"I've found what I've been looking for--an axe! I'll soon have you out
now!"

He came running back, carrying an axe of curious make. It was a large,
keen one, however, and later it developed that it was one the French
miller had used to chop his firewood. Throwing off his coat, and
revealing beneath it a dark blue shirt, the officer began fiercely
to chop at the beams.

And the boys remembered afterward, though at the time they were too
excited to mark it, that the officer picked out what might be called
the "key" beam. That is one which held all the other pieces of jigged
and splintered timber in place, making a prison of that part of the
cellar.

With vigorous blows of the keen implement, the unknown chopped away at
a great hand-hewn beam. And he swung the axe as though he knew how to
use it, and not as a tyro.

"He's been in a lumber camp at one time of his life," decided Jimmy,
and the others were inclined to agree with him.

The fire was now gaining so rapidly that the heat of it, penetrating
to the prison of the boys, was almost unbearable. The smoke, too, made
their eyes smart and burn, and it choked them, causing them to gasp
and cough.

"Steady, boys! Steady!" panted the officer, between his vigorous
blows. "A few more strokes and I'll have this beam cut. Then I think
you can get out."