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In that vise he was borne across the house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word. But although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant.

"We'll show you, if we once get started," said Tom. "I guess we'll have to get one of these fellows to twirl the propellers for us, Ned," he added. "I didn't think, or I'd have brought the self-starting machine," for this one of Tom's had to be started by someone turning over the propellers, once or twice, to enable the motor to begin to speed.

The old man, disgusted by what in his suspicious nature he considered a shameless and fulsome puff of Mr Pecksniff, which was a part of Tom's hired service and in which he was determined to persevere, set him down at once for a deceitful, servile, miserable fawner. So HE was silent.

He knew that no animal could graze a tree in its flight but old Uncle Jeb would find there some tell-tale souvenir of its passing. Tom's interest was keenly aroused now. He was baffled and a little chagrined. But no supplementary inspection revealed so much as a single hair. Thus confounded, he examined the tracks more carefully.

After a little talk on more ordinary affairs, Mr. Bartholomew took his departure. It was getting late in the evening, and Tom Swift had an engagement. While old Rad, their colored servant, was helping him on with his coat preparatory to Tom's leaving the house, his father called from the library: "Got those notes in a safe place, Tom?" "Safest in the world, Dad," his son replied.

"If both stay, Injun kill both. Long Hair run swift like deer;" and he darted up the ridge again with cat-like agility. When Tom's eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he found himself in a spacious, rocky room. It was one of those natural caves which seem as if the work of art, rather than a freak of nature.

It hurt his boy heart, but he afterward became hardened to such necessary severity and he tells the story to a fellow planter with apologies for his youthful sentimentality. Does "Uncle Tom's Cabin" show more clearly the two curses of slavery: cruelty to the slave and demoralization to the master?

"I guess we've hit somebody else's trail," said Sam. "Dick! Mr. Barrow! Where are you?" he called out. No answer came back, and then the two boys shouted in chorus. All remained as silent as before. "Well, this is a mess, to say the least," was Tom's comment. "How are we to know which trail to follow?" "I move we make a sure thing of it and get down to the river again," was Sam's answer.

Then he touched lightly the triple chevron on Sergeant Tom's arm, and said: "Eh, a man does much work for that. And then, to be moral and the friend of the law all the time!" Pierre here shrugged his shoulders. "It is easier to be wicked and free, and spend when one is rich, and starve when one is poor, than to be a sergeant and wear the triple chevron.

Some of our meat we got that way. As for Tom, he was off and on. When the roving spirit seized him he made journeys to the westward with Cowan and Ray. Generally they returned with packs of skins. But sometimes soberly, thanking Heaven that their hair was left growing on their heads. This, and patrolling the Wilderness Road and other militia duties, made up Tom's life.