elpless ones, there they lay, their troubles ended,
mine begun!

Did I appeal to the law--I? Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the
King drink for him? Oh, no, no, no--I wanted no impertinent interference
of the law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt that was owing
to me! Let the laws leave the matter in my hands, and have no fears: I
would find the debtor and collect the debt. How accomplish this, do you
say? How accomplish it, and feel so sure about it, when I had neither
seen the robbers' faces, nor heard their natural voices, nor had any
idea who they might be? Nevertheless, I WAS sure--quite sure, quite
confident. I had a clue--a clue which you would not have valued--a clue
which would not have greatly helped even a detective, since he would
lack the secret of how to apply it. I shall come to that, presently--you
shall see. Let us go on, now, taking things in their due order. There
was one circumstance which gave me a slant in a definite direction
to begin with: Those two robbers were manifestly soldiers in tramp
disguise; and not new to military service, but old in it--regulars,
perhaps; they did not acquire their soldierly attitude, gestures,
carriage, in a day, nor a month, nor yet in a year. So I thought,
but said nothing. And one of them had said, 'the captain's voice,
by G--!'--the one whose life I would have. Two miles away, several
regiments were in camp, and two companies of U.S. cavalry. When I
learned that Captain Blakely, of Company C had passed our way, that
night, with an escort, I said nothing, but in that company I resolved to
seek my man. In conversation I studiously and persistently described the
robbers as tramps, camp followers; and among this class the people made
useless search, none suspecting the soldiers but me.

Working patiently, by night, in my desolated home, I made a disguise for
myself out of various odds and ends of clothing; in the nearest village
I bought a pair of blue goggles. By-and-bye, when the military camp
broke up, and Company C was ordered a hundred miles north, to Napoleon,
I secreted my small hoard of money in my belt, and took my departure in
the night. When Company C arrived in Napoleon, I was already there. Yes,
I was there, with a new trade--fortune-teller. Not to seem partial, I
made friends and told fortunes among all the companies garrisoned there;
but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions. I made myself
limitlessly obliging to these parti