put on some gold eyeglasses and walked up and handed me the grip.

"'Mr. Detective,' he says, talking a little broken, 'I conclude
to return with you. I have finished to discover that life on this
desolate and displeased coast would be worse than to die, itself. I
will go back and hurl myself upon the mercy of the Republic Company.
Have you brought a sheep?'

"'Sheep!' says I; 'I haven't a single--'

"'Ship,' cut in the young lady. 'Don't get funny. Father is of German
birth, and doesn't speak perfect English. How did you come?'

"The girl was all broke up. She had a handkerchief to her face, and
kept saying every little bit, 'Oh, father, father!' She walked up to
me and laid her lily-white hand on the clothes that had pained her at
first. I smelt a million violets. She was a lulu. I told her I came
in a private yacht.

"'Mr. O'Day,' she says. 'Oh, take us away from this horrid country at
once. Can you! Will you! Say you will.'

"'I'll try,' I said, concealing the fact that I was dying to get them
on salt water before they could change their mind.

"One thing they both kicked against was going through the town to the
boat landing. Said they dreaded publicity, and now that they were
going to return, they had a hope that the thing might yet be kept out
of the papers. They swore they wouldn't go unless I got them out to
the yacht without any one knowing it, so I agreed to humour them.

"The sailors who rowed me ashore were playing billiards in a bar-room
near the water, waiting for orders, and I proposed to have them take
the boat down the beach half a mile or so, and take us up there. How
to get them word was the question, for I couldn't leave the grip with
the prisoner, and I couldn't take it with me, not knowing but what
the monkeys might stick me up.

"The young lady says the old coloured woman would take them a note. I
sat down and wrote it, and gave it to the dame with plain directions
what to do, and she grins like a baboon and shakes her head.

"Then Mr. Wahrfield handed her a string of foreign dialect, and she
nods her head and says, 'See, senor,' maybe fifty times, and lights
out with the note.

"'Old Augusta only understands German,' said Miss Wahrfield, smiling
at me. 'We stopped in her house to ask where we could find lodging,
and she insisted upon our having coffee. She tells us she was raised
in a German family in San Domingo.'

"'Very likely,' I said. 'But you can search me for German words,