"How did he get away without money?" he asked. "He had money. I stuck a twenty-dollar bill into his coat pocket." Before leaving town, we visited our gunmaker, with the intention of ordering some cartridges. By the merest chance, he spoke of Johnson. "A Britisher was in here yesterday: somethin' o' the cut o' you boys." "In a grey suit with a brown sombrero?" "Sure enough." "Did he buy cartridges?" "He bought a six-shooter and a few cartridges." "Oh!" said Ajax. We found ourselves walking towards a secluded lot at the back of the Old Mission Church. Ajax asked me for an opinion which I was too dazed to express. "We've done a silly thing, and perhaps a wicked thing," said my brother. "If that poor devil is lying dead in the brush-hills, I shall never forgive myself. We've given a starving man too heavy a meal." "Bosh!" said I, believing every word he uttered--the echo, indeed, of my own thoughts. "I feel in my bones we are going to see Johnson again." Twenty-four hours later we heard of him. The Santa Barbara stage had been held up by one man. It happened, however, that a remarkably bold and fearless driver was on the box. The stage had been stopped upon the top of a hill, but not exactly on the crest of it. The driver testified that the would-be robber had leaped out of a clump of manzanita, just as the heavy, lumbering coach was beginning to roll down the steep hill in front of it. To pull up at such a moment was difficult. The driver saw his chance and took it. He lashed the leaders and charged straight at the highwayman, who jumped aside to avoid being run over, and then, being a-foot, abandoned his enterprise. He was wearing a mask fashioned out of a gunny-sack, new overalls, and _brown_ shoes! That same night, at Los Olivos, a man wearing brown shoes was arrested by a deputy sheriff because he refused to give a proper account of himself; but, on being searched, a letter to the cashier of the San Lorenzo bank, signed (so ran the paragraph) by a well-known and responsible Englishman, was found in the pocket of his coat. Whereupon he was allowed to go his ways, with many apologies from the over-zealous official. "Johnson!" said Ajax. "Did he hold up the stage?" I asked. "Of course he did" replied my brother contemptuously.