ars' Cap'm!" the trap was sprung.

In deference to the up-coming passengers from the _Belle Julie_, the two
man-catchers tried to do their job quietly. But Griswold would not have
it so, and he was up and had twisted himself free when a blow from a
clubbed pistol drove him back to his knees. Half stunned by the
clubbing, he still made shift to spring afoot again, to drop his
handkerchief bundle and kick it aside, and to close with his assailants
while the negro was snatching up the treasure and darting away among the
freight pyramids. After that he had but one thought; to keep the two
plain-clothes men busy until the negro had made his escape. Even this
proved to be a forlorn hope, since the smaller of the two instantly
broke away to give chase, while the other stepped back, spun his weapon
in air, and levelled it.

Rage-blinded as he was, Griswold knew that the levelled pistol meant
surrender or death. In the fine battle-frenzy of the moment he was on
the verge of accepting the alternative. Life and the love of it were
merged in a fierce desire to rush Berserk-mad upon the weapon and the
man behind it, and his muscles were hardening for the spring when he
chanced to look past the levelled weapon to the _Belle Julie_; to the
saloon-deck guard where a solitary, gray-coated figure stood clinging to
a stanchion and looking on with what agonies of soul none might know.
Like a flash of revealing light it came to him that the death which
would be the lesser of two evils for him would brim a life-long cup of
trembling for the woman whose duty it had been to betray him, and he
thrust out his wrists for the manacles.

Quite naturally, the upflash of self-abnegation gave birth to renewed
hope; and when his captor had handcuffed him and was walking him toward
a closed carriage drawn up before the nearest saloon in the
river-fronting street, he ventured to ask what he was wanted for.

"You'll find that out soon enough," was the curt reply, and nothing more
was said until the carriage was reached and the door had been jerked
open. "Get in!" commanded the majesty of the law, and when the door was
slammed upon the captive, the plain-clothes man turned to the driver, a
little wizened Irishman with a face like a shrivelled winter apple.
"What time does that New Orleans fast train pull out?"

Griswold heard the reply: "Sivin-forty-five, sorr," and something in the
thin, piping voice gave him fresh courage. Through the open window of