" said Ned, after a pause. "I have a little plan in my head,
but it won't work until evening. If that fails we still have a slim
chance left.

"The farmer from whom those chickens were stolen may stray down here in
search of the thief, and it is not impossible that Mose Hocker is
somewhere about here. This man certainly stole that gun from Hocker's
cabin, and if he took the boat at the same time--which I believe he
did--Hocker will surely try to recover his property, and will naturally
look for it along the creek."

Ned's reasoning--and especially his intimation of a plan to escape--put
the boys in a more cheerful mood. They were all thoroughly exhausted for
want of sleep, but that was of little consequence compared with the
pangs of hunger and thirst they were enduring. They had eaten nothing
since the previous evening, nor had a drop of water touched their lips.
And it was now past noon.

It was aggravating, nay, maddening, to know that their store of
provisions was so close. Well they realized the futility of appealing to
their merciless captor.

He had said they should have no food, and they knew he meant it. No
doubt he would deny them water also, and they did not venture to ask it.

They could see the fellow plainly. He was sprawled in a lazy attitude on
the sawdust, pulling at his foul black pipe. Occasionally he took a
flat, greenish bottle from his pocket and tasted the contents with a
satisfactory smack of the lips. The fumes of bad tobacco and whisky
began to permeate the closet.

So the long afternoon wore on. Moxley seemed quite unconcerned about his
prisoners. He was well content to lie on the soft sawdust with his
bottle and his pipe, secure from the pelting rain that was falling
outside.

Ned kept a close watch upon him, noting with satisfaction that he had
frequent recourse to the bottle. His potations would likely induce
sleep.

It seemed to the impatient boys that night would never come, but at last
the gray light faded from the crevice, and the dusk of evening deepened
the shadows in the old mill.

Before it was fairly dark Moxley lighted one of the lanterns that he
had brought from the canoes and put it on a log. It was a bullseye, and
he so trained it that the yellow glare shone on the sawdust heap.

Perhaps he fancied it an excellent substitute for sunlight, which all
tramps love so dearly. At all events he basked in it while he smoked a
couple of pipes, and then, after several ineffe