id to Nick:

"Monsieur Carter, some day that young woman will appear on your side of
the water. I hope you thought to take a good look at her face."

"I did," replied the detective.

"Remember it, for some day you will have cause to do so, I do not doubt.
She is a terror, and she has brains. The worst kind of a criminal. She
should have been a man, for she has a man's daring, a man's
recklessness, and a man's way of doing things. Black Madge, we call her
here."

Nick recalled all that conversation now, plunged into a reverie about it
by Handsome's use of the name. All the time he had been in the room with
her in that house in the swamp, he had felt that he ought to remember
where he had seen those eyes before. Now, he counted the years that had
passed since he saw her, and, to his astonishment, they were five.

"She was seventeen then, the chief told me," he thought, "that would
make her twenty-two by now."

And then it came back to him how strangely she had looked at him while
he was leaving her presence, and he wondered if her recollection for
faces was as good or even better than his own.

"But," he argued, "it could not be possible that she would remember me
from that one short glance she must have had of me at that time. And,
besides, I was not disguised at all, and now I look no more like myself
than--well, than she does."

"What the devil are you so silent about?" demanded Handsome. They had
reached the fence at the railroad track, and Handsome was leaning
against it.

"I was trying to figure out in my mind what sort of a lay we are on
to-night," replied Nick. "I'm not used to starting out without knowing
where I am going. I feel like a horse--with you for a driver."

"Well"--Handsome laughed--"I won't use the whip unless you get
skittish."

"What are we waiting here for?"

"We are waiting for our chauffeur with the automobile," grinned
Handsome. "Nice road for an auto, isn't it?--bumping over those ties."

"Hark!" said Nick.

"I'm harking, my gun."

"It does sound like an automobile, sure enough," said Nick.

"Didn't I tell you that we are waiting for one. Come on."

He leaped the fence, and Nick followed him over; then they climbed the
grade, and paused beside the track.

And then, while they stood there, and the droning sound peculiar to
automobiles came momentarily nearer and nearer, the detective began
thoroughly to realize for the fist time that something really serious
was afoot for