I'll go with you just to
larn you the march drill."

"Then I'll not budge a foot after the traps."

"You are crusty, Wat Adair; what's the matter with you?"

"Is Major Butler up yet?" asked the woodman thoughtfully.

"_Who_ do you say? _Major_ Butler."

"_Major!_" cried Adair, with affected surprise.

"Yes, you called him Major Butler?"

"I had some dream, I think, about him: or, didn't you call him so
yourself, Horse Shoe?"

"Most undoubtedly, I did not," replied Robinson seriously.

"Then I dreamt it, Horse Shoe: these dreams sometimes get into the head,
like things we have been told. But, Galbraith, tell me the plain
up-and-down truth, what brings you and Mr. Butler into these parts? What
are you after in Georgia? It does seem strange to find men that are
wanted below, straggling here in our woods at such a time as this."

"There are two sorts of men in this world, Wat," said the sergeant, with
a smile, "them that axes questions, and them that won't answer
questions. Now, which, do you think, I belong to? Why, to the last, you
tinker! Where are our horses, Wat? Tell me that. Who let them out of the
stable?"

"Perhaps they let themselves out," replied Adair, "they were not
haltered."

"You are either knave or fool, Wat. Come here. There are the tracks of
the beast that carried the man up this road, who sot loose all the
horses that were in that stable."

"Mike Lynch, perhaps," said Adair, with an assumed expression of
ignorance. "Where can that fellow have been so early? Oh, I remember, he
told me last night that he was going this morning to the blacksmith's.
He ought to be back by this time."

"And you are here to larn the news from him?" said the sergeant, eyeing
Adair with a suspicious scrutiny.

"You have just hit it, Horse Shoe," returned Wat, laughing. "I did want
to know if there were any more squads of troopers foraging about this
district: for these cursed fellows whip in upon a man and cut him up
blade and ear, without so much as thanks for their pillage, and so I
told Mike to inquire of the blacksmith, for he is more like to know than
anybody else, whether there was any more of these pestifarious
scrummagers abroad."

"And your traps, Wat?"

"That was only a lie, Galbraith--I confess it. I was afeard to make you
uneasy by telling you what I was after. But still it wasn't a broad,
stark, daylight lie neither; it was only a civil fib, for I was going
after my wolf trap before I got my