they lay, their troubles ended,
mine begun!

Did I appeal to the law--I? Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the
King drink for him? Oh, no, no, no--I wanted no impertinent
interference of the law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt
that was owing to me! Let the laws leave the matter in my hands, and
have no fears: I would find the debtor and collect the debt. How
accomplish this, do you say? How accomplish it, and feel so sure about
it, when I had neither seen the robbers' faces, nor heard their natural
voices, nor had any idea who they might be? Nevertheless, I WAS sure--
quite sure, quite confident. I had a clue--a clue which you would not
have valued--a clue which would not have greatly helped even a
detective, since he would lack the secret of how to apply it. I shall
come to that, presently--you shall see. Let us go on, now, taking things
in their due order. There was one circumstance which gave me a slant in
a definite direction to begin with: Those two robbers were manifestly
soldiers in tramp disguise; and not new to military service, but old in
it--regulars, perhaps; they did not acquire their soldierly attitude,
gestures, carriage, in a day, nor a month, nor yet in a year. So I
thought, but said nothing. And one of them had said, 'the captain's
voice, by G--!'--the one whose life I would have. Two miles away,
several regiments were in camp, and two companies of U.S. cavalry. When
I learned that Captain Blakely, of Company C had passed our way, that
night, with an escort, I said nothing, but in that company I resolved to
seek my man. In conversation I studiously and persistently described
the robbers as tramps, camp followers; and among this class the people
made useless search, none suspecting the soldiers but me.

Working patiently, by night, in my desolated home, I made a disguise for
myself out of various odds and ends of clothing; in the nearest village
I bought a pair of blue goggles. By-and-bye, when the military camp
broke up, and Company C was ordered a hundred miles north, to Napoleon,
I secreted my small hoard of money in my belt, and took my departure in
the night. When Company C arrived in Napoleon, I was already there. Yes,
I was there, with a new trade--fortune-teller. Not to seem partial, I
made friends and told fortunes among all the companies garrisoned there;
but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions. I made myself
limitlessly obliging to these particular