No, I must work up to it by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in shops wide apart, and getting a little finer article with each change, until I should finally reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project.

So I started.
But the scheme fell through like scat! The first corner I turned, I came plump upon one of our slaves, snooping around with a watchman.
I coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right into my marrow.

I judge he thought he had heard that cough before.
I turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter, pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye.

Those people had stopped, and were talking together and looking in at the door.

I made up my mind to get out the back way, if there was a back way, and I asked the shopwoman if I could step out there and look for the escaped slave, who was believed to be in hiding back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in disguise, and my pard was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him he needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of the back alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out.
She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated murderers, and she started on the errand at once.