Sept. 22, 1860.]
THE UNCONSCIOUS BODY-GUARD.
359
(See p. 358.)
voluntary effort to leap out, but regarded it as the result of his having stumbled against me in changing his seat. This was too much. Unable longer to endure the tension of mind which had kept me on the rack so long, I began to wish that the dreaded struggle should come and end my torture, when, all at once, making a sharp turn, we shot into a large expanse of cleared land, studded over with houses, traversed by a great road alive with flying teams and the merry jingle of a thousand sleigh-bells, and soon joining this road dashed at full gallop into the square of Binghampton, and pulled up at the door of the hotel.
“Strayinger!” exclaimed my companion, addressing me, as he sprung out of the vehicle, “come along here;” and grasping me by the arm like a vice, as soon as I had alighted, he dragged me into the hotel, up to the first-floor, and into a bed-room which fronted on the square. Astonished as I was, the presence of others, who had seen us enter, divested me of fear, although I saw that he still held the bowie-knife in his hand. Shutting the door with his elbow, as he flew through it, pushing me before him, he cast off, more rapidly by far than I can relate it, his green blanket garment, then his coat, then an outer waistcoat, which last he flung on the table before me along with the bowie-knife saying, “Strayinger!—no words—oblige me by unripping that parcel as fast as you can;” pointing to a flat package of something, like a diminutive pillow, about eight inches by five, enclosed in a bandana silk handkerchief, which was neatly sown by a hundred small stitches to the inside of the waistcoat behind. As he said this, he stripped off another waistcoat, and proceeded with another smaller knife to separate from the two sides of it two similar but smaller parcels. The whole was the work of a few seconds. Then, throwing on his green blanket coat, without any of the under-garments, he snatched up the parcels, and flew out of the room. Lost in wonder, with the bowie-knife still in my hand, I turned to the window just in time to see my companion in the act of entering a door on the opposite side of the square, over which were inscribed the words, “Chenango County Bank,” just as the clock above the entrance was pointing to four o’clock. What could this mean! Had he gone to deposit the proceeds of former villanies? It seemed probable; but I, at all events, could now rejoice that none of my money should be added to his store. In a few minutes he returned, with a smoothened