But not alone, when he took his second promenade lake-ward. The boy Billy was at his heels unseen but watchful, and well knowing how to act should danger threaten.
In the meantime, since the night of the attack upon Lossing, the brunette, Bob, Delbras, Smug—all had vanished utterly. Neither in Midway nor elsewhere, as Turks or gentlemen of leisure, were they seen by Dave, myself, or the boy Billy.
'But they're here all right!' Dave declared, 'and if we don't find a new gap in the fence somewhere soon, I don't know the gentry!'
During Lossing's confinement in the hospital, after he had begun to mend, I had brought Dave to see him, and after that he had several times looked in upon the invalid; sometimes at my request, and later for his own pleasure as well.
Dave's bluff ways had made for him a friend in our guard, and so one day, the day following that of Lossing's third lakeside promenade, I asked Dave, who had declared himself off duty for the night, to go and see him.
I had just received a letter from Boston which made me anxious to see Miss Jenrys; and as I had not called upon nor met her during the day, I decided to go to Washington Avenue that evening.
'Go early, Dave,' I said, when he had assured me of his readiness to go, 'and ask him to put in the evening with you. I don't like these lakeshore prowls. The fellow's a good one with his fists, but he don't seem to realize that it's treachery, a blow in the back, that he must guard against.'
Dave went his way, and it being rather early for my call, I sat down to re-read Mr. Trent's letter.
It was brief and evidently penned under excitement. He had received an anonymous letter from Chicago, proposing to open negotiations for the ransom of his son, who, it declared, was at that moment a prisoner in the hands of desperate men.