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massy!" said Mrs. Stackridge. "Do help me! do take off my clo'es! a poor lone widder!" faintly moaned Mrs. Sprowl. "When I got here," added the captain, "she had fainted, and they had used her basket to pack things in, as you see, and filled this pail, which they emptied afterwards, so as to bring water and fetch her to. Scoundrels! I'm glad they ain't native-born southerners!" "And where is Aunt Deb?" said Mrs. Stackridge, hastening to raise the widow up. "I dono'; I hain't seen her. O, dear, them villains!" groaned Mrs. Sprowl. "I was just comin' over to borry a few things, you know." "Going by; she wasn't coming here," said Lysander. "Going by," repeated the widow. "O, shall I ever git over it! O, dear me, I'm all cut to pieces! A poor forlorn widder, and my only son--O, dear!" "Her only son," cried Lysander in a loud voice, "couldn't get here in time to prevent the outrage. That's what she wants to say. I leave her in your care, Mrs. Stackridge. She was doing a neighborly thing for you when she came in to stop the pillaging, and I'm sure you'll do as much for her." And the captain retired, his appetite for woman-whipping cloyed for the present. "Where is Aunt Deb?" repeated Mrs. Stackridge. "Aunt Deb!" she called, "where are you? I want you this minute!" "Here I is!" answered a voice from heaven, or at least from that direction. It was the voice of the old negress, who had hid herself in the chambers, and now spoke through a stove-pipe hole from which she had observed all that was passing from the time when the widow entered with her empty basket. XXXV. _THE MOONLIGHT EXPEDITION._ Toby had been released. Mrs. Stackridge had been whipped by proxy, and had kept her husband's secret. Gad, the spy, was still unaccountably absent. These three sources of information were, therefore, for the time, considered closed; and it was determined to have recourse to the fourth, namely, Carl. Here it should, perhaps, be explained that the confederate government, informed of the position of armed resistance assumed by the little band of patriots, had immediately telegraphed orders to recapture the insurgents. Among the Union-loving mountaineers of East Tennessee the mutterings of a threatened rebellion against the new despotism had long been heard, and it was deemed expedient to suppress at once this outbreak. "Try the ringleaders by drum-head court-martial, and, if guilty, hang them on
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