the stairs, closing the door after him. Carl, who thought
of the schoolmaster in the hands of the mob, felt his heart swell and
burn with anxiety at each moment's delay. Jim did not keep him long
waiting.

"This way, Carl, if you want some of the right sort," said the negro
from the stairs.

Carl went down in the darkness, Jim taking his hand to guide him. They
entered a cellar, crowded with casks and boxes, where there was a dim
lamp burning; but no human being was visible, until suddenly out of a
low, dark passage, between some barrels, a stooping figure emerged,
giving Carl a momentary start of alarm.

"What's the trouble, Carl?"

"O! Mishter Stackridge! is it you?" said Carl, as the figure stood erect
in the dim light,--sallow, bony, grim, attired in coarse clothes. "The
schoolmaster--that is the trouble!" and he hastily related what he had
seen.

"Wouldn't take the pistol? the fool!" muttered the farmer. "But I'll see
what I can do for him." He grasped the boy's collar, and said in a
suppressed but terribly earnest voice, "Swear never to breathe a word of
what I'm going to show you!"

"I shwear!" said Carl.

"Come!"

Stackridge took him by the wrist, and drew him after him into the
passage. It was utterly dark, and Carl had to stoop in order to avoid
hitting his head. As they approached the end of it, he could distinguish
the sound of voices,--one louder than the rest giving the word of
command.

"_Order--arms!_"

The farmer knocked on the head of a cask, which rolled aside, and opened
the way into a cellar beyond, under an old storehouse, which was
likewise a part of Barber Jim's property.

The second cellar was much larger and better lighted than the first, and
rendered picturesque by heavy festoons of cobwebs hanging from the dark
beams above. The rays of the lamps flashed upon gun-barrels, and cast
against the damp and mouldy walls gigantic shadows of groups of men.
Some were conversing, others were practising the soldiers' drill.

"Neighbors!" said Stackridge, in a voice which commanded instant
attention, and drew around him and Carl an eager group. "It's just as I
told you,--Ropes and his gang are lynching Hapgood!"

"It's the fellow's own fault," said a stern, dark man, the same who had
been drilling the men. "He should have taken care of himself."

"Young Hapgood's a decent sort of cuss," said another whom Carl knew,--a
farmer named Withers,--"and I like him. I believe he means well; but