day out from New Orleans, Miss
Gilman was so far from being travel-sick that she was able to sit with
Charlotte in the shade of the hurricane-deck aft, and to enjoy, with
what quavering enthusiasm there was in her, the matchless scenery of the
lower Mississippi.

At Baton Rouge the New Orleans papers came aboard, and Miss Farnham
bought a copy of the _Louisianian_. As a matter of course, the
first-page leader was a circumstantial account of the daring robbery of
the Bayou State Security, garnished with startling head-lines. Charlotte
read it, half-absently at first, and a second time with interest
awakened and a quickening of the pulse when she realized that she had
actually been a witness of the final act in the near-tragedy. Her little
gasp of belated horror brought a query from the invalid.

"What is it, Charlie, dear?"

For answer, Charlotte read the newspaper story of the robbery,
head-lines and all.

"For pity's sake! in broad daylight! How shockingly bold!" commented
Miss Gilman.

"Yes; but that wasn't what made me gasp. The paper says: 'A young lady
was at the teller's window when the robber came up with Mr.
Galbraith--' Aunt Fanny, _I_ was the 'young lady'!"

"You? horrors!" ejaculated the invalid, holding up wasted hands of
deprecation. "To think of it! Why, child, if anything had happened, a
terrible murder might have been committed right there before your very
face and eyes! Dear, dear; whatever are we coming to!"

Charlotte the well-balanced, smiled at the purely personal limitations
of her aunt's point of view.

"It is very dreadful, of course; but it is no worse just because I
happened to be there. Yet it seems ridiculously incredible. I can hardly
believe it, even now."

"Incredible? How?"

"Why, there wasn't anything about it to suggest a robbery. Now that I
know, I remember that the old gentleman did seem anxious or worried, or
at least, not quite comfortable some way; but the young man was smiling
pleasantly, and he looked like anything rather than a desperate
criminal. I can close my eyes and see him, just as I saw him yesterday.
He had a good face, Aunt Fanny; it was the face of a man whom one would
trust almost instinctively."

Miss Gilman's New England conservatism, unweakened by her long residence
in the West, took the alarm at once.

"Did you notice him particularly, Charlotte? Would you recognize him if
you should see him again?" she asked anxiously.

"Yes; I am quite sure I s