A few months after his return from California, the tangled web of my yarn began to unravel. Mat Bailey had reported that nothing had been heard of the highwaymen "from that day to this." But John Keeler's work had not been done in vain. O'Leary of You Bet, the Nevada City jail-bird, had been duly impressed with the handsome reward offered for the apprehension of the murderers. So every time he met an old acquaintance he talked about the murder of Will Cummins. It was a simple method of procedure, and it did not prove immediately successful. As it was about as easy to be a vagabond in one locality as in another, he drifted from place to place--first to Sacramento, then to San Francisco, then over the Sierras to the mining camps of Nevada, then through Utah and Wyoming, till at last he found himself in jail in St. Louis. There, three years after the murder, he found his old pal J. C. P. Collins--but how changed! Could that coarse and bloated countenance belong to the fastidious and pleasure-loving Collins? "Well, Collins, I hardly knew you. How does the grub here compare with what we used to get at Carter's boarding-house?" O'Leary referred to the jail at Nevada City. "This must be your first week in St. Louis," replied Collins, "if you haven't put up at this hotel before. Been caught stealing again, I suppose?" "That's me. Only the matter of a lady's purse that was of no use to her." "Well, women are the cause of all my trouble. They drag a man down worse than drink. They are a bad lot, are women." "Why, you're a regular preacher, ain't you? You used to be a ladies' man." "That was in California." "How's the wild and woolly?" asked Collins, presently, looking his old pal over contemptuously. "Oh, I know I ain't stylish like you Eastern dudes. I'm a honest miner, I am. And I don't wear boiled shirts like you." "You're honest, all right. We'll leave that to Sheriff Carter. Remember how he caught you stealing that Chinaman's dust? I can see that Chinaman's sign now: 'Heekee & Co., Gold Dust Bought.' By the way, what's become of my old flame back there?" "Oh, a lady? I don't remember no ladies that was acquainted with gents like us." "I don't reckon you know the girl I mean. She wasn't in your class, that's a fact." "Maybe I can tell you if you'll just say her name." "Well, I'm inquiring after Miss Mamie Slocum, the sweetest little girl in Nevada City." "You're joking, sure. That girl never had any use for the likes of you. Mat Bailey would knock your head off if he heard you breathe her name." "Insult me as much as you like. 'No fighting' is the rules of this hotel. I asked you, how is that little girl? Sweet on Mat Bailey, is she? Well, I'm glad of it." "Yes; she and Mat have been good friends ever since Will Cummins was killed." "So? How's that?"