"They are spies!"

By this time the whole house was in an uproar. Most of the children were
in tears (being frightened out of their wits at the mention of terrible
spies), and the servants were running to and fro wringing their hands
helplessly, without understanding exactly what had happened. Jason tore to
the broken door, broke off some more glass with the end of the riding whip
he held in his hand, and was quickly past this bristling barrier and out
on the back porch. Mr. Peyton was behind him.

At the end of the garden, nearly a hundred yards away, was an
old-fashioned hedge of box, which had reached, in the course of many
years, a height of twelve feet or more. A little distance beyond this box
was a wood of pine-trees. As Jason reached the porch he could see the two
Northerners fairly squeeze their way through the hedge, and disappear on
the other side. He leaped from the porch, and started to run down the
garden. But his enemy, the gout, gave him a warning twinge, and he was
quickly outdistanced by Mr. Peyton, who sped onward, with several negroes
at his heels.

The party continued down the garden until they reached the hedge; then
they ran to the right for a short distance, scurried through an arched
opening in the green box, and thus reached the outskirts of the pine
woods. Next they began to search through the trees. But not a sight of the
fugitives could they obtain. After they had tramped over the whole woods,
which covered about forty acres, they emerged into open fields. Not a
trace of the runaways! They went back and made a fresh search among the
pines; they sent negroes in every direction; yet the result was the same.
When Mr. Peyton returned, very hot and disgusted, to his usually quiet
study he found Charles Jason lying on the sofa in an agony of gout.
Several of the children were near him.

"Oh, papa, I hope you did _not_ catch them," cried one of the latter. She
was the little girl who had pulled Waggie from George's pocket.

Mr. Peyton laughed, in spite of himself.

"Have you fallen in love with the boy who sang, Laura?" he asked, with a
twinkle in his eye.

"No," said Miss Laura, indignantly, "but Mr. Jason says they were
spies--and spies are always hung--and I wouldn't like to see that nice dog
hung."

The father burst into a peal of merriment.

"Don't worry," he said; "I reckon the dog would be pardoned--on the ground
that he was led astray by others older than himself. Anyway, the ras