ad till I call
you: I want a little private talk with the captain."

The captain's attendants likewise took the hint, reined their horses up
out of the water, rode over the shaking bridge and Penn's head under it,
and proceeded to search the next house for him, while Sprowl was
conversing with Augustus.

"Let's go over the other side," said Bythewood, "where we can be in the
shade. The sun is powerful hot."

They accordingly walked over Penn's head a moment later, climbed down
the same rocks he had descended, picked their way along the dry stones
to the bridge, and took their seats in its shadow beneath him, and so
near that he could easily have reached over and taken the captain's cap
from his head!

XX.

_UNDER THE BRIDGE._

"The colonel wasn't aware of your sentiments," said Sprowl, "or he
wouldn't have let him off for fifty substitutes."

"Or if you and Ropes," retorted Bythewood, "had only put through the job
with the celerity I had a right to expect of you, he would have been
strung up before the colonel had a chance to interfere." And he puffed
impatiently a cloud of smoke, whose fragrance was wafted to the nostrils
of the listener under the planks.

"Well," said Lysander, accepting a cigar from his friend, "if he gets
out of the state,"--biting off the end of it,--"and never shows himself
here again,"--rubbing a match on the stones,--"you ought to be
satisfied. If he stays, or comes back,"--smoking,--"then we'll just
finish the little job we begun."

Penn lay still as death. What his thoughts were I will not attempt to
say; but it must have given him a curious sensation to hear the question
of his life or death thus coolly discussed by his would-be assassins
over their cigars.

"Where are you bound?" asked Lysander.

"O, a little pleasure excursion," said Bythewood. "There's to be some
lively work at home this evening, and I thought I'd better be away."

"What's going on?"

"The colonel is going to make some arrests. About fifteen or twenty
Union-shriekers will find themselves snapped up before they think of it.
Stackridge among the first. 'Twas he, confound him! that helped the
schoolmaster off."

"Has the colonel orders to make the arrests?"

"No, but he takes the responsibility. It's a military necessity, and the
government will bear him out in it. Every man that has been known to
drill in the Union Club, and has refused to deliver up his arms, must be
secured. There's no other wa