r inwented!" he exclaimed,
speaking unusually thick in his heat and excitement. "I shouldn't be
wery much surprised if I vas a leetle out of the right vay. You shtay
right here till I look."

She sat down and waited. Intense darkness surrounded her; not a star was
visible; she could not see her own hand. For a little while Carl's
footsteps could be heard feeling for more familiar ground; and then,
occasionally, the crackling of a dry twig, as he trod upon it, showed
that he was not far off. Then he whistled; then he softly called,
"Hello!" in the woods; moving all the time farther and farther away.

Carl believed that Penn could not be far distant, and, in order to get
an answering signal, he kept whistling and calling louder and louder. At
length came a response--a low warning whistle. So he plodded on, and had
nearly reached the spot where he was confident Penn was searching for
him, when there came a rush of feet, and he was suddenly and violently
seized by invisible assailants.

"Got him?"

"Yes! all right!"

"Hang on to him! It's the Dutchman, ain't it? I thought I knew the
brogue!"

The last speaker was Lieutenant Silas Ropes; and Carl perceived that he
had fallen into the hands of a squad of confederate soldiers. That he
was vastly astonished and altogether disconcerted at first, we may well
suppose. But Carl was not a lad to remain long bereft of his wits when
they were so necessary to him.

"Ho! vot for you choke a fellow so?" he indignantly demanded. "I vas
treated petter as that ven I vas a prisoner."

"What do you mean, you d--d deserter?"

"Haven't I just got avay from Stackridge? and vasn't I running to find
you as vast as ever a vellow could? And now you call me a deserter!"
retorted Carl, aggrieved.

"Running to find _us_!"

"To be sure! Didn't I say, 'Is it you?' For they said you vas on the
mountain. Though I did not think I should find you so easy!" which was
indeed the truth.

Carl persisted so earnestly in regarding the affair from this point of
view, that his captors began to think it worth while to question him.

"Vun of them vellows just says to me, he says, 'Shpeak vun vord, or make
vun noise, and I vill plow your prains out!' I vasn't wery much in favor
to have my prains plowed out, so I complied mit his wery urgent request.
That's the vay they took me prisoner."

"Wal," remarked Silas, "what he says may be true, but I don't believe
nary word on't. Got his hands tied? Now loc