284
XXVI THE CRIMINAL'S COMPACT. 294
XXVII THE GLARE OF A MATCH. 303
XXVIII BLACK MADGE CAUGHT IN A TRAP. 311

A WOMAN AT BAY.

CHAPTER I.

THE KING OF THE YEGGMEN.

Four men were seated around a camp fire made of old railroad ties, over
which a kettle was boiling merrily, where it hung from an improvised
crane above the blaze.

Around, on the ground, were scattered a various assortment of tin cans,
some of which had been hammered more or less straight to serve for
plates, and it was evident from the general appearance of things around
the camp that a meal had just been disposed of, and that the four men
who had consumed it were now determined to make themselves as
comfortable as possible. The kettle that boiled over the fire contained
nothing but water--water with which one of the four men had jocularly
said he intended to bathe.

These four men were about as rough-looking specimens of humanity as can
be imagined. Not one of them had been shaved in so long a time that
their faces were covered with a hairy growth which suggested full
beards; indeed, their faces looked as if the only shaving they had ever
received, or rather the nearest approach to a shave, had been done by a
pair of scissors, cropping the hair as closely as possible.

The camp they had made was located just inside the edge of a wood
through which a railway had been built, and it was down in a hollow
beside a brook, so that the light of their fire was effectually screened
from view, save that the glow of it shone fitfully upon the drooping
leaves over their heads.

The four men were tramps--hoboes, or yeggmen, of the most pronounced
types, if their appearance went for anything at all.

Their conversation was couched entirely in the slang of their order; a
talk that is almost unintelligible to outsiders.

But, strangely enough, the four men were not hoboes at all; neither were
they yeggmen; and the lingo they talked so glibly among themselves,
although perfect in its enunciation, and in the words that were used,
was entirely assumed.

For those four men were Nick Carter, the New York detective, and his
three assistants, Chick, Patsy, and Ten-Ichi, a Japanese.

The president of the E. & S. W. R. R. Co. had sent for Nick Carter a
week before this particular evening, and as soon as he and the detective
were alone together in the president's private room, he had opened the
convers