ter of the ground occupied
by the house, so it was not a difficult thing to enclose a small
space with slight danger of its existence being detected. This chimney
chamber in the Heath house was little more than a closet eight feet by
four. It was entered from the north chamber, Abram's room, through a
narrow sliding panel that looked exactly like the rest of the wall,
which was of cedar boards. An inch-wide shaft running up the side
of the chimney ventilated the closet, and it was lighted by a window
consisting of three small panes of glass carefully concealed under the
projecting roof. In a sunny day one could see to read there easily.

A small cot-bed was now carried into this room, and up there, after
his wound had been dressed by Basha, who, like many old-time women,
was skilful in dressing wounds and learned in the properties of herbs
and roots, and he had been fed and bathed, the soldier was taken; and
a very grateful man he was as he settled himself upon the comfortable
bed and looked up with a smiling "thank you," into Basha's face, which
was no longer grim and forbidding.

All this time no special notice had been taken of Dorothy and Arthur.
They had followed about to watch the bathing, feeding and tending,
and when Mrs. Heath turned to leave the secret chamber, she found
them behind her, staring in with very wide-open eyes indeed; for, if
you can believe it, they never before had even heard of, much less
seen, this lovely little secret chamber. It was never deemed wise in
colonial families to talk about these hiding-places, which sometimes
served so good a purpose, and I doubt if many adults in the town of
Hartland knew of this secret chamber in the Heath house.

The panel was closed, and Abram was left to care for the wounded
soldier through the night. It was nine o'clock, the colonial hour for
going to bed, and long past the children's hour, and Dotty and Arthur
in their prayers by their mother's knee, put up a petition for the
safety of the stranger.

"_Would_ they hang him if they could get him, mamma?" asked Arty.

"Certainly," she replied. "It is one of the rules of warfare. A spy is
always hung."

In the morning, from nine to eleven, Mrs. Heath always devoted to the
children's lessons. Arthur, who was eleven, was a good Latin scholar.
He was reading _Caesar's Commentaries_, and he liked it--that is, he
liked the story part. He found some of it pretty tough reading, and
I need not tell you boys wh