ft
felt hat were the insignia of the down-river, back-country planter, and
the merchant drew his conclusions accordingly.

"My, my! Rachel," he remarked to his helpmate behind the counter. "See
dis chay from de backvoods across der street coming! Maype ve could sell
him some odder t'ings to go vit dot coat, ain'd it? Come right in,
_mein_ frient; dis is der blace you vas looking for," this last to the
drifter, with a detaining finger hooked persuasively into a buttonhole
of the long-tailed coat.

So much for the grappling. But the possible customer was not to be
landed so easily. Twice and yet once again he broke away from the
detaining finger; and when at last he finally allowed himself to be
drawn into the garish, ill-smelling little shop, he proved to be
discouragingly indifferent and hard to please in the matter of prices,
hanging back and taking refuge in countrified reticence when Mr.
Sonneschein's eloquence grew pathetically pressing.

"I did think maybe I'd buy me a suit of clothes," he admitted, finally,
drawling the words to make his speech fit the countrified role, "but
there isn't any hurry. I reckon I'll wait a spell and look around and
see what kind of fashions they're wearing now."

This was a tacit acknowledgment that he had money to spend, and the
eager merchant redoubled his efforts. His perseverance was rewarded, at
length, and when the ship of bargain and sale was bowling merrily along
before a fair breeze of suggestion, Mr. Sonneschein interlarded his
solicitations with an account of the recent miscarriage of justice in
front of the near-at-hand saloon.

The customer listened with apparent incuriosity, as one whom these
doings in the city world touched but remotely; but the two or three
questions he asked were nicely calculated to bring out the more
important facts. The detectives had cautiously kept their own counsel as
to the details of their quest. Mr. Sonneschein had gossiped with the
policeman on the beat, and the policeman had talked with the red-faced
man who had come alone in the cab, and had taken an unofficial drink
with the roundsman before going down to the steamboat landing. He and
his "partner" were from New Orleans, and they were after a man who was
wanted for big money: that was all he would tell the roundsman.

"I suppose they've caught him again long before this," said the hesitant
customer, trying on a coat which might have been modelled upon a man
twice his size, and surve