For a whole hour Miss Leona sat weeping.
At last she started to her feet and dried her tears.
“Captain Antonio,” she said quietly, “we still can pray.”
“We can,” was the solemn reply.
Miss Leona’s prayer was earnest, pleading, pathetic.
“Yet not our will but Thine be done,” she concluded. And I think he or she is a true Christian who can pray these words from the inmost heart. Then at her request, some of the beautiful verses from that psalm of psalms, the twenty-third, were sung:—
“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green: He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
. . . . . .
Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill:
For Thou art with me; and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still.”
. . . . . .
The only one missing in the saloon was strangely enough the fat boy Johnnie Smart, and considerable anxiety was felt as to his fate. Surely he too could not have joined the mutineers.
But about half-past three o’clock on that eventful night, a single low knock was heard at the door of the saloon, and a moment after a piece of paper was passed in under it.