thirty minutes brought Bart to the log tenement of Howard, who was a
soldier in the continental service, now absent on duty, having left
his house and business in charge of his wife a woman no less noted, in
her neighborhood, for energy in conducting her domestic affairs, than
for the patriotic spirit with which she espoused the American cause.
She and her daughter, a rustic beauty of eighteen, of keen
perceptions, and even rare good sense, when her frolicsome disposition
would allow her to exercise it, were now the only permanent inmates of
this secluded cabin, which consisted of but two rooms, with a front
entrance leading through an entry into either of them, and another
door at the end of the house opening into the one usually occupied by
the family as both sitting-room and kitchen.

"A light in both rooms, by the pipers!" exclaimed Bart, as, after
having cautiously approached, he paused to reconnoitre the house. "The
fellow is there at his traps, as sure as a gun! Now what's to be done,
Bart? 'Twon't do to go in and show yourself, and have that torified
scamp carry away word that you are mousing round the country nights,
will it? No, but I'll tell you what, if it want for the name of
sneaking and evesdropping, we would creep round back of the room where
they be, and hark through the cracks; like enough get a peep, and so
learn something. But such things they expected of you, didn't they,
Bart? Must be so, I think. Then suppose we throw the name and blame of
it on the council, and try it, mister?"

Taking a wide sweep round the house, Bart soon approached that part of
it, on the back side, in which he rightly conjectured the young people
were sitting; and gliding up to the wall with steps as noiseless as
those of a mousing fox, he discovered a crevice between the logs, from
which the moss calking had fallen out so as to permit a small pencil