“Steve Hoyle, m’am. He’s fixin’ to have a big gang er niggers and low white trash here in the mornin’ ter hoot and yell and make fun of him all the way to the train, an’ I thought I’d tell ye.”
“Thank you,” she answered warmly, her big brown eyes beginning to flash fire.
“Ye know ef I’d step out, that suit o’ clothes might be foun’ missin’. It ain’t mine. I’ll swear to that. I don’t know anybody that owns it, er wants it.”
“I understand. Wrap it up, please. I can’t touch it.”
Stella shuddered and watched the jailor with wide-staring eyes as he picked up the suit, wrapped it in a piece of brown paper and laid it back on the chair.
“I got to go—there’s somebody knockin’ at the door—course, I won’t know what’s become er the d—— thing.”
He left her with a grin, and Stella seized the bundle, hurried home and burned it. On the way she stopped at a hardware store and made a mysterious purchase which she carefully concealed, and there was a dangerous light in her eyes as she placed this package beside the travelling dress which she had laid out to wear on the train with John.
The jailor passed Stella in the hall but looked the other way as he hurried forward with two soldiers who had called to see John Graham. They were dressed in the regulation blue suits of the army. The jailor, trusting implicitly their uniforms, allowed them to go up unaccompanied to John’s door.
So complete was the disguise that at first the condemned man gazed through the bars with indifference at his callers.
The taller of the two suddenly thrust his face close and whispered: