Williams is “nobbiest” of third-story boys, bravest of Camanche warriors, but Williams doesn’t dare refuse to go for that basket.  During his absence his fellow-savages express strong doubts as to his ever re-appearing upon the battle-field, but he does return, like Regulus to his barrel of spikes.

The Captain has borrowed a number of brooms and dust-pans from the Diggers who, to a man, had retired and been snoring sweetly.

“Now, gentlemen, clear up these feathers!” orders the Captain, as if he was crying, “Forward, march!”

Clearing up those feathers was a tedious and trying process.  Any one who has ever chased a worn-out but still lively feather up and down a long hall can imagine the scene with hundreds of them flying about.

“They’re the meanest lot of feathers,—­pretty much all fuzz,” said one exhausted brave.

When the last handful had been crowded into the basket, Williams attempted opening the door.

“No; you’re to make your exit the same way you made your ingress,” announced the Captain.

Williams stared blankly at the trap-hole in the ceiling.

Dropping down through a trap-door and going up through the same, with no visible means of support but the floor, are naturally different exercises.

“You’re fertile in expedients; can’t you devise some good way of getting out?” coolly asked the Captain.

“We might stand on each other’s shoulders,” suggested one small savage, whom the blood-thirsty Williams afterward confessed he longed to scalp at this juncture.

“Very well, do so,” ordered the Captain.

Then one of the noble savages stood under the trap-door while one by one the others sprang upon his shoulders, caught the edges of the opening above, wriggled, writhed, contorted his limbs, and finally succeeded in drawing himself up to his own story, while all down the hall, on either side, there appeared at the open ventilators over the doors the eyes of pairs of miserable Diggers, and for every Camanche that wriggled up there resounded a succession of groans.

The Camanches thought, with a thrill of exultation, that the Captain would be obliged to proffer his shoulders for the last man, and would then be left pondering alone, like the goat in the well.  That would be something of a revenge, at any rate.

But when only one boy remained, who, to the exasperation of the entire tribe, was the identical small savage who had proposed going up in that ridiculous style, the Captain quietly opened the iron door, and he and the small savage retired with dignity.

The Captain, who had his “good streaks,” never reported the Camanches, but they manifested a disposition thereafter to settle quietly upon their own reservation and cultivate the peaceful arts, and they always treated their neighbors, the Diggers, with respect, though unmingled with affection.

[Illustration:  “LITTLE BO-PEEP, SHE WENT TO SLEEP.”]