“One fellow lifted his hat as we passed, and I thought——”
“Well, what did you think, Mr. Ardmore?” demanded Cooke impatiently.
“Well, it may seem strange, but I thought there was something about that chap that suggested Grissy. It would be like Grissy to lift his hat to a corpse under any circumstances. He has spent a whole lot of time in Paris, and besides, he never forgets his manners.”
“But suppose it was Griswold,” said Cooke, wishing to dispose of the suspicion, “what could he be doing out here? He hasn’t Appleweight—we know that; and he has just now missed his chance of ever getting him.”
They paused to allow Jerry to resume her horse, and one of the detectives joined in the conference to venture his opinion that the men they had passed were in uniform. “They looked like militia to me,” and as he was a careful man, Cooke took note of his remark, though he made no comment.
“Suppose they were in uniform,” said Jerry lightly; “they can do no harm, and as we are now in South Carolina, and they are not our troops, it would not be proper for us to molest them. Let us go on, for Mr. Appleweight’s widow is not anxious to miss her train back to the fatherland.”
“If they were a detail of the enemy’s militia, they would have held us up,” declared Cooke with finality.
But as they moved on toward Turner’s, Ardmore was still troubled over what had seemed to him the remarkable Parisian courtesy of the returning reveller who had lifted his hat as the corpse passed. Grissy, he kept saying over and over to himself, was no fool by any manner of means, and he was unable to conjecture why the associate professor of admiralty, known to be detached on special duty for the governor of South Carolina, should be riding to Kildare, unless he contemplated some coup of importance.
The stars paled under the growing light of the early summer dawn. Appleweight, with shoulders wearily drooping, contemplated the attending cortege with the gaze of one who sullenly accepts a condition he does not in the least understand.
A few early risers saw the strange company enter and proceed to the jail; but before half the community had breakfasted, Bill Appleweight, the outlaw, was securely locked in jail in Turner Court House, the seat of Mingo County, in the state of South Carolina, and the jailer, moreover, was sharing the distinguished captive’s thraldom.