She did not reply.
"My dear Miss Waring, you need have no fear on Colonel Merrick's account. The law has taken this matter out of your hands. Colonel Merrick is protected by the law."
"Oh! I did not understand," meekly.
To be brief, she told me the whole story. When she reached the spring she had found the old man bleeding and still breathing. He died in her arms. The men, who had gone back into the laurel to open the valise, came back upon her. The negro was a desperate character, well known in the county. He had died two years later. The other man was masked and thoroughly disguised. He had stopped the negro when he would have killed her, and after a few minutes' consultation had whispered to him the terms upon which she was allowed to escape.
"You did not hear the white man's voice?"
"Not once."
"Bring me the letters you have received from him."
She brought two miserably spelled and written scrawls on soiled bits of paper. It was the writing of an educated man, poorly disguised. He threatened to meet her speedily, warned her that he had spies constantly about her.
"That is all the evidence you can give me?"
"All." She rose to go. I held the door open for her, when she hesitated.