It occurred to me on the instant that this was the real reason for my being summoned. These were days of universal suspicion, and the worthy sheriff had his doubts even of Daisy. "All right! Let me see the man," I said, and we entered the jail. When the soldier in charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at our presence. "Is your hanging-party ready?" he said, and yawned, stretching his arms as freely as the manacles would admit. I looked curiously at him--a long, slender, wiry figure, with thin, corded neck, and twisted muscles showing on so much of his hairy breast as the open buckskin shirt exposed. The face was pointed and bony, and brown as leather. For the moment I could not place him; then his identity dawned on me. I stepped forward, and said: "Is that you, Enoch Wade?" He looked up at me, and nodded recognition, with no show of emotion. "It might have been my ghost, cap'n," he said, "if you hadn't hurried right along. These friends of yours were bent on spoiling a good man to make bad meat. They wouldn't listen to any kind of reason. Can I have a palaver with you, all by yourself?" "What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff. I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying "talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon the sheriff and the soldier left us. "It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that." "Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could. "Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?" I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more his conduct mystified me. "Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all about it." The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its essential points were these: