hich saw everything.

Suddenly he lifted a long finger and pointed. "What's that?"

"That? That's a feed box, I suppose."

"What's in it?"

"I don't know. I----"

"You ought to know," said the officer sharply. He walked over to the
feed box and flung up the lid. With a sweeping gesture, he reached down
and scooped a handful of feed. "You ought to know what's in everything
when you have prisoners in your care," he added, scowling.

During the time of this incident, the girl had nearly swooned. Her hands
searched weakly over the boards for something to which to cling. With
the pallor of the dying she had watched the downward sweep of the
officer's arm, which after all had only brought forth a handful of feed.
The result was a stupefaction of her mind. She was astonished out of her
senses at this spectacle of three large men metamorphosed into a handful
of feed.

IV.

It is perhaps a singular thing that this absence of the three men from
the feed box at the time of the sharp lieutenant's investigation should
terrify the girl more than it should joy her. That for which she had
prayed had come to pass. Apparently the escape of these men in the face
of every improbability had been granted her, but her dominating emotion
was fright. The feed box was a mystic and terrible machine, like some
dark magician's trap. She felt it almost possible that she should see
the three weird men floating spectrally away through the air. She
glanced with swift apprehension behind her, and when the dazzle from the
lantern's light had left her eyes, saw only the dim hillside stretched
in solemn silence.

The interior of the barn possessed for her another fascination because
it was now uncanny. It contained that extraordinary feed box. When she
peeped again at the knothole, the calm, gray prisoner was seated upon
the feed box, thumping it with his dangling, careless heels as if it
were in nowise his conception of a remarkable feed-box. The sentry also
stood facing it. His carbine he held in the hollow of his arm. His legs
were spread apart, and he mused. From without came the low mumble of the
three other troopers. The sharp lieutenant had vanished.

The trembling yellow light of the lantern caused the figures of the men
to cast monstrous wavering shadows. There were spaces of gloom which
shrouded ordinary things in impressive garb. The roof presented an
inscrutable blackness, save where small rifts in the shingles glowed
phosp