t by declining to follow
the party. Near the outside door, as they passed out, he discovered
another door, which was ajar, and which led up-stairs. Without any waste
of valuable time, he slyly stepped through the doorway, and ascended the
stairs. The rebels were so busy in listening to the great stories of
Captain de Banyan, that they did not immediately discover the absence of
the unpretending young man.

When our resolute adventurer saw the stairs through the partially open
door, they suggested to him a method of operations. It is true, he did
not have time to elaborate the plan, and fully determine what he should
do when he went up-stairs; but the general idea, that he could drop out
of a window and escape in the rear of the house, struck him forcibly, and
he impulsively embraced the opportunity thus presented. The building was
an ordinary Virginia farm-house, rudely constructed, and very imperfectly
finished. On ascending the stairs, Somers reached a large, unfinished
apartment, which was used as a store-room. From it opened, at each end of
the house, a large chamber.

No place of concealment, which was apparently suitable for his purpose,
presented itself; and, without loss of time, he mounted a grain chest,
and ascended to the loft over one of the rooms; for the beams were not
floored in the middle of the building. The aspect of this place was not
at all hopeful; for there were none of those convenient "cubby holes,"
which most houses contain, wherein he could bestow his body with any hope
of escaping even a cursory search for him.

In the gable end, on one side of the chimney, which, our readers are
aware, is generally built on the outside of the structure, in Virginia,
was a small window, one-half of which, in the decay of the glass panes,
had been boarded up to exclude the wind and the rain. The job had
evidently been performed by a bungling hand, and had never been more than
half done. The wood was as rotten as punk; and without difficulty, and
without much noise, the fugitive succeeded in removing the board which
had covered the lower part of the window.

By this time the absence of the prisoner had been discovered, and the
rebels were in a state of high excitement on account of it; but Somers
was pleased to find they had not rightly conjectured the theory of his
escape. He could hear them swear, and hear them considering the direction
in which he had gone. Two of them stood under the window, to which Some