“Can you find the boat?” he asked Gabe, who chattered between his teeth.

“I think so, sah.”

“Very well; we must find a small stream running into the pond, and then lead me to the boat.”

“Moccasin Brook is close yonder, sah.  Shall I go dah?”

“Yes, like lightning.”

In a few minutes they were in a sluggish current, running between masses of reeds and spreading lily-leaves, into the pond.  Here Jack repeated Jones’s manoeuvre, except that he was not wise enough in woodcraft to make use of a tree to get into the water, and thus leave the dogs at the end of the trail at a point far removed from his real entrance into it.  When they had reached the pond, Jack bade the boy head to the boat.  This they found moored under a bluff, and Gabe, pointing upward, said the blockhouse was there.

“Very well, you stay here in the boat and wait for me.  Don’t stir, don’t speak, no matter what you see or hear.  Will you do this?”

“Oh, yes, sah; ’deed, ’deed I will, sah!”

Jack crawled up the bank, keeping in the shadow of the uneven ground, until he reached a point whence he could make out the blockhouse.  It was a half-finished structure of rough logs, and, from the stakes and other signs of engineering preliminaries, he saw that it was intended as the guard-house of a fortification.  He could hear the drawl of languid, half-sleepy voices, and, as he pushed farther to the eastward, saw a group of troopers lounging about a dying fire.  A sentry sat before the doorway, which had no door.  He was dozing on his post, though, now and then he aroused himself to listen to the comments of the men at the fire.  While Jack waited, irresolute what to do, a volley sounded across the pond, evidently the fellows whom he had seen, keeping up the fusilade to distract the fugitives.

“They’ve wasted enough lead to fight a battle,” he heard one of the men say, scornfully.

“Well, that’s what lead’s for,” a philosopher remarked, stirring the embers.  “So it don’t get under my skin, I don’t care a cuss what they do with it.”

“Oh, your skin’s safe enough, Ned.  You may adorn a gallows yet.”

“If I do, you’ll be at one end of the string—­and I ain’t a-saying which end, neither,” the other retorted, taking a square segment of what looked like bark, but was really tobacco, and worrying out a circle with his teeth, until he had detached a large mouthful.  This affording his jaws all the present occupation they seemed capable of undertaking, the other resumed when the haw-haw that met the sally had subsided: 

“Yes, it takes two to make a hangin’, just like it takes two to make a weddin’, and you can’t allus say just sartin which one has the lucky end.”

This facetious epigram was duly relished, and the sage was turning his toasted side from the fire to present the other, when the clatter of a horse coming up the hillside sent the group scouring toward their guns, stacked near the unfinished walls.