effectually interrupted, and he thrust
the boots, as he supposed, into a hole, driving them with some little
force through a tangled net work of small roots. What he really did
do, however, was to drive them through a net work of small roots,
between two great ones, into the outer air, at the very spot from
which he had taken them. When he quitted his hold of them, leaving
them, as he supposed, buried in the centre of a great drift pile, they
lay in fact by Sam's coat and hat, right where they had lain when Sam
went to sleep.

Sam had silently observed him as he entered the drift pile, and
running quickly to the entrance he seized a stick of timber and drew
it toward him with all his force. Sam Hardwicke had an excellent habit
of remembering not only things that were certainly useful to know, but
things also which might be useful. When Jake entered the drift pile,
Sam remembered that during his own stay there a year before, he had
carefully examined the great log which formed the archway of the
entrance, and that it was kept in its place only by this single stick
of timber acting as a wedge. Pulling this out, therefore, he let the
farther end of the great tree trunk fall, and completely blocked the
passage way.

CHAPTER III.

REVENGE OF A DIFFERENT SORT.

No matter where one begins to tell a story there is always something
back of the beginning that must be told for the sake of making the
matter clear. Whatever you tell, something else must have happened
before it and something else before that and something else before
that, so that there is really no end to the beginnings that might be
made. The only way I can think of by which a whole story could be told
would be to begin back at Adam and Eve and work on down to the present
time; and even then the story would not be finished and nobody but a
prophet ever could finish it.

The only way to tell a story then is to plunge into it somewhere as I
did two chapters back, follow it until we get hold of it, and then go
back and explain how it came about before going on with it. I must
tell you just now who these boys were, where they were and how they
came to be there. All this must be told sometime and whenever it is
told somebody or something must wait somewhere, and I really think
Jake Elliott may as well wait there in the drift-pile as not. He
deserves nothing better.

During the summer of the year 1813, while the United States and great
Britain were at w