"That there fur coat! I'll be blowed! He got down here, sir; and he had the devil to help him--leastwise, reckoning from all I have seen this night, I conclude that Satan was in the concern. He climbed down that crack in the rock, sir, and caught on by the bushes on the way, and scrambled along that slantwise bit, and then he got hold of the tree. He warn't killed or maimed or he'd be here." "Then we've lost him." "Mr. Bantam Cock will perhaps be sending despatches for to apprehend him at the different steam-car depôts, for to get my forty dollars." "Say we make it fifty?" "Well, sir; I would say, 'thank you.'" "And that would be all you would say, mind you, or I'll have you turned off at the hotel." "Then I won't even say that, sir. There ain't anything comes easier to me than shuttin' up, I reckon." After this colloquy, which passed quickly, Durgan was turning upwards when he heard a horse ascending the road. In a few minutes he had met his two negro laborers coming to their work, and, behind them, the doctor from Hilyard, riding, as he usually did, with saddle-bags, his old buff clothes much bespattered. "The yellow nigger is dead, Mr. Durgan. He died last night with the change of the weather. You told me to keep him alive till you came, but you didn't come. He was a very curious fellow--not half bad; and his last freak was to ask me to come and tell you to look sharp after the visitor he sent you. So, as you're not much out of my way to-day, I've come at once." He got off his horse, and the two men talked together. The doctor, whose ordinary round comprised anything within a radius of thirty miles, had not been in Hilyard when the rich traveler from New Orleans arrived and started again. His wealth and imperious airs had impressed the little town, but beyond the fact that he had gained a private interview with the dying prisoner, nothing was known about him. "And the odd thing is," said the doctor, "that 'Dolphus sent the jailer with every cent he had in the world--about fifteen dollars--to bribe the driver. As to his health, he was decidedly better, and when this Mr. Courthope turned up he seems to have acted like a well man, and made him believe he was well. When I got home there was a report about that the stranger was a wonder-worker, and had cured him. But when I went to him the fever was up. After his last flash in the pan he burnt out in a few hours." Durgan supposed there might be something of greater importance to justify the doctor's ride. "Perhaps," he said, "he asked you to bring a message to Mr. Alden or Miss Smith?"