"I don't know," he said, "'tisn't regular. How do we know that you aren't a spy?"
"You could bind my eyes with a napkin, and——"
"That's the thing!" cried several of Nipper's followers, who scented something to eat, and who knew that the commissariat was the weak point in the defences of the Castle of Windy Standard under the Consulship of Donnan.
"Well," said the chief, "that's according to rule. Here, Timothy Tracy, tell us if that is all right."
Whereupon uprose Timothy Tracy, a long lank boy with yellowish hair and dull lack-lustre eyes, out of a niche in the wall and unfolded a number of "The Wild Boys of New York." He rustled the flaccid, ill-conditioned leaves and found the place.
"'Then Bendigo Bill went to the gateway of the stockade to interview the emissary of the besiegers. With keen unerring eyes he examined his credentials, and finding them correct, he took from the breast of his fringed buckskin hunting-dress a handkerchief of fine Indian silk, and with it he swathed the eyes of the ambassador. Then taking the envoy by the hand he led him past the impregnable defences of the Comanche Cowboys into the presence of their haughty chief, who was seated with the fair Luluja beside him, holding her delicate hand, and inhaling the fragrance of a choice Havanna cigar through his noble aquiline nose.'
"That's all it says," said Timothy Tracy, succinctly, and straightway curled himself up again to resume his own story at the place where he had left it off.
"Well, that's all pretty straight and easy. Nobody can say fairer nor that," meditated Bob Hetherington.
"Shut up!" said his chief; "who asked for your oar? I'll knock the bloomin' nut off you if you don't watch out. Blindfold the emissary of the enemy, and bring her before me into the inner court."
And with this peremptory command, Nipper Donnan disappeared.