“Ah! here you are, my fine lad,” said Bud, seizing him by the arm. “Where’s that brother of yours?”
“Oh, now, what are you going to arrest me for?” exclaimed Cale, who turned white and trembled in every limb. “I ain’t done nothing. Father, do you see what they are doing?”
“We hain’t done you no harm yet, but just wait until we get back—”
Bud had been on the point of looking in at the window to see if he could discover anything of Dan, when, to his surprise, there came something down on his head which knocked the hat over his eyes and narrowly escaped laying him out flat. It was the skillet in the hands of the old woman; but Bud didn’t wait to see what it was. He straightened himself up by the side of the house, and when the skillet descended a second time he caught it in his hand and came within an ace of jerking the woman through the window. He wrested the novel weapon from her and threw it as far as possible into the bushes.
“Say, old woman, you want to keep your distance!” said Bud, who was so angry that he could scarcely talk straight. “You try that again and I’ll have you through that window!”
By this time the men from the front part of the house had entered through the door—the man with his axe didn’t make half the battle his wife did—but no Dan was there to be seen. You will remember that when he came back he sat down with his pipe to smoke and think over the perfidy of the captain in giving him promotion when he had no business to do it, and that he had not yet gone to bed. While smoking he was startled by a noise in the bushes. He listened, but the noise increased and grew louder, and in an instant it flashed upon him that his interview with the rebel captain was known. That was enough to start him into the bushes. Giving his father a sign to call Cale, he was out of sight in a moment, and all efforts to find him were useless.
“Here’s one of them, colonel!” said Bud, coming around the house. “Now, where’s the other?”
The man had been disarmed of his axe, and the woman didn’t seem to have any more fight left in her, the powerful jerk she got from Bud satisfying her that the best thing she could do was to keep quiet; but they had plenty of talk left in them.
“Of all the mean things that I ever saw this is the beat!” said Mrs. Newman, as she gazed around at the number of men that had come there to take her boy into custody.
“It is an outrage!” chimed in Mr. Newman, stamping about over the floor as if he were almost beside himself. “They come with an army of men to take away one little fellow! I hope you feel duly ashamed of yourselves.”