Sholto's lasso was soon in working order. The trap-door once raised, the head of the unsuspecting savage flew up like a Jack in a box, and with such a rubber-like bound that Sholto's lasso went wide of the mark. In this dilemma, a scientific blow from the fist of a Harvard athlete deftly floored him, and, in the consequent lapse of consciousness, he was easily bound, and safely deposited in the bottom of the Hilton express wagon. This accomplished, Sholto and the Harvard man summarily took the road for Las Cruces, some four miles distant. The horse and his driver being in absolute accord as to the ratio of miles proper to the hour, the captors drove leisurely along; the Harvard man meantime relieving the slow monotony of the way, with incident and anecdote, and Sholto, in turn, imparting much interesting New-Mexican information. Presently a faint stir, as of the quiet, persistent nibbling of a mouse in the wall, might (but for the talking) have been heard from the bottom of the wagon. "Poor beggar!" said the Harvard man, at last recalling to mind the captive Apache; "he must, by this time, be about ready to come to." And taking from his over-coat pocket a tiny flask of brandy, he turned on his seat with the humane intention of aiding nature in bringing about that restoration. "Gone! clean gone! by George!" exclaimed the astonished athlete. The cunning savage had, with his sharp, strong teeth, actually gnawed through his wrist cords, and, with tooth and nail extricating himself from the knotted clothes-line, was already on his return from the unsatisfactory husks of Mesilla Valley, to the fatted veal of the U. S. government, in his father's house,--"The Reservation." "_They are fleet steeds that follow!_" quoted the Harvard man as the jubilant Apache, with flying heels, loomed tantalizingly on the distant plain. The startled cotton-tail, swept by "the wind of his going," scurried breathlessly to his desert fastnesses among the sage-brush and mesquite. With a humorous glance at his fast-vanishing form, the Harvard man measured with his eye the intervening distance, the speed of the escaped captive, and the pace of the propeller of the Hilton express, and gracefully accepted the situation. Sholto lazily turned the horse's head, and in process of time the discomfited captors of Miss Paulina's Apache--like John Gilpin-- "Where they did get up Did get down again." Meantime, Miss Hemmenshaw brought up the mid-day meal. "Auntie," said the invalid, "this feverish cold puts queer fancies in my head. While you were away, I must have taken a little nap, and when I awoke there seemed to be some sort of a rumpus going on below; after which I fancied that a team started away from the back door. It could not have been Sholto's; for he would be coming from Brown's about that hour with our dinner."