“Whenever he started to put his hands down we made him put them up again.  Once he said: 

“‘Don’t you fellows be so rough.  I was tenderly reared.’

“Then we told him and Denis to keep their hands up for fifteen minutes after we were gone—­this was to give us time to get back to Virginia and be settled when they came along.  As we were going away Mark called: 

“‘Say, you forgot something.’

“‘What is it?’

“Why, the carpet-bag.’

“He was cool all the time.  Senator Bill Stewart, in his Autobiography, tells a great story of how scared Mark was, and how he ran; but Stewart was three thousand miles from Virginia by that time, and later got mad at Mark because he made a joke about him in ‘Roughing It’.

“Denis wanted to take his hands down pretty soon after we were gone, but Mark said: 

“’No, Denis, I’m used to obeying orders when they are given in that convincing way; we’ll just keep our hands up another fifteen minutes or so for good measure.’

“We were waiting in a big saloon on C Street when Mark and Denis came along.  We knew they would come in, and we expected Mark would be excited; but he was as unruffled as a mountain lake.  He told us they had been robbed, and asked me if I had any money.  I gave him a hundred dollars of his own money, and he ordered refreshments for everybody.  Then we adjourned to the Enterprise office, where he offered a reward, and Dan de Quille wrote up the story and telegraphed it to the other newspapers.  Then somebody suggested that Mark would have to give another lecture now, and that the robbery would make a great subject.  He entered right into the thing, and next day we engaged Piper’s Opera House, and people were offering five dollars apiece for front seats.  It would have been the biggest thing that ever came to Virginia if it had come off.  But we made a mistake, then, by taking Sandy Baldwin into the joke.  We took in Joe here, too, and gave him the watch and money to keep, which made it hard for Joe afterward.  But it was Sandy Baldwin that ruined us.  He had Mark out to dinner the night before the show was to come off, and after he got well warmed up with champagne he thought it would be a smart thing to let Mark into what was really going on.

“Mark didn’t see it our way.  He was mad clear through.”

At this point Joseph Goodman took up the story.  He said: 

“Those devils put Sam’s money, watch, keys, pencils, and all his things into my hands.  I felt particularly mean at being made accessory to the crime, especially as Sam was my guest, and I had grave doubts as to how he would take it when he found out the robbery was not genuine.

“I felt terribly guilty when he said: 

“’Joe, those d—­n thieves took my keys, and I can’t get into my trunk.  Do you suppose you could get me a key that would fit my trunk?’