gested Jeff. "He can lay down on the shucks,
and I will give him a blanket to keep himself warm."

"Will he be quite safe there?" asked the Emergency man. "No chance to
get out, is there? Or will we have to put a guard over him?"

"There aint no call for nobody to lose sleep guarding on him," was
Jeff's confident reply. "There aint no winder to the corncrib, and the
door fastens with a bar outside. Some of the chinking has fell out
atween the logs, but he can't crawl through the cracks less'n he can
flatten himself out like a flying squirrel. Furthermore, there's the
dogs that will be on to him if he gives a loud wink."

Rodney listened to every word of this conversation, and told himself
that his friend's chances for escape were very slim indeed.

"Take a keg and sit down over there," said Mr. Westall, pointing to the
farthest chimney corner and addressing himself to the prisoner, while
Nels and one of the other wood-cutters began making preparations for
supper. "Now, if you have no objections, Mr. Gray, we should like to
hear the rest of your story. You must be set in your ways, or else you
never would have come up here simply to carry out your idea of becoming
a partisan. You will find plenty of them in these parts. Indeed, you
will find more of them than anything else."

It did not take Rodney long to make Mr. Westall and his four companions
understand just how matters stood with him, for there was really little
to tell. He was careful not to let his auditors know that he had acted
as drill-sergeant, for Captain Hubbard's company of Rangers, for if he
touched upon that subject, Mr. Westall might ask him where he received
his military education; and if he answered that he got it at the
Barrington Academy, and Mr. Westall happened to know that his prisoner
had been a student at that very school, then what would happen? The fat
would all be in the fire at once, for the Emergency man would very
naturally want to know why the two boys had not given each other some
sign of recognition when they first met. That would never do; so Rodney
steered clear of these dangerous points, and Tom Percival sat in the
chimney corner with his elbows on his knees and listened to the story.
When it was finished and Mr. Westall and his companions had asked him a
few leading questions, Rodney ventured to inquire what an Emergency man
was.

"He is a partisan in the truest sense of the word," was Mr. Westall's
answer. "He is a soldier wh