revolver in his
hand. My teeth began to do a little fox-trot all by themselves.

"Wait! Stop!" I shouted after him. "Don't go away!"

He stopped and asked me what was wrong. "I--I don't want to shoot a man!
I don't want to shoot _any_ man!" I tried to explain to him.

"You probably won't have to," was his cool response. "But it's better to
do that than have him shoot _you_, isn't it?"

Whereupon Mr. Red-Coat made straight for the hay-stacks, and I stood in
the doorway, with Dinky-Dunk's rifle in my hands and my knees shaking a
little.

I watched him as he beat about the hay-stacks. Then I got tired of
holding the heavy weapon and leaned it against the shack-wall. I watched
the red coat go in through the stable door, and felt vaguely dismayed at
the thought that its wearer was now quite out of sight.

Then my heart stopped beating. For out of a pile of straw which Olie had
dumped not a hundred feet away from the house, to line a pit for our
winter vegetables, a man suddenly erupted. He seemed to come up out of
the very earth, like a mushroom.

He was the most repulsive-looking man I ever had the pleasure of casting
eyes on. His clothes were ragged and torn and stained with mud. His face
was covered with stubble and his cheeks were hollow, and his skin was
just about the color of a new saddle.

I could see the whites of his eyes as he ran for the shack, looking over
his shoulder toward the stable door as he came. He had a revolver in his
hand. I noticed that, but it didn't seem to trouble me much. I suppose
I'd already been frightened as much as mortal flesh could be frightened.
In fact, I was thinking quite clearly what to do, and didn't hesitate
for a moment.

"Put that silly thing down," I told him, as he ran up to me with his
head lowered and that indescribably desperate look in his big frightened
eyes. "If you're not a fool I can get you hidden," I told him. It
reassured me to see that his knees were shaking much more than mine, as
he stood there in the center of the shack! I stooped over the trap-door
and lifted it up. "Get down there quick! He's searched that cellar and
won't go through it again. Stay there until I say he's gone!"

He slipped over to the trap-door and went slowly down the steps, with
his eyes narrowed and his revolver held up in front of him, as though he
still half expected to find some one there to confront him with a
blunderbuss. Then I promptly shut the trap-door. But there was no w