimony was ready, and it helped us
much. As for Susan Kendricks, for this was the name by which the poor
soul had wedded Greenback Bob, there came a time when she told me her
story, and a sad