Sam echoed the chuckle, and Baillie said: "I hope your patient will suffer no harm from all this!" "O, not a bit. He's in the game, and he'll enjoy it, especially after they are gone, and he suddenly recovers from his extreme illness." "But why was it necessary to take him there at all?" "Why, under the circumstances, it would never have done for me to be seen driving away from there with a companion when I had been seen driving out there alone. As it is, your presence in the sleigh is satisfactorily accounted for to everybody who sees us. But how about your discarded uniform? Won't they find that?" "No. Sam reduced it to ashes early this morning, and then aired the room to get rid of the smell of burning wool." "That was excellent. Who thought of doing it?" "Sam." XXVI _MADEMOISELLE ROLAND_ During all those months of waiting, Agatha Ronald had remained in New York, under the advice of Marshall Pollard's friend, who was accustomed to put his counsel into the form of something like a command whenever that seemed to him necessary. She was urged to remain in the city, too, by all her friends who were near Baillie Pegram's prison hospital. "Stay where you are," was the burden of all their letters. "You can do no good here, and you may do much harm if you attempt to come, while you will very surely be needed where you are, if we succeed, as we hope, in effecting Captain Pegram's escape. We shall do all that is possible to accomplish that, but when we do he will still be a very ill man,--for if he is to escape at all, it must be before he sufficiently recovers to be sent to a prison. You will be needed then to care for him somewhere, for, of course, he must not remain in this quarter of the country. Be patient and trust us--and Sam. For that boy is a wonder of devotion and ingenuity. He has just left us to return to the hospital before morning. He makes the journey on foot by night, three times a week, walking twenty odd miles each trip, in all sorts of weather. When we remonstrated with him to-night--for a fearful storm is raging--and told him he should have waited for better weather, he indignantly replied: 'Den Mis' Agatha would have had to wait a whole day beyond her time fer news. No sirree. Sam's a-gwine to come on de 'pinted nights, ef it rains pitchforks an' de win' blows de ha'r offen he haid.'" So Agatha busied herself with such concerns as were hers. She laboured hard to improve the service of her "underground railroad," and sent medicines and surgical appliances through the lines with a frequency that surprised the authorities at Richmond. She corresponded in a disguised way with her friends in and near Washington, offering all she could of helpful suggestion to them and through them to Sam. It was by her command that Sam told his master, while in the hospital, just where and how she was to be found if he should escape, and how perfectly equipped she was to come to his assistance in such a case.