the time, talking to Cousin Belle; the boys thought this
due to his lameness. Something had occurred, the boys didn't
understand just what; but the General was on an entirely new footing
with all of them, and their Cousin Belle was in some way concerned in
the change. She did not any longer run from the General, and it seemed
to them as though everyone acted as if he belonged to her. The boys
did not altogether like the state of affairs. That afternoon, however,
he and their Cousin Belle let the boys go out walking with them, and
he was just as hearty as he could be; he made them tell him all about
capturing the deserter, and about catching the hogs, and everything
they did. They told him all about their "Robbers' Cave," down in the
woods near where an old house had stood. It was between two ravines
near a spring they had found. They had fixed up the "cave" with boards
and old pieces of carpet "and everything," and they told him, as a
secret, how to get to it through the pines without leaving a trail. He
had to give the holy pledge of the "Brotherhood" before this could be
divulged to him; but he took it with a solemnity which made the boys
almost forgive the presence of their Cousin Belle. It was a little
awkward at first that she was present; but as the "Constitution"
provided only as to admitting men to the mystic knowledge, saying
nothing about women, this difficulty was, on the General's suggestion,
passed over, and the boys fully explained the location of the spot,
and how to get there by turning off abruptly from the path through the
big woods right at the pine thicket,--and all the rest of the way.

"'Tain't a 'sure-enough' cave," explained Willy; "but it's 'most as
good as one. The old rock fire-place is just like a cave."

"The gullies are so deep you can't get there except that one way,"
declared Frank.

"Even the Yankees couldn't find you there," asserted Willy.

"I don't believe anybody could, after that; but I trust they will
never have to try," laughed their Cousin Belle, with an anxious look
in her bright eyes at the mere thought.

That night they were at supper, about eight o'clock, when something
out-of-doors attracted the attention of the party around the table. It
was a noise,--a something indefinable, but the talk and mirth stopped
suddenly, and everybody listened.

There was a call, and the hurried steps of some one running, just
outside the door, and Lucy Ann burst into the room, her face as