"Then whut's all these yere dirty dishes doing on the table?"

"Hed sum Yankee officers yere; they just rode on down ther trail as you
uns cum up."

"Like hell!" ejaculated the fellow with complete loss of temper. "See
here, old woman, we 're too old birds to be caught with any such chaff.
We'll take a look around the old shebang anyhow, and while we're at it
you put something on the table for me and my mates to eat."

The voice and manner were rough, but I was impressed with a certain
accent creeping into the man's speech bespeaking education. More, in
spite of an apparent effort to make it so, his dialect was not that of
those mountains.

Even as he uttered these last words, throwing into them a threat more
in the tone than the language, I became aware of a thin ray of light
penetrating the seemingly solid wall just in front of me, and bending
silently forward could dimly distinguish the elliptical head of Bungay
as he applied one eye to a small opening he had industriously made
between the logs. Grasping Mrs. Brennan firmly by the hand so that we
should not become separated, I crept across the intervening blackness,
and reached his side.

"Holy smoke, Cap," the little man muttered in suppressed excitement, as
he realized my presence, "it's a goin' ter be b'ilin' hot in thar
mighty soon. Mariar's steam is a risin'."

He silently made room for me, and bending down so as to bring my eye