The merchant stared at first in astonishment and delight.  Then he ran to the lamp and spread out the sheets of fine, thin deerskin.  He looked at them, one by one, and laughed with delight.

“Yes,” he said, “the notes are in the handwriting of Francisco Alvarez!  I know it—­I have seen it often enough—­and Bernardo Galvez will know it, too!  Oh, it is a great find! a great find!  It is not conclusive proof, but it will go far toward swaying belief!  How did you get them?”

Henry had recovered from all signs of his struggle with the renegade, and was now sitting placidly in a chair.

“I took them,” he said.  “I found Braxton Wyatt in the grove around the house of Alvarez, and I seized him.  I found these in the lining of his waistcoat.”

“You did not kill him?”

“Oh, no.  He is not hurt.”

“It is well.  I did not wish any unnecessary violence, but we had a right to seize these documents which mean so much to us and Bernardo Galvez.  You will leave them with me.”

“Of course,” said Henry.  “And now that this task is finished, I’ll go back to prison with my comrades.”

“It’s unnecessary for you to join them there,” said the merchant still laughing in his pleasure.  “I’ll have them out to join you, and that speedily, too.  Go into the next room and sleep.  You’ve earned the right to it.”

The five, reduced to four, were sitting in their prison the next afternoon chafing more than ever.  It seemed to every one of them that those walls, already so narrow, were still contracting.  They did not even like to look out of the window.  The contrast was too painful, and they did not wish to increase their sorrow.

“Jim,” said Shif’less Sol in plaintive tones to Long Jim Hart, “won’t you please come here, an’ hold up my head?”

“Now, Sol Hyde,” said Long Jim, “what do you want me to come thar an’ hold up your head fur?  Are you too lazy to hold it up fur yourself?”

“No, Jim, I ain’t too lazy to hold it up fur myself, I’m jest too weak.  Lack o’ exercise an’ fresh air, an’ elbow room hev done fur poor Sol Hyde at last.  I’m pinin’ away.  Tell Henry when he comes back, ef he ever does, that I fell into a decline.  I done my best to b’ar up, but my best wuzn’t good enough.”

“Now you shut up, Sol Hyde,” said Jim Hart, “or you’ll hev me down real sick with your foolish talk, ez I jest can’t stand it.”

They stopped because at that moment there came unto them Lieutenant Diego Bernal, fresh, chipper, with a few additional flounces and ruffles added to his jaunty uniform, and a smile upon his dark, pleasant face.

“Ah, my gallant four, who were once my gallant five,” he said as he stroked his little mustache, “I have news for you, important news.  You are even to be summoned again to the presence of His Excellency, Bernardo Galvez, the Governor General of Louisiana, and that summons is immediate.  I have an impression, though my impressions are usually false and my memory always weak, that the large youth, the strong youth, the splendid youth, surnamed the Ware, who was released for the time at the intercession of Senor Pollock, has been achieving something.  This, I think, is the reason of the sudden call to the audience with His Excellency.”