"I had to keep myself, sah, and to pay for de railroad, and to buy dem tree suits of clothes, and to make de nigger I lodged with a present to keep him mouth shut."
"Oh, I know you have had lots of expenses, Dan, and I am sure that you have not wasted your money; but I had not thought about it. I have only got ten dollars left, and we may have a hundred and fifty miles to travel before we are safe. Anyhow, you must get another disguise, and trust to luck for the rest. We have tramped a hundred and fifty miles before now without having anything beyond what we could pick up on the road. Here's the money. Get a rough suit of workingman's clothes, and join me here again in an hour's time. Let us find out the name of the street before we separate, for we may miss our way and not be able to meet again."
Passing up into the busy streets, Vincent presently stopped and purchased a paper of a newsboy who was running along shouting, "News from the war. Defeat of the rebels. Fight in a railway car near Nashville; a minister punishes a border ruffian."
"Confound those newspaper fellows!" Vincent muttered to himself as he walked away. "They pick up every scrap of news. I suppose a reporter got hold of some one who was in the car." Turning down a quiet street, he opened the paper and by the light of the lamp read a graphic and minute account of the struggle in the train.
"I won't go back to the hotel," he said to himself. "I shall be having reporters to interview me. I shall be expected to give them a history of my whole life; where I was born, and where I went to school, and whether I prefer beef to mutton, and whether I drink beer, and a thousand other things. No; the sooner I am away the better. As to the hotel, I have only had one meal, and they have got the bag with what clothes there are; that will pay them well." Accordingly when he rejoined Dan he told him that they would start at once.
"It is the best way, anyhow," he said. "To-morrow, no doubt, the fellow I had the row with will be watching the hotel to see which way I go off, but after once seeing me go to the hotel he will not guess that I shall be starting this evening. What have you got left, Dan?"
"I got two dollars, sah."
"That makes us quite rich men. We will stop at the first shop we come to and lay in a stock of bread and a pound or two of ham."
"And a bottle of rum, sah. Berry wet and cold sleeping out of doors now, sah. Want a little comfort anyhow."
"Very well, Dan; I think we can afford that."