"I know it; but I have a good horse somewhere outside," answered
Rodney.
"So I supposed; but you can't depend upon your horse to tell you whether you are talking to a Yankee sympathizer or an honest Confederate, can you? The ride won't amount to anything, but you have a tough bit of country to go through. Your short experience right here among friends will serve to show you how very suspicious everybody is. We don't trust our nearest neighbors any more, and so you can imagine what we think of a stranger, especially if he happens to own a watch chain that looks something like one that is worn by a horse-thief," said Mr. Westall, smiling at the boy as he handed his property back to him. "Now, Jeff, how could you have made such a mistake? Can't you see that they don't at all resemble each other?"
"Now that I see them together I can," was Jeff's answer. "But don't he look a trifle as that thief might look if his duds was changed and his whiskers took off?"
Rodney thought from the first that his old schoolmate did not look just as he did the last time he saw him, and now he knew the reason. To a very slight mustache Tom Percival, since leaving the Barrington Academy, had added a pair of what the students would have called "side-boards;" but they were so very scant that they could not by any possibility be looked upon as a disguise. Mr. Westall laughed at the idea.
"Jeff, you and your friends are too anxious to do something for the cause," said he. "Of course that is better than being lukewarm, but you don't want to be too brash or you may get yourselves into trouble. Can you give us some supper? But first we want to put this prisoner where he will be safe."
"Couldn't you postpone that part of the programme until I have had a bite to eat, or do you think there's nobody hungry but yourselves?" asked the prisoner, in the most unconcerned manner possible; and there was no mistaking his voice. It was Tom Percival's voice.
"I didn't think about you," answered Mr. Westall. "And perhaps if you had your dues, you would be left to go hungry. But we are not savages, even if we are down on your way of thinking and acting."
"Better give him a sup of coffee to keep the cold out and then chuck him in the old corncrib," suggested Jeff. "He can lay down on the shucks, and I will give him a blanket to keep himself warm."
"Will he be quite safe there?" asked the Emergency man. "No chance to get out, is there? Or will we have to put a guard over him?"
"There aint no call for nobody to lose sleep guarding on him," was Jeff's confident reply. "There aint no winder to the corncrib, and the door fastens with a bar outside. Some of the chinking has fell out atween the logs, but he can't crawl through the cracks less'n he can flatten himself out like a flying squirrel. Furthermore, there's the dogs that will be on to him if he gives a loud wink."