massy!" said Mrs. Stackridge.

"Do help me! do take off my clo'es! a poor lone widder!" faintly moaned
Mrs. Sprowl.

"When I got here," added the captain, "she had fainted, and they had
used her basket to pack things in, as you see, and filled this pail,
which they emptied afterwards, so as to bring water and fetch her to.
Scoundrels! I'm glad they ain't native-born southerners!"

"And where is Aunt Deb?" said Mrs. Stackridge, hastening to raise the
widow up.

"I dono'; I hain't seen her. O, dear, them villains!" groaned Mrs.
Sprowl. "I was just comin' over to borry a few things, you know."

"Going by; she wasn't coming here," said Lysander.

"Going by," repeated the widow. "O, shall I ever git over it! O, dear
me, I'm all cut to pieces! A poor forlorn widder, and my only son--O,
dear!"

"Her only son," cried Lysander in a loud voice, "couldn't get here in
time to prevent the outrage. That's what she wants to say. I leave her
in your care, Mrs. Stackridge. She was doing a neighborly thing for you
when she came in to stop the pillaging, and I'm sure you'll do as much
for her."

And the captain retired, his appetite for woman-whipping cloyed for the
present.

"Where is Aunt Deb?" repeated Mrs. Stackridge. "Aunt Deb!" she called,
"where are you? I want you this minute!"

"Here I is!" answered a voice from heaven, or at least from that
direction.

It was the voice of the old negress, who had hid herself in the
chambers, and now spoke through a stove-pipe hole from which she had
observed all that was passing from the time when the widow entered with
her empty basket.

XXXV.

_THE MOONLIGHT EXPEDITION._

Toby had been released. Mrs. Stackridge had been whipped by proxy, and
had kept her husband's secret. Gad, the spy, was still unaccountably
absent. These three sources of information were, therefore, for the
time, considered closed; and it was determined to have recourse to the
fourth, namely, Carl.

Here it should, perhaps, be explained that the confederate government,
informed of the position of armed resistance assumed by the little band
of patriots, had immediately telegraphed orders to recapture the
insurgents. Among the Union-loving mountaineers of East Tennessee the
mutterings of a threatened rebellion against the new despotism had long
been heard, and it was deemed expedient to suppress at once this
outbreak.

"Try the ringleaders by drum-head court-martial, and, if guilty, hang
them on