"I think there will be no more trouble," said Inspector Goings, "though I can claim small share in the honor of the victory."
During the ride to Daring's Diamond, where the prisoners were to be left for safe keeping, the wonderful surprises of the recent developments of affairs were talked over and discussed.
The following facts were then learned by those who had not dreamed of them before, though I cannot do better than to let Mr. Lewis tell them in his own words:
"You wonder, my son, more than the others, perhaps, my reason for being in this disguise. To explain it I must go back to the days when I lived in Boone Lick, and you were nothing more than a prattling babe.
"There I incurred the lifelong enmity of a numerous family by the name of Raggles, Nicholas Raggles being at the head of the crowd. In a hand-to-hand fight with three of them one day I was nearly killed, and it was years before I fully recovered from the effects of that blow.
"As soon as I was able I removed to Six Roads to live, my old home. You may judge of my surprise, when I found myself soon afterward followed by one of my enemies. But he came under another name, and, throwing off the ways of his father, he aspired to move among the better class of people.
"I hoped he had forgotten, or overlooked, his ill feeling toward me, and I think I should not have been troubled by him had not the rest of his relatives come after him, to settle nearby, but under names not their own. I felt all this boded me ill, so I put myself on my guard.
"I need not tell you now that the first of those to follow me was he you have known as Jason Warfield. The others were the Burrnocks, of Blazed Acre.
"But I had no open trouble with them, no doubt partly because they considered me an imbecile, until you began to carry the mail of the Kanawha. At almost that very time they planned their systematic scheme of robbery, aided and abetted by Trencher Raggles, known to you as Jason Warfield.
"Then it was that I conceived the idea of assuming the disguise of the hermit, in order to watch over you and to lay some trap whereby I might bring my enemies to justice. Later I joined them under another disguise to learn their secrets, but they proved too wily for a long time.