“There’ll not be a rag on me body nor a whole bone in me skin when we get out of this!” he gasped, as they reached high ground between two spreading deeps of mingled weeds and water.  “The sight of us’d frighten the whole rebel army, if we don’t come on them aisy loike, as the fox said when he whisked into the hen-house.”

“He was a very considerate fox, Barney.  Most of the personages you select to illustrate your notions seem to me to be gifted with little touches of thoughtfulness.  Barney, you ought to write a sequel to Aesop.  There never was out of his list of animal friends such wise beasts, birds, and what not as you seem to have known.”

“Jack, dear, if a man lived on roses would the bees feed on him?  If he ate honeysuckle instead of hard-tack would he be squeezed for his scents to fill ladies’ smelling-bottles?”

“I don’t know that sense is always a recommendation to women,” Jack shifts his burden to say tentatively, as Barney, involved in a more than commonly obstinate brier, loses the thread of this jocose induction.

“Ah, Jack, dear, ye’re weak in ye’re mind when you fall to play on words like that.”

“You mean my sense is small?”

“Not that at all.  Sure, it’s a hero’s mind ye show when you can find heart to make merry at a time like this!”

“Yes—­’he jests at love who never felt a throb.’”

“Then you’ve a hard heart—­and I know I lie when I say it, as Father Mike McCune said to himself when he tuk the oath to King George in ’98—­if ye’re heart never throbbed in Acredale beyant, for there’s many a merry one cast down entirely that handsome Jack’s gone.”

“Come, come, Barney; it’s dark, and I can’t see the grin that saves this from fulsome blarney.”

“Indeed, then—­”

“Hark!”

Through the monotonous noises of the night the clanking of steel and the neighing of horses could be heard just ahead.

“We must move cautiously now, Barney.  Try to put a curb on your tongue, and let your reflections mature in your busy brain.”

“Put me tongue in bonds to keep the peace, as Lawyer Donigan cautioned Biddy Gavan when the doctor said she was driving the parish mad with her prate.”

“Sh!—­sh!—­you noisy brawl; we shall have a platoon of cavalry upon us.  Even the birds have stopped crooning to catch your delicate brogue!”

“’Tis only the ill-mannered owl that makes game of me—­if—­”

“Sh!  Come on.  Bend low.  Do as I do—­if you can see me.  If not, keep touch on my arm.”

“As the wolf said to the lamb when he bid him take a walk in the wather.”

They had now emerged on the reedy margin of the dark pool discovered by Dick and Jones later.  All was silent.  The sky was full of stars—­so full that, even in the absence of the moon, there was a transparent clarity in the air that enabled Jack to take definite bearings.

“This must be an outlet of the York River, the stream we saw this afternoon.  If it be, then we are not far from our own outposts.  The troopers we heard just now may be Union soldiers.  We must wait patiently to let them discover themselves.  Keep abreast of me, and don’t, as you value your life, speak above a whisper—­better not to speak at all.”