h desperate energy he continued
his serpent march; but it was only to butt his head against the stones of
the drain, where its size was reduced to less than half its proportions
near the cellar.

His farther advance was hopelessly checked; and there was nothing more to
be done but to wait patiently the result of the exciting event. He was
satisfied that his feet were not within eight or ten feet of the cellar;
for, being a progressive young man, he had entered the hole head first.
It was possible, but not probable, that he might escape detection, even
if the opening was examined; and, with what self-possession he could
muster for the occasion, he lay, like the slimy worms beneath him, till
ruin or safety should come.

"I reckon he isn't down here," said the sergeant, after the party had
examined the cellar, and even pulled over some of the boxes and barrels.

"God bless you for a stupid fellow as you are!" thought Somers; for he
was prudent enough not audibly to invoke benedictions, even upon the
heads of his enemies; but the words of the sergeant afforded him a degree
of relief, which no one, who has not burrowed in a drain in the rebel
country, can understand or appreciate.

"I reckon there's a place down in that corner that's big enough to hold a
man; fur my son Tom's been in there," added the farmer.

These words gave Somers another cold sweat; and perhaps he thought it was
a mistake that he had not put a bullet through the patriarch's head when
he had been tempted to do so in the room above. He was a double traitor;
but I think the conscience of our hero was more at rest as it was than it
would have been if he had shot down an unarmed man, even to save himself
from prospective capture.

"Where is the place?" demanded the sergeant.

"In yonder, under them barrels and boxes. Jest fotch the trumpery out,
and you'll see the hole," replied Rigney.

Somers heard the rumble of the barrels, as they were rolled out of the
way, with very much the same feelings that a conscious man in a trance
would listen to the rumbling of the wheels of the hearse which was
bearing him to the church-yard, only that he was to come forth from a
hopeless grave to the more gloomy light of a rebel dungeon.

"I can't see anything in that hole," said the sergeant. "No man could get
into such a place as that."

"Blessed are your eyes; for they see not!" thought Somers. "May your
blindness be equal to that of the scribes and Pharisees!"