same box? I don't
want to be caught, any more than you do."

"Who be yer?" asked the man, a little mollified by this conciliatory
remark.

"Never mind who I am now. The soldiers are in the house looking for us;
and, if you make a noise, they will hear you."

"What regiment do yer belong ter?" said the lower occupant of the chimney
in a whisper.

"Forty-first," replied Somers at a venture, willing to obtain the
advantage of the fellow's silence.

"Did yer run away?"

"No. Did you?"

"What yer in here fur, if yer didn't run away, then?" asked the deserter
from the rebel army, which it was now sufficiently evident was his
character.

"Keep still!" replied Somers, regretting that he had not given a
different answer.

"I know yer!" exclaimed the rebel, making a movement farther down the
chimney, thereby detaching sundry pieces of stone and mortar, which
thundered down upon the hearth below with a din louder, as it seemed to
Somers in his nervousness, than all the batteries of the Army of the
Potomac. "Yer come to ketch me in a trap. Scotch me if I don't blow yer
up so high 'twill take yer six months ter come down ag'in!"

"Keep still!" pleaded Somers, in despair at the unreasonableness of the
rebel. "The soldiers are after me; and, if they catch me, they will catch
you. 1 don't want to hurt you. If you will only keep still, I will help
you out of the scrape."

"You go to Babylon! Yer can't fool me! What yer doin' in the chimley?"

If Somers could quietly have put a bullet through the fellow's head, and
thus have punished him for the crime of desertion, he might have promoted
his own cause; but the bullet would not do its work without powder, and
powder was noisy; and therefore the remedy was as bad as the disorder, to
say nothing of assuming to himself the duty of a rebel provost-marshal.

"Yer can't fool me!" repeated the fellow, after Somers had tried for a
moment the effect of silence upon him.

It was unnecessary to fool such an idiot; for Nature had effectually done
the job without human intervention. It was useless to waste words upon
him; and Somers crept cautiously up out of his reach, and out of his
hearing, unless he yelled out his insane speeches. Every moment he
stopped to listen for sounds within the house; but he could hear none,
either because the pursuers had abandoned the search, or because the
double thickness of wood and stone shut out the noise.

The rebel deserter, for a wonder, kept