pistols so promiscuously. They might go off by
accident.'

"They told him to hand over his watch and money; but when he started to
take his hands down they made him put them up again. Then he asked how
they expected him to give them his valuables with his hands up in the
sky. He said his treasures didn't lie in heaven. He told them not to
take his watch, which was the one Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters had
given him as Governor of the Third House, but we took it all the same.

"Whenever he started to put his hands down we made him put them up
again. Once he said:

"'Don't you fellows be so rough. I was tenderly reared.'

"Then we told him and Denis to keep their hands up for fifteen minutes
after we were gone--this was to give us time to get back to Virginia and
be settled when they came along. As we were going away Mark called:

"'Say, you forgot something.'

"'What is it?'

"Why, the carpet-bag.'

"He was cool all the time. Senator Bill Stewart, in his Autobiography,
tells a great story of how scared Mark was, and how he ran; but Stewart
was three thousand miles from Virginia by that time, and later got mad
at Mark because he made a joke about him in 'Roughing It'.

"Denis wanted to take his hands down pretty soon after we were gone, but
Mark said:

"'No, Denis, I'm used to obeying orders when they are given in that
convincing way; we'll just keep our hands up another fifteen minutes or
so for good measure.'

"We were waiting in a big saloon on C Street when Mark and Denis
came along. We knew they would come in, and we expected Mark would be
excited; but he was as unruffled as a mountain lake. He told us they
had been robbed, and asked me if I had any money. I gave him a hundred
dollars of his own money, and he ordered refreshments for everybody.
Then we adjourned to the Enterprise office, where he offered a reward,
and Dan de Quille wrote up the story and telegraphed it to the other
newspapers. Then somebody suggested that Mark would have to give another
lecture now, and that the robbery would make a great subject. He entered
right into the thing, and next day we engaged Piper's Opera House, and
people were offering five dollars apiece for front seats. It would have
been the biggest thing that ever came to Virginia if it had come off.
But we made a mistake, then, by taking Sandy Baldwin into the joke. We
took in Joe here, too, and gave him the watch and money to keep, which
made it hard for Joe aft