"Who are you?"

"A white man," came the reply, the words sounding thick and muffled
because of the squeezing which the speaker's throat had received.

Then like a flash came to me that which I should have suspected before!

It was my comrade for whom we had been searching that I was grappling
with, and, just as the old soldier knelt by my side knife in hand to put
an end to the struggle, I whispered, for the darkness was so intense that
I could not even see the face which was but a few inches from my own:

"Are you Jacob Sitz?"

"Ay; an' you?"

"It is the sergeant an' Noel, lad, an' right glad am I that we came to
know each other just as we did, else would your blood have been on our
hands."

Jacob apparently gave no heed to the close shave which had been his, so
great was the delight at knowing we were with him once more, and we three
sat with our heads close together in order that we might question and be
questioned without fear of betraying our whereabouts.

"Where have you been all this time?" I asked, and Jacob replied, softly:

"Hangin' around this camp. Twice have I come near bein' discovered, an'
of a verity I believed, when you clutched my throat, that this was the