MRS. VERNON. [Shaking.] Why, Lor’, Sam—­I’m glad—­I’ll bet Em’ly kissed him.

KATE and LIZBETH shake hands with SAM. Enter JIM—­EM’LY runs to him.

EM’LY.  Jim!

JIM puts his left arm around EM’LY and sits on anvil.

SAM. [Approaching and taking JIM’S hand, smiling.] You didn’t think I done it, did you, Jim?

JIM. [Nods at EM’LY.] No, not while she’s keepin’ house for me—­ha, ha!

EM’LY.  He’s always stood up for you, Sam.

JOE.  Well, tell us ’bout it, Sam.  Did the papers have it right?

They are a semi-circle about SAM.

SAM.  Yes, purty near.

JOE. Did you help the feller into your car?

SAM.  Yes, we were just pulling out of the depot when he came a-runnin’ up to my side door with an order from the superintendent for me to carry him as fur as Vinita.  He ran alongside and put his hand up, so of course I pulled him into the car.

EM’LY.  Wasn’t you scared, Sam?

SAM.  Why, no—­I thought he belonged to the company, and he went to work with me, sorting and fixing my express stuff.

JOE.  Well, I’m durned!

SAM. [Intensely serious.] I joked with him—­just like I’m joking with you—­he was one of the nicest fellows I ever saw.

JOE. [Wide-eyed with gossip.] Don’t that beat everything?

SAM.  When we were eighteen or twenty miles out, an’ I was stoopin’ this way over a box—­I felt him on my back, and grabbing at my arms—­why, why—­even then I thought he was jokin’, and I looked around laughin’, and here was his gun pokin’ right into my face.

MRS. VERNON. [Haunted.] Just think of it!

JOE.  Then he tied you.

SAM.  What could I do?  There was his gun—­and I wasn’t even on my feet—­anybody could tie a fellow that way—­I could tie you, couldn’t I? [To JIM.

JIM.  If you had the gun?

SAM.  Yes.

JIM.  Well, rather.

SAM. [Indignantly.] The ropes cut clean through here at my wrists, and there was a mark over one eye where I fell against the safe—­and then the company said I was an accomplice.

JOE.  Then I s’pose he jis’ deliberately packed his little valise full of green-backs and—­[Pantomimes.]—­got out!

SAM.  A hundred and twenty thousand—­

JOE.  Jump off?

SAM.  No—­got off at a water-tank.

JIM.  I s’pose you’d know him agin?

SAM.  Anywhere.

LIZBETH. [With nursery alarm.] He must a looked terrible.

SAM. [Commonplace.] Well, he didn’t—­nice a lookin’ feller as you want to see.  Black mustache—­kind a curly hair—­looked a little bit, you know, like a race-horse man.

EM’LY.  The company said Sam wrote the superintendent’s order himself.