Your friend."
On the night in question, Terrence wore a tall, peaked brown hat, with black band. He also wore white trousers and a gray coat. The three set off in a cart which Terrence hired to bring back the treasure. It was dark before they commenced their journey, for the officers did not want the men to know of the affair.
They reached the farm house of Mr. Condit and prepared to enter it and begin operations. The cart and mule were left under some trees. It was now ten o'clock, and the house was quite dark. Slowly they crept up to it, Terrence asking himself if the farmer had heeded his warning. Like many farm-house cellars, there was a trap door opening on the outside. To this cellar door they made their way. Terrence, who was accustomed to such affairs, had provided himself with a lantern, which he was to light when they entered the cellar.
They descended the steps and had scarcely reached the floor, when footsteps were heard descending a flight of steps from the inside of the house.
"Hide behind the barrels and boxes, ivery mother's son of ye!" whispered the Irishman. The officers were concealing themselves, when suddenly the door opened and a portly elderly gentleman in his shirt sleeves, knee breeches and slippers, carrying a lighted candle in one hand and a pistol in the other descended. He saw Captain Bones and his lieutenant trying to hide behind a barrel. The captain, in his excitement, had drawn a pistol and was cocking it. Terrence at this moment escaped.
With a yell, the old gentleman dropped the candle, which lay on the floor, the thin blaze ascending upward and dimly lighting the scene. At his yell, there suddenly rushed into the cellar half a dozen stout men, armed with guns and pistols, and the supposed burglars were arrested. Next morning, Captain Bones and his chief officer were snugly reposing in the county jail, while Terrence, Fernando and Job set out across the country for Augusta. From this point they took passage in a swift coaster for New York. At New York they separated, Terrence going to Philadelphia, Job to Baltimore, and Fernando to his home in Ohio.
His journey was long and tedious. At the close of a hot day in autumn, 1811, the old stage coach came in sight of the dear old home. The past four years seemed like a terrible dream. The old familiar spot, where every tree and flower was endeared by sacred remembrances, was never half so precious as now. His gray-haired father and sorrowful mother, who had long given him up for dead, wept over him and thanked God that he had returned to again bless their home. Friends, relatives and neighbors, hearing of the sudden return of Fernando, all gathered on that evening, and the youth told the sad story of his impressment and slavery. He told all save his love affair. That secret was too sacred. When he had finished, good old Mrs. Winners was weeping bitterly, and there was scarce a dry eye in the house; for all remembered that poor Sukey was still a slave to the rapacity and cruelty of an ambitious monarch.
CHAPTER XII.
WAR.