The fugitive did not finish the sentence, but shrugged his shoulders and looked at Ned and his mother in a way that had a volume of meaning in it.
"It did not take us many seconds to determine upon a plan of operations," he continued, "and then we crept toward the house under cover of the bushes and out buildings, telling our friendly darkey to stay where he was till the trouble was over, and no one should ever hear from us that we had exchanged a word with him. Everything was in our favor. There wasn't a servant outside the house to run in and warn the inmates that we were coming, and before those six Johnnies knew that there was a Yank within 100 miles, we were in the breakfast room where they sat at the table, and had them covered."
"And what did they turn out to be?" Ned almost gasped.
"Regular soldiers, I am glad to say, and we were saved a most disagreeable piece of business. We told them they were in a trap, and could take their choice between going to the bone-yard and signing a parole not to take up arms against the government again until they were regularly exchanged, and they thought they had better sign; and it didn't take them a great while to say so, either."
"Had you any right to do that?" inquired Mrs. Griffin.
"Not the least in the world, madam," replied the corporal, with a smile. "But as long as the rebels didn't know it, what was the odds? We couldn't take them with us, we couldn't shoot them, seeing that they were not Home Guards, and yet we had to do something. All we really hoped to accomplish was to frighten them off our trail long enough to give us a good start toward the swamp. We knew their officers would tell them that their parole didn't amount to a row of pins, but by the time they found their officers we might be miles away. There was one thing we were sorry for, and that was that they did not have their dogs in the house with them. They wouldn't have followed any more escaped prisoners when we got through with them, I assure you."
CHAPTER XII.
A HAIL AT THE BARS.
Although the corporal talked rapidly, he did not neglect his supper, and by the time he reached this point in his story his second supply of bread and meat was all gone. He handed back the empty plate, rested his gun across his knees where it would be handy in case of emergency, and drew from one of the pockets of his ragged blouse something that looked like a small bundle of brown wrapping paper.