"Cap'n Sawyer!" incredulously whispered the other men.

But the girl had something to ask. "How did you get out of that feed-
box?" He smiled. "Well, when you put us in there, we was just in a
minute when we allowed it wasn't a mighty safe place, and we allowed
we'd get out. And we did. We skedaddled 'round and 'round until it
'peared like we was going to get cotched, and then we flung ourselves
down in the cow-stalls where it's low-like--just dirt floor--and then we
just naturally went a-whooping under the barn floor when the Yanks come.
And we didn't know Cap'n Sawyer by his voice nohow. We heard 'im
discoursing, and we allowed it was a mighty pert man, but we didn't know
that it was him. No, m'm."

These three men, so recently from a situation of peril, seemed suddenly
to have dropped all thought of it. They stood with sad faces looking at
the barn. They seemed to be making no plans at all to reach a place of
more complete safety. They were halted and stupefied by some unknown
calamity.

"How do you raikon they cotch him, Sim?" one whispered mournfully.

"I don't know," replied another in the same tone.

Another with a low snarl expressed in two words his opinion of the
methods of Fate: "Oh, hell!"

The three men started then as if simultaneously stung, and gazed at the
young girl who stood silently near them. The man who had sworn began to
make agitated apology: "Pardon, miss! 'Pon my soul, I clean forgot you
was by. 'Deed, and I wouldn't swear like that if I had knowed. 'Deed, I