"Oh, dear, I can never do anything without your interference!" burst out the lady, petulantly. "Joe, lock him in again;" and she flounced out of the cellar, past the colonel, who tried in vain to detain her, and up to her own room. The negro did as ordered, and Artie was left once more to himself. What the captain had learned filled him with interest. Gossley was not only going to hold him for the money that might be gotten out of such a proceeding, but he was going to hold him until a secret mission for General Bragg could be executed. The guerilla chief was now a spy within the Union lines. "If only Life knew that, and knew I was here," he half groaned. "I must get away from here--not only for my own sake, but in order to make Gossley a prisoner and thus prevent him from carrying any news of importance to the Confederates. How can I get away?" Over and over again Artie asked himself that question. In the meantime he began work on the board again, this time without a light. After several minutes of twisting and pulling the board came off, revealing several panes of glass, set in a window frame. But beyond the glass was a mass of dirt, showing that the cellar opening had been completely closed up from the outside. For the instant the captain was dismayed; then his natural buoyancy of spirit returned. "I can dig that dirt away, sooner or later," he muttered, and set to work removing the glass. A job of this sort looks easy, on paper; in reality Artie found the task quite hard, and it took the best part of an hour to remove the panes without making a noise. The glass out of the way, he drew his pocket-knife and began to dig at the dirt, which came away easily, falling in clods into his hand. The clods he placed on the cement flooring directly under the opening. The ground had been banked up for nearly three feet, so it took some time to reach daylight. But at last the blade of the knife cut into the roots of the sodding, and Artie felt that liberty was only a question of a few minutes more. He worked away diligently, and soon had a hole as big as his hand. Through this he peered anxiously. Was there a guard outside, ready to frustrate his design? CHAPTER XVI THE HOLDING-UP OF THE CLOSED CARRIAGE Artie found it still raining outside, harder than before, and the landscape was dreary and deserted,--neither man nor beast being in sight. "That remark about putting the negroes on guard was only meant to frighten me," he thought. "Now to get out and find my horse, and I'll make it warm for Major Dan Gossley and his hot-headed relatives. I'll show them that they cannot make a Union officer a prisoner with impunity."