ay that you prove to me her death I will double your fee!"

"Agreed, my colonel, agreed! I have no objection to your doubling, or
even quadrupling, my fee. You shall find me in that, as in all other
matters, perfectly amenable to reason. Only I must have time. Haste
would ruin us. I repeat that I have a plan by which I am certain to get
the girl into my possession--a plan the execution of which I will
entrust to no other hands but my own. But I conclude as I began--I must
have time."

"And how much time?" exclaimed Le Noir, again losing his patience.

"Easy, my patron. That I cannot tell you. It is imprudent to make
promises, especially to you, who will take nothing into consideration
when they cannot be kept," replied Black Donald, coolly.

"But, sir, do you not know that I am ordered to Mexico, and must leave
within three days? I would see the end of this before I go," angrily
exclaimed Le Noir.

"Softly, softly, my child the colonel! 'Slow and sure!' 'Fair and easy
goes far in a day!'"

"In a word, will you do this business for me and do it promptly?"

"Surely, surely, my patron! But I insist upon time."

"But I go to Mexico in three days."

"All honor go with you, my colonel. Who would keep his friend from the
path of glory?"

"Perdition, sir, you trifle with me."

"Perdition, certainly, colonel; there I perfectly agree with you. But
the rest of your sentence is wrong; I don't trifle with you."

"What in the fiend's name do you mean?"

"Nothing in the name of any absent friend of ours. I mean simply that
you may go to--Mexico!"

"And--my business--"

"--Can be done just as well, perhaps better, without you. Recollect, if
you please, my colonel, that when you were absent with Harrison in the
West your great business was done here without you! And done better for
that very reason! No one even suspected your agency in that matter. The
person most benefited by the death of Eugene Le Noir was far enough
from the scene of his murder."

"Hush! Perdition seize you! Why do you speak of things so long past?"
exclaimed Le Noir, growing white to his very lips.

"To jog your worship's memory and suggest that your honor is the last
man who ought to complain of this delay, since it will be very well for
you to be in a distant land serving your country at the time that your
brother's heiress, whose property you illegally hold, is got out of
your way."

"There is something in that," mused Le Noir.

"There is