Suddenly there was a rush of feet and more men came up the stairs.  I got out of bed, wondering what would be best to do, when I heard Lola shriek and a shot in the passage.  So I felt I must go to her help and opened the door, and such a scene, Mamma!  There were seven of the most awful looking men you ever saw, the ones who, I told you, had come into the dance hall at Osages.  Among them Lola and Randolph in night clothes, were already lined up against the wall, with their hands above their heads.  While one brute stood at the end of the passage pointing his gun at them, one of the others was rifling their room, others had kicked down the girls’ door and one was at the end by Octavia’s.  None of the other people, miners of sorts, except one man’s wife, had come in yet, as it was not more than half past ten o’clock!  She was soon pulled out, too, and one brute seized me and roughly threw my hands up while he held a gun to my head.  I did feel very frightened, Mamma, but it was all so terribly exciting, it was quite worth while.  I wish I had had a revolver.  I would have used it in a minute.  As it was I just watched from under the brute’s arm.  Every door was broken down then, and as noiselessly as they could they ransacked each room.  If we had attempted to scream they would have shot us dead.  The girls were speechless with terror, only Octavia looked a contemptuous tragedy queen in her white nighty, and the miner’s wife had a face of petrified rage; she wasn’t a bit frightened, either.  Then up the stairs ran the secretary and the proprietor’s wife, a kind amusing old woman.  She had evidently seen this sort of hold up before (it is called a “hold up,” Mamma), for she called out:  “Don’t be afraid, ladies, dears, they won’t hurt you if you don’t yell”; and then she bolted down the stairs again like a rabbit to get help, while my brute turned his attention from me for a minute to fire after her.  She had got past the turn of the stairs, but he caught the secretary in the ankle, and he fell with a groan on the floor.

It was an unpleasant situation, wasn’t it, Mamma, six women in nightgowns with their hands above their heads, Randolph an object of misery with his pink silk pyjamas torn, and the secretary lying in a pool of blood, unconscious, by the stairs, while two wretches covered the whole party with their revolvers!

It seemed an eternity before the men had finished ransacking the rooms, swearing terribly at finding so little there; and then they came out and made for the door at the end, which had an outside staircase leading on to the mountain.  At last a noise of voices like distant thunder was heard getting nearer and nearer, and before they could kick that door down and escape, Nelson and Tom dashed up the stairs, their revolvers in their hands; and the last coherent thing I remember was seeing Nelson take instant aim and shoot the man who was holding the gun to my head as he had his finger on the trigger to shoot me; and if