At the end of the hut opposite to the chimney a rough flight of steps led to an attic. After the two half-famished wanderers had concluded a hearty meal, washed down by strong, hot, black coffee, their host motioned to the steps.

"Ef you want a shake-down you'll find straw up thar," he said.

Rob thanked him civilly and he and Jumbo climbed the stairway and found themselves in a low-ceiled loft. The floor was of unnailed boards.

Through the c.h.i.n.ks between them the ruddy lamplight below could be seen.

"Dere's wusser beds in dis wale ob tears dan nice clean straw," observed Jumbo philosophically as he threw himself on his heap. Rob agreed with him. The straw did, indeed, seem soft and grateful after their recent hard knocks and experiences. Following Jumbo's example, the lad made for himself a kind of nest. Curling up in it he was soon off in the deep, dreamless slumber of healthy boyhood.

Voices awakened Rob. He sat up sharply. They were coming from below. The sounds of the conversation floated up through the wide c.h.i.n.ks in the rough floor.

Rob rolled on his side and peered through the most convenient crack.

Three men were now in the room below him. As he gazed he was amazed to see the hearthstone swing bodily backward, on some concealed hinges, and a fourth man emerge from some secret pa.s.sage.

"Wall," said the newcomer, a huge figure of a man with a big, blond viking-like beard, "the last keg is headed and fixed up. We've finished our work. To-morrow----"

But the black-bearded man checked him with a sharp gesture.

"Shut up, Sims," he warned, "not so loud. Go ahead, Watkins," he went on, turning to one of the men with whom he had been talking.

"What I ses is," resumed this fellow, a squatty-built, loosely-hung little fellow, with close-cropped sandy hair, and a bristly growth on his chin, like the stubble on an old tooth brush, "what I ses is, don't take no risks."

He paused impressively and then added in a lowered voice, but one that reached Rob, nevertheless, with thrilling clearness:

"Fix 'em."

"Great Abraham Lincoln!" gasped the boy, "this is a nice nest of hornets we've stumbled into. 'Fix 'em,' that must mean us."

But the talk went on, and Rob strained his ears for the continuation.

"But if they was guvn'ment men they wouldn't hev walked in like they done, I reckon," put in another man, a pallid, sickly-looking chap, with pink-rimmed eyes and a ferrety, furtive manner.

"Best be on the safe side," counselled the black-bearded man, who had introduced the travelers to the hut, "they've got money, too."

"Money?" questioned the blonde-bearded man.

"Yes. The boy has. And they haven't got any weapons. I guess we'll have an easy time of it with them."

"That n.i.g.g.e.r looks pretty hefty, and the kid's no weakling."

It was the pink-eyed man who spoke. Rob felt a shiver run through him. So they had been observed while they were asleep and never knew it!

"Oh, I'm a fine Scout!" thought the lad bitterly.

"Seems kind of tough on the kid," said the blonde-bearded man, "but you never did have no sense of pity, Black Bart."

Black Bart! Rob's heart stood still and then beat furiously. These men then, were the moonshiners of whom Dale had spoken that afternoon. It seemed, too, from their talk, that they suspected him and Jumbo of being government spies. In that case they would stop at nothing. And they were four to one. The Boy Scout felt for the knife he had filched from Dale, but in their pa.s.sage through the woods it must have been lost, for he could not find it on him.

"Kid or no kid," retorted Black Bart, viciously, "he can tell the revenues a story jes' as well as anybody else, can't he?"

"That's so," agreed the red-headed man, "and if they get us this time they'll make it hot for us."

This argument seemed to extinguish all regrets in the blond-bearded man's mind.

"When air you goin' ter do it?" he asked. His voice was perfectly matter-of-fact and cold-blooded.

"No time like the present. But it's best to get 'em asleep. We don't want no noise," said Black Bart, with deliberation. "Pinky," to the pink-eyed man, "jes' take a look upstairs and see if they are asleep."

Rob laid down and crouched still as a mouse while he heard Pinky ascend the creaking stairs, satisfy himself that the intended victims were asleep, and retreat again.

Then the boy awakened Jumbo. In a few words he apprised him of the situation. To Rob's great relief, the negro, in this dire emergency, seemed to be as self-possessed as he was cowardly in minor matters. Many natures are so const.i.tuted.

"What we gwine ter do, Ma.r.s.e Rob?" he breathed, crawling noiselessly about on his straw.

"There's a window over there," whispered Rob; "we'll have to drop through it and chance coming out safely."

"Lawsy sakes! S'posin' it looks out on one ob dem bottomless pitses lak yo' all near fell inter ter-night?"

"Can't be helped, it's the only way we can escape. Hark! They're coming now. Get over to the window with as little noise as you can."

"How 'bout you alls?"

"I'll follow. You get it open first."

Without another word the negro noiselessly wriggled across the floor to the window--a mere opening in the wall--that Rob had observed. At the same instant there came the "creak! creak!" of the staircase as one of the men below began to ascend the stairway.

There was a big bit of loose timber lying near Rob's straw. With a sudden flash of anger at the thought of the men's treachery, the lad s.n.a.t.c.hed it up.

"They shan't get off scot free, anyhow," he decided within himself.

With the bulk of timber clutched in both his hands, ready poised for a blow, Rob waited by the opening at the head of the rickety stairway as the midnight a.s.sailant ascended.

CHAPTER XVII.

"WE WANT YOU."

A stubbly red-head protruded itself through the opening. The crucial moment had come.

"Take that!" cried Rob bringing down the bulk of timber with a resounding crack on the fellow's pate. He grunted, clutched at the sill of the opening for an instant, and then went toppling down the stairway in a heap.

A roar of fury and a rush of feet from below followed. But Rob did not wait for the sequel.

"Hope I haven't seriously injured the chap," he thought, as he sprinted for the window, "I hit a bit harder than I meant to."

But the next instant, when red-head's voice was added to the uproar below, Rob knew that he had, at least, not impaired the miscreant's talent for profanity.