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Lovejoy, Samson and Harry built a hollow haystack about half-way from the house to the barn. The stack had a comfortable room inside of it about eight feet by seven and some six feet in height. Its entrance was an opening near the bottom of the stack well screened by the pendant hay. But no fugitive came to occupy it that winter. Early in March Abe wrote a letter to Samson in which he said: *

Again Jack shuddered a trifle, but he held his ground. His hands rested on his revolvers. The sound of creaking twigs reached the ears of the three who stood silently there in the forest. At a sign from Jack, each man got behind a tree and each drew his revolvers. Hardly had they thus screened themselves when half a dozen men burst into view, walking along slowly and laughing.

The enemy, having heavy artillery of various calibre mounted on Bulwaan, is able to enfilade certain posts held by our infantry pickets on the heels of the horse-shoe, but there are folds among the rocky kopjes where men can lie comparatively screened from shells, which at that distance give timely notice of their coming, as sound travels rather faster than the projectiles do at the end of their flight.

A commission for this purpose was granted in the preceding reign, but had been for some years discontinued; and indeed always proved ineffectual to detect and punish those individuals who shamefully pillaged their country. The villany was so complicated, the vice so general, and the delinquents so powerfully screened by artifice and interest, as to elude all inquiry.

I have before explained how Madame des Ursins and the deceased Queen had kept the King of Spain screened from all eyes, inaccessible to all his Court, a very palace-hermit. Alberoni, as I have said, followed their example. He kept the King even more closely imprisoned than before, and allowed no one, except a few indispensable attendants, to approach him.

By the end of the first week in March we had converted the veranda, which ran round three sides of the old magnetic hut, into dog and pony shelters, two inner compartments were screened off by bulkheads made of biscuit cases, a cook's table was somehow fashioned and a reliable stove erected out of petrol tins and scrap-iron. Our engineers in this work of art were Oates and Meares.

The first men to get through the doors had hardly leaped to the ground when they saw from the shadow of the cut the vicious spit of revolvers and heard the bullets singing unpleasantly over their heads. Where they stood the gray dawn made them perfectly visible, but the blackness of the cut screened their assailants and made it impossible to guess their numbers.

'Twas not them I feared, but that other force now screened behind the mountains, who had for their leader some white madman with a fire in his head and Bible words on his lips. Were we of Virginia destined to fight with such fanatics as had distracted Scotland fanatics naming the name of God, but leading in our case the armies of hell?

That which had been like rising gold smoke was a hooded head lifting just now, dilating. Already he knew, almost fully, what the running had done. The thought of Carlin in the playhouse had over-balanced his own genius. He walked forward now, for the time not hearing Carlin's words from within. . . . The door was open; the windows were screened.

"You'll promise to forget me," I heard her say. I looked down at her, but the hat screened her face. "Yes," I answered, with a steadiness that was surprising, for my throat was parched and my knees had become very weak, so weak that I gave up all thought of marching in military fashion and gathered strength to drag myself out of her sight. I went up the lane slowly.