"Not to save yourself, or your master?"
"I know very well that nothing that I can say will have the least effect upon my fate, or upon Nick Carter's," he replied.
"Very good," she replied slowly; and then to Handsome: "Take him away, Handsome. Take him out there to the men. Tell them who he is, and that they may do as they please with him. I think the quicksand bog would be as good a place as any for him; or the fire tree; but they may do as they please—so long as they kill him. Take him away."
Chick, realizing that it was all up with him, and that he might as well make a fight for it, leaped forward quickly, full at the woman, intending to seize upon her, and hold her as a shield; but even as he attempted to do so, the floor beneath him sank under him for the depth of two feet, and before he could recover his balance, Madge had thrown a table cover over his head, and in another moment Handsome had thrown him to the floor, and called the others to his assistance.
And so Chick was tightly bound and borne away a captive—to what fate he could only imagine.
"You need not bring the Jap here at all," Madge called after them. "Let my hoboes take him with them, along with this one; but do you bring the man Pat to me at once."
And five minutes later Handsome reappeared with Patsy in tow, only that Patsy was not a prisoner—as yet.
"Now, my man," said Madge coldly, "you will have to give a pretty straight account of yourself. You were found in bad company."
"Sure, ma'am, don't I know the same? I've been apologizing to meself ever since I discovered it, an' if Handsome here had only left me alone, faith, I'd have settled wan part of me misgivings then and there, so I would. I had me doubts about the bunch from the beginning, ma'am, when they came a-sneakin' up to me fire, and eatin' of me grub; and when that other gazabo dropped from the trees, sure, I was certain of it. I was after kapin' me eyes peeled all the time since then, your worship, but I thought it wasn't f'r the likes of me to be after makin' suggestions to y'r majesty, at all, at all."
"Who are you, and what are you, Pat?" she asked, smiling upon him.