Spidertracks drew his revolver, mildly touched the young man on the shoulder, and remarked:
The ex-knight of the pencil bowed his prisoner into an abandoned gopher-hole (_i.e._, an artificial cave,) cocked his revolver, and then stretched himself on the ground and devoted himself to staring at the unfortunate youth. To a student of human nature Ernest Mattray was curious, fascinating, and repulsive. Short, slight, handsome, delicate, nervous, unscrupulous, selfish, effeminate, dishonest, and cruel, he was an excellent specimen of what city life could make of a boy with no father and an irresolute mother.
The reporter, who had many a time studied faces in the Tombs, felt almost as if at his old vocation again as he gazed into the restless eyes and sullen features of the prisoner.
Meanwhile Happy Rest was becoming excited. There had been some little fighting done since the settlement of the place, but as there had been no previous attempt at highway robbery and murder made in the vicinity, the prisoner was an object of considerable interest.
In fact, the major told so spirited a story, that most of the inhabitants strolled up, one after another, to look at the innovator, while that individual himself, with the modesty which seems inseparable from true greatness, retired to the most secluded of the three apartments into which the cave was divided, and declined all the attentions which were thrust upon him.
The afternoon had faded almost into evening, when a decrepit figure, in a black dress and bonnet, approached the cave, and gave Spidertracks a new element for the thrilling report he had composed and mentally rearranged during his few hours of duty as jailer.
"Beats the dickens," muttered the reporter to himself, "how these Sisters of Charity always know when a tough case has been caught. Natural enough in New York. But where did _she_ come from? Who told her? Cross, beads, and all. Hello! Oh, Louise Mattray, you're a deep one; but it's a pity your black robe isn't quite long enough to hide the very tasty dress you wore this morning? Queer dodge, too--wonder what it means? Wonder if she's caught sight of the major, and don't want to be recognized?"
"No one has a better right, Mrs. Mattray," said the guardian of the cave, with a triumphant smile, while the poor woman started and trembled. "Don't be frightened--no one is going to hurt you. Heard all about it, I suppose?--know who just missed being the victim?"