It was after seven o'clock, and darkness had completely fallen, when Barbara received Guilford Duncan's telegraphic appeal for help "in earnest." She wasted no time--slow operator that she was on the telegraph--in sending messages of sympathy and reassurance. She laboriously spelled out the words: "I'll do my best," and closed the instrument in order that she might attend to more pressing things than telegraphic chatting. She summoned Bob to serve as her protector, and promptly sallied forth into the night. The great groceries, known as "boat stores," were accustomed to be open very late at night, and often all night, for the accommodation of the stewards of steamboats landing at the levee. At seven or eight in the evening they were sure to be open, with business in unabated activity. But the clerks were full of curiosity when Barbara, escorted only by the negro serving boy, presented herself and began rattling off orders greater in volume than any they had ever received, even from the steward of an overcrowded passenger steamer. She began by ordering forty sugar cured hams and four hindquarters of beef. She followed up these purchases with orders for four kegs of molasses, six boxes of macaroni, a barrel of rice, and so on through her list. Still more to the astonishment of the clerks, she gave scarcely a moment to the pricing of the several articles, and seemed to treat her purchases as matters of ordinary detail. They began to understand, however, when she ordered the goods sent that night by express, to that station on the Illinois Central Railroad which lay nearest the scene of Guilford Duncan's operations, and directed that the bill be sent to him at the X National Bank for payment. Barbara made short work of her buying. When it was done she hurried home and packed a small trunk with some simple belongings of her own. At seven o'clock the next morning, accompanied by the negro boy Robert, she took the train and before noon found herself at the little station to which she had ordered the freight sent. She was disappointed to find that although she had ordered the goods sent by express, they had not come by the train on which she had traveled. The railroad was run by telegraphic orders in those days, and so, even at this small station, there was an instrument and an operator. Making use of these, Barbara inquired concerning the freight, and was assured of its arrival by a train due at four o'clock. She spent the intervening time in securing two wagons with four stout horses to each, and when the freight came it was loaded upon these with particular care, so that no accidents might occur to delay the journey. If the roads had been even tolerably good, one of the wagons might have carried the load, perhaps, but the roads were execrably bad and Barbara was not minded to take any risks.