“That’s where I was taken with the dizzy spell,” said Katherine. “I must have dropped it without knowing it when I caught ahold of the fence to steady myself.”
“But where did you go right after that?” asked the old man curiously. “You disappeared as suddenly as if the earth had swallowed you. I put up my umbrella for a few minutes to shield my face from the rain and when I looked out from behind it you were nowhere in sight.”
“That was where I went into the dark doorway of a church, and sat down to wait for the dizzy spell to wear off,” replied Katherine. “I must have fallen asleep, for the first thing I knew a clock was striking a quarter to eleven. When I discovered the bag was gone I ran around like mad looking for it, and the first thing I knew I was lost, and the lights were out, and there I was down in those awful factory yards. I saw you coming out of that saloon and thought you were the man who had watched me take out some bills out of an inner pocket earlier this evening, and hid behind a fence until you had gone by.”
“But fate evidently intended that our paths should cross again,” resumed the old man, with the faint flicker of a smile on his pensive countenance, “for it was not long before you were just ahead of me again. The lights came on then, and I saw you plainly.”
“And I saw you, and started to run,” finished Katherine, joining in Sherry’s burst of laughter.
Just then Hercules straightened up from the ground and came around the front of the car.
“Kin we have yo’ pocket flasher, Mist’ Sherry?” he asked.
Then his glance fell upon the stranger standing beside the car. His eyes started from their sockets; his jaw dropped, and for a moment he stood as if petrified. Then he gave a great gasp, and with a piercing cry of “Marse Tad!” he sank upon his knees at the old man’s feet.
CHAPTER XX
THE END OF A PERFECT DAY
“Daggers and dirks!” exclaimed Sherry, weakly sitting down on the car step when it was finally borne in upon him that Katherine’s highwayman was none other than Sylvia’s father, Hercules’ “Marse Tad,” the man for whom he and Hercules had been futilely fine-combing the earth for the last twenty-four hours.