"We will search the house," added the sergeant resolutely.

"Yer kin, if yer like; but I hope yer won't lose the other feller while ye're looking for this one."

"I told Gordon to shoot him if he attempted to get away; and I can trust Gordon."

They pa.s.sed out of hearing, and Somers felt that his time had come. But, as we have several times before had occasion to remark, strategy is successful in one only by the blunders and inertness of the other; and he cherished with increased enthusiasm his project of hiding in the chimney.

Neither the farmer nor the soldiers were trained detectives, and the blunder they made which rendered Somers's strategy more available was in hunting in crowds instead of singly. They all entered the house together; and even Gordon, in charge of the other prisoner, conducted him to the interior, that he might have the pleasure of seeing the fugitive unearthed.

Taking down the board, Somers emerged from the little window, and, by the steps which he had before marked out, ascended to the roof; a difficult feat, which would have been impossible to one whose father was not the master of a vessel, and who had not explored a ship from the step to the truck of the mainmast. It was done, safely done, and without much noise, which would have been as fatal as a fall. As he sprang from the window still to a projecting stone in the chimney, he heard the steps of the whole party on the stairs below. He was not an instant too soon in the execution of his project; and, when he reached the ridge-pole of the house, he paused to recover the breath which he had lost by excitement and exertion.

The pursuers occupied some time in examining the store-room and the adjoining chambers, and he had a sufficient interval for rest before he renewed his labors. But in a few moments he heard the noise caused by the party ascending to the loft over the room beneath him, and the movement could no longer be delayed.

"I tell yer, sergeant, the feller isn't in here!" protested the farmer violently, and in a tone loud enough for Somers to hear him on the roof.

"Be keerful there, or you'll break down the plastering."

Somers could not hear what the sergeant said in reply; but the farmer was so earnest in his protest against any further search of his house, that the fugitive was almost willing to believe that the protester knew he was in the house, was his friend, and meant to save him from the hands of his enemies. But this supposition was too absurd to be tolerated, for the farmer could have no possible interest in his welfare.

While watching, he had taken off his shoes, and thrust one into each side-pocket of the old blouse he wore, partly to save noise, and partly to prevent his feet from slipping on the smooth stones of the chimney.

Thus prepared, he climbed to the top, and commenced the descent of the smoky avenue. He found the opening much smaller than that of his previous experience in chimneys; and, after he had descended a few feet, the place became inconveniently dark. He could no longer hear the steps or the voices of his pursuers; and he had begun to congratulate himself on the ultimate success of his stratagem, when his foot struck upon something which moved out of his way. It was an animal--perhaps a cat. He moved on.

"Quit! Lemme alone!" said a snarling voice beneath him.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MAN IN THE CHIMNEY

"Lemme alone!" repeated the voice in the chimney several times before Somers could make up his mind as to the precise nature of the adventure upon which he had stumbled.

There was another man in the chimney; and this was the full extent of his knowledge in regard to the being who had stepped into his darkened path.

A succession of exciting questions presented themselves to his mind, all of which were intimately connected with the individual with whom, for the moment, his lot seemed to be cast. Was he friend, or foe? Yankee, rebel, or neutral? What was he in the chimney for? What business had he there?

Somers had some knowledge of a useful and otherwise rightly respectable cla.s.s of persons, known as chimney-sweeps, who pursue their dark trade up and down such places as that in which he was now burrowing; but the sweeps were a civilized inst.i.tution, and he could hardly expect to find them in this benighted section of the Ancient Dominion. He did not, therefore, waste a moment in the consideration of the question, whether the man beneath him was a chimney-sweep or not; for the supposition was too improbable even for the pages of a sensational novel.

The individual was in the chimney; and there seemed to be the boundary of knowledge on the subject. If he was not crazy, he was there for concealment; and, thus far the two occupants of the chimney were in sympathy with each other. Why should the man wish to conceal himself? Was he a hated Yankee like himself, pursued and hunted down by the myrmidons of Jeff Davis? Certainly, if he was a rebel, he had no business in the chimney. It was no place for rebels; they had no occasion to be there.

Of course, then, the man must be a Yankee, a fellow-sufferer with Somers himself, and therein ent.i.tled to the utmost consideration from him. But, if a Yankee, what Yankee? The species did not abound on this side of the river; and he could not imagine who it was, unless it were one of his own party. Just then, induced by this train of reflection, came a tremendous suggestion, which seemed more probable than anything he had before thought of. Was it possible that the other denizen of the sooty flue could be Captain de Banyan?

His fellow-prisoner had been taken into the house by his custodian; and, while the guard was looking the other way, perhaps he had suddenly popped up the chimney, leaving the rebel soldier in charge of him to believe that he was in league with the powers of darkness, and had been spirited away by some diabolical imp.

In the range of improbable theories which the fertile mind of Somers suggested to account for the phenomenon of the chimney, this seemed more reasonable than any of the others. The personage below him very considerately dropped down a step or two, to enable our theorist to discuss the question to his own satisfaction; albeit it did not take him a t.i.the of the time to do his thinking which it has taken his biographer to record it.

"Captain?" said he in a gentle whisper, as insinuating as the breath of a summer evening to a love-sick girl.

"I ain't a captain; I'm nothing but a private!" growled the other, who seemed to be in very ill-humor.

Nothing but a private! It was not the captain then, after all. He had hoped, and almost believed, it was. He had told his friend all about his experience in a chimney; and it seemed to him quite probable that the valiant hero of Magenta and Solferino had remembered the affair, and attempted to try his own luck in a similar manner. It was not the voice of the captain, nor were there any of his peculiarities of tone or manner. If the other character had only said Balaclava, Alma, or Palestro, it would have been entirely satisfactory in any tone or in any manner.

"What are you doing here?" demanded Somers in the same low voice, with commendable desire to obtain further knowledge of the dark subject beneath him.

"I don't want nothin' of you; so yer kin let me alone. If yer don't let me alone, I'll be dog derned if I don't ketch hold of yer legs, and pull yer down chimley."

"Hush!" said Somers in warning tones. "They will hear you, if you speak so loud."

The man was a rebel, or at least a Southerner; and it pa.s.sed our hero's comprehension to determine what he was doing in such a place.

"Hush yerself!" snarled the disconcerted rebel. "What yer want o' me? I ain't done nothin' to you."

"I don't want anything of you; but, if you don't keep still, I'll drop a stone on your head," replied Somers, irritated by the fellow's stupidity.

"Will yer?"

"Not if you keep still. Don't you see we are in the same box? I don't want to be caught, any more than you do."

"Who be yer?" asked the man, a little mollified by this conciliatory remark.

"Never mind who I am now. The soldiers are in the house looking for us; and, if you make a noise, they will hear you."

"What regiment do yer belong ter?" said the lower occupant of the chimney in a whisper.

"Forty-first," replied Somers at a venture, willing to obtain the advantage of the fellow's silence.

"Did yer run away?"

"No. Did you?"

"What yer in here fur, if yer didn't run away, then?" asked the deserter from the rebel army, which it was now sufficiently evident was his character.

"Keep still!" replied Somers, regretting that he had not given a different answer.

"I know yer!" exclaimed the rebel, making a movement farther down the chimney, thereby detaching sundry pieces of stone and mortar, which thundered down upon the hearth below with a din louder, as it seemed to Somers in his nervousness, than all the batteries of the Army of the Potomac. "Yer come to ketch me in a trap. Scotch me if I don't blow yer up so high 'twill take yer six months ter come down ag'in!"

"Keep still!" pleaded Somers, in despair at the unreasonableness of the rebel. "The soldiers are after me; and, if they catch me, they will catch you. 1 don't want to hurt you. If you will only keep still, I will help you out of the sc.r.a.pe."

"You go to Babylon! Yer can't fool me! What yer doin' in the chimley?"

If Somers could quietly have put a bullet through the fellow's head, and thus have punished him for the crime of desertion, he might have promoted his own cause; but the bullet would not do its work without powder, and powder was noisy; and therefore the remedy was as bad as the disorder, to say nothing of a.s.suming to himself the duty of a rebel provost-marshal.

"Yer can't fool me!" repeated the fellow, after Somers had tried for a moment the effect of silence upon him.

It was unnecessary to fool such an idiot; for Nature had effectually done the job without human intervention. It was useless to waste words upon him; and Somers crept cautiously up out of his reach, and out of his hearing, unless he yelled out his insane speeches. Every moment he stopped to listen for sounds within the house; but he could hear none, either because the pursuers had abandoned the search, or because the double thickness of wood and stone shut out the noise.

The rebel deserter, for a wonder, kept quiet when Somers retreated from him, evidently believing that actions spoke louder than words. From his lower position in the flue, he could look up into the light, and observe the movements of him whom he regarded as an enemy. He seemed to have discretion enough to keep still, so long as no direct attack was made upon him; and to be content to wait for a direct a.s.sault before he attempted to repel it; which was certainly more than Somers expected of him, after what had transpired.

Carefully and noiselessly our fugitive made his way to the top of the chimney for the purpose of ascertaining the position of the pursuers, as well as to remove all ground of controversy with the intractable deserter. On reaching the top, he heard the voice of the sergeant at the window, who had probably just reached this point in his investigations.