forgotten that terrible time, Polly, have you?"

"I reckons not," she muttered, stirring uneasily.

"Well, somehow I never could get myself to believe that my father was
really dead. I had one of the revenue men in my pay, and he used to
write me every week or so. It was through him I first heard the rumor
that the moonshiners were said to have a prisoner up at your father's
Still, who was kept constantly under guard, and made to work. They even
said he was a revenue man; and that it was a part of the moonshiners'
revenge to make him help manufacture the mountain dew, so as to pay up
for the quantities he had destroyed in his raids. You've heard more or
less about this, too, haven't you, Polly?"

"Sure I has, Bob Quail," replied the girl.

"Polly, somehow I just can't get it out of my head that this mysterious
prisoner of the mountains might be my own father; that he was badly
wounded, and not killed in that fight; that the moonshiners nursed him
back to health; and ever since he's been kept under guard. Do you know
if that is so? I ask you to tell me, because it would mean a great deal
to me, and to my poor mother at home in the North."

Polly shook her head in the negative.

"I jest can't say as to thet," she answered, soberly; "I done hears a
heap 'bout some man as they has kep' a long time up thar, adoin' of the
chores, an' never without a gun clost to his head; but I ain't never
seed him. I gives ye my word on thet, Bob Quail."

"But Polly, you _could_ see him if you tried real hard, couldn't you?"
the boy went on, in an anxious tone.

She looked at him. The eager expression on poor Bob's face would have
moved a heart of stone; and Polly was surely deeply touched.

"I reckons I cud," she answered, steadily; while in her black eyes stole
a glow that gave Thad a curious feeling; for he began to believe that
they had after all come upon an unexpected and valuable ally, right in
the household of the chief enemy.

"Think what it means to me, Polly," Bob suggested, knowing how best to
appeal to her sympathies. "Put yourself in my place, and tell me what
you would do if it was your own father who was held a prisoner, and you
had long believed him dead? Do you blame me for coming back to these
mountains to try and learn the truth; and if it should turn out to be
all I dream it may, of attempting in some way to bring about his
release. Would you blame me, Polly?"

"Sure I wudn't, Bob Quail," she replied.

"And