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The man suddenly left the knot-hole and returned to the others. Upon his face, dimly discerned, there was an indication that he had made an astonishing discovery. The others questioned him with their eyes, but he simply waved an arm to express his inability to speak at that spot. He led them back toward the hill, prowling carefully. At a safe distance from the barn he halted, and as they grouped eagerly about him, he exploded in an intense undertone: “Why, that–that’s Cap’n Sawyer they got in yonder.”

“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 wouldn’t.”

The girl did not seem to hear him. She was staring at the barn. Suddenly she turned and whispered, “Who is he?”

“He’s Cap’n Sawyer, m’m,” they told her sorrowfully.”He’s our own cap’n. He’s been in command of us yere since a long time. He’s got folks about yere. Raikon they cotch him while he was a-visiting.”

She was still for a time, and then, awed, she said: “Will they–will they hang him?”

“No, m’m. Oh no, m’m. Don’t raikon no such thing. No, m’m.”

The group became absorbed in a contemplation of the barn. For a time no one moved nor spoke. At last the girl was aroused by slight sounds, and turning, she perceived that the three men who had so recently escaped from the barn were now advancing toward it.

V

The girl, waiting in the darkness, expected to hear the sudden crash and uproar of a fight as soon as the three creeping men should reach the barn. She reflected in an agony upon the swift disaster that would befall any enterprise so desperate. She had an impulse to beg them to come away. The grass rustled in silken movements as she sped toward the barn.

When she arrived, however, she gazed about her bewildered. The men were gone. She searched with her eyes, trying to detect some moving thing, but she could see nothing.

Left alone again, she began to be afraid of the night. The great stretches of darkness could hide crawling dangers. From sheer desire to see a human, she was obliged to peep again at the knot-hole. The sentry had apparently wearied of talking. Instead, he was reflecting. The prisoner still sat on the feed-box, moodily staring at the floor. The girl felt in one way that she was looking at a ghastly group in wax. She started when the old horse put down an echoing hoof. She wished the men would speak; their silence re-enforced the strange aspect. They might have been two dead men.