“They have found out that you are disguised as a boy,” she explained, “and when they set out to find us again, they’ll probably look for a lady and a boy. So, by wearing girl’s clothes again, you’ll have a better chance to escape their clutches.” I was getting to be a pretty big girl by that time, and so I had been ashamed of wearing boy’s clothes for some time past. But when I put on my gowns again, they made me still more ashamed, because they were so short. So, as soon as we got to a place where we could stop for a few days, Mrs. Dennison sent for two dressmakers to fashion some new gowns for me, and I really looked quite like another person when I put them on. That must have been about four years ago. According to what I was afterward told, I was then thirteen years old. I know now that I was fifteen. But I’ll tell you all about that further on. All this while, Mrs. Dennison was receiving money from my father at regular intervals, and there was plenty of it. But it never came directly from my father. It came from a bank, with a very formal note saying that the money was sent “by order of Mr. Jackson Byrd,” and asking Mrs. Dennison to sign and return a receipt for it. My father sent us no letters and no messages. This troubled me very much when I got to thinking about it. And that made me very unhappy, for I loved my father dearly, and I remembered how happy I had been with him. But after thinking more about it, I saw that he hadn’t forgotten his little girl and hadn’t quit caring about her, because if he had, the money wouldn’t have come so regularly. Still, that troubled me more than ever, because it must mean that my father was in some kind of difficulty, that he could not send any letters to us. I learned afterward that this was so, but Mrs. Dennison would never tell me anything about it. We were moving about a good deal at this time, generally starting suddenly—sometimes so suddenly as to leave many of our things behind. But I always carried the little satchel that contained the papers my father had given me. At last, one day when we left the train at Chicago and entered a carriage to drive to a little hotel that we were to live at, a man came to the carriage door and handed Mrs. Dennison a paper. He said something which I did not understand, and Mrs. Dennison kissed me and got out of the carriage. The man got in, and ordered the carriage to drive away with us, leaving Mrs. Dennison standing there on the sidewalk. I was terribly scared, and wanted to jump out. I tried to open the doors, but the man had placed his hands on the two latches, so that I couldn’t move them. I felt like shrieking, but I decided that it was best to control myself, keep my wits about me, and be ready to deal with the situation wisely, as soon as I should find out what it really was. So, summoning all my self-control, I entered into conversation with the man who sat on the front seat opposite me.