be for you. So if there is ever trouble--any at
all--you know where to come."

She arose. Nora was a tall woman, but she had to lift her face so that
her eyes might meet his. She laid both hands upon his breast and when
she spoke there was just the least tremble in her voice.

"I know," she said. "Dear old Bat, I know. Haven't I always called on
you when I needed help, and you were near enough to hear? You are the
most loyal friend a woman could have; I have been grateful for you, Bat,
and I have prayed for you, many times."

"No!" said Scanlon. "No; have you though, Nora? Well, what do you know
about that?"

When he went down the stairs he had a lump in his throat, and there was
a tendency to blink drops from his lashes--Bat would have denied
indignantly that they were tears--which amazed him. In the lower hall he
met the maid.

"Isn't there a way out beside the front door?" he asked.

"Oh, yes; there is a door which opens onto a yard beside the old
carriage house," said the girl.

"I'll go out that way," said Bat.

Surprised, but making no comment, the maid led the way. Scanlon passed
through a door into the yard and then through a gate which opened upon a
small, quiet street.

"Thank you!" said he. And when the gate had been closed and the maid
vanished, he started down the street; in a few moments he had rounded
the corner; then a dozen yards brought him to the thoroughfare on which
Nora's house stood. Cautiously, he peered from a sheltering doorway.
Yes, there was the figure of the Swiss in the same position as before;
and as Scanlon looked he saw a tall, stoop-shouldered man cross the
street and stop at Bohlmier's side.

"Big Slim," said Bat. "That's who the sign was being passed to a while
ago."

He watched the two men while they engaged in earnest conversation; then
they started off, and he followed them. However, they did not go far; at
the intersection of a small street they paused and then disappeared.
Something in their manner of doing this told Bat their intention.

"They are going to lie low just around the corner," he said. "Waiting
for something, I think."

He was but a dozen yards from Nora's house at this moment; and at an
ornamental iron gate, of the period just after the Civil War, stood an
aged colored man, very black, very highly collared and with much of the
dignity of a servant of the old time. Bat paused and said with the
carelessness of a casual stroller:

"Nice old street yo