terminus station with him and see his
young men; but my wife wanted to see things, and we jest went as fur
as the door, out of perliteness.'

'And when did you discover that you had been swindled?'

'Wal, M'riar wanted to ride in one of them coopy things with a
man-hoss behind and before; and when she got ready to get out, which
was purty soon, I give one of them fellers a two-dollar soovyneer
bill, but they made a great jabbering about it, and M'riar says, says
she, "I guess they ain't got the change;" so I fished out some
pennies, and a dime and two postage stamps, and after a bit they tuk
'em and waddled off. Then we got to lookin' up and down, and we didn't
have no more 'casion to use money--M'riar was so busy seein' the folks
and their clo's--till we got hungry, and then come the rumpus. When I
come to pay the bill, they was a reg'lar howl, an' we come mighty near
bein' marched off to the calaboose, same's you was. They said the bill
I offered 'em first off, an' all the rest, was counterfeit.'

Until now Brainerd had taken no part in the dialogue; but now, with a
quick glance in my direction, he asked;

'Will you describe the man who gave you the money--the supposed
agent?'

Camp pondered. 'Wal,' he began, 'he was tall, 's much as six foot, I
should say, an' his eyes were black an' big. His hair was consid'able
long, and he had a good deal of it on his face in a big bushy
moustache. He had a slim nose--and he wore a big di'mond on his little
finger.'

'Did you notice his hands?'

'M--no.'

'Wal, I did!' interposed his wife. 'I seen the di'mond, ef 'twas a
di'mond. His hands was white--real white, 'long side of his face, and
they looked like reg'lar claws; sech long fingers and pointed nails.'

'Ah!' Dave shot me a glance full of meaning. 'Now, Mrs. Camp, you seem
a very observing woman. Will you describe the other man--the gentleman
with the Sabbath-school class?'

The woman's head became even more erect, and her look more firm and
confident than before. 'Yes,' she said at once; 'I can.' She cast her
eyes about her, and, seeing a vacant chair near her interlocutor--the
one lately vacated by myself--she seated herself deliberately, and
began:

'He wasn't much to look at; about as big as you, mebbe, and about the
same complected as that gentleman,' pointing to the sergeant at the
desk, 'only his nose was longer, and sort of big and nobby at the end,
an' a leetle red. I remember he had bigger ears than