'There—in the crowd where you stood?'
'Wal, no. He took us to one side a little—right in behind the place where the little man was a-sellin' canes—sort of up ag'inst a partition, and there we made the dicker.'
'And he left you right away?' queried the officer in charge.
'Yes—jest about as quick as he could.'
'And the other,' I asked, 'the man who took you to this agent—the man with the large Sabbath-school class?'
'Oh! he asked us to go to the terminus station with him and see his young men; but my wife wanted to see things, and we jest went as fur as the door, out of perliteness.'
'And when did you discover that you had been swindled?'
'Wal, M'riar wanted to ride in one of them coopy things with a man-hoss behind and before; and when she got ready to get out, which was purty soon, I give one of them fellers a two-dollar soovyneer bill, but they made a great jabbering about it, and M'riar says, says she, "I guess they ain't got the change;" so I fished out some pennies, and a dime and two postage stamps, and after a bit they tuk 'em and waddled off. Then we got to lookin' up and down, and we didn't have no more 'casion to use money—M'riar was so busy seein' the folks and their clo's—till we got hungry, and then come the rumpus. When I come to pay the bill, they was a reg'lar howl, an' we come mighty near bein' marched off to the calaboose, same's you was. They said the bill I offered 'em first off, an' all the rest, was counterfeit.'
Until now Brainerd had taken no part in the dialogue; but now, with a quick glance in my direction, he asked;
'Will you describe the man who gave you the money—the supposed agent?'