These combinations were written down; and opposite each was written the question or answer for which it stood. The answers likely to be used most we placed opposite the shortest combinations, to save time in signalling. My old "Code" lies before me, from which I copy the following examples: 1. _Yes._ 2. _No._ 3. _Morning._ 4. _Afternoon._ 5. _Evening._ 1 2. _Can you come over?_ 1 3. _When?_ 2 5. _Wait till I find out._ 1 3 4. _Can you go a-fishing?_ 2 4 5. _Are you well to-day?_ Suppose, now, that I place flags in positions 2 4 and 5. (See the above examples.) Harry glances down his "code" until he reaches 2 4 5 and its signification, and perhaps answers with a flag at 1. Then the following dialogue ensues: I. 1 2. He. 1 5. I. 4. He. 2 5. And, in a few moments, He. 1. We usually spent our noon hour conversing with each other in this manner; and, when it became necessary for either to leave his station, all the flags, 1 2 3 4 5, were put out, signifying "gone." One combination, 1 2 3 4, was, by mutual consent, reserved for a communication of vital importance, "COME OVER!" It was never to be used except in time of trouble, when the case would warrant leaving everything to obey the call. We had little expectation of its ever being used. It was simply a whim; although, like many other things, it served a serious purpose in the end. Not far from my father's house stood a valuable timber lot, in which he took an especial pride. Adjoining this was an old apple-orchard, where the limbs of several trees that had been cut down, and the prunings of the remainder, had been heaped together in two large piles to be burned at a favorable opportunity. One afternoon, when there was not the slightest breath of wind, we armed ourselves, father and I, with green pine boughs and set the brush-heaps a-fire. We had made the heap in as moist a spot as possible, that there might be less danger of the fire spreading through the grass. While the flame was getting under way, I busied myself in gathering stray bits of limbs and twigs--some of them from the edge of the woods--and throwing them on the fire. "Be careful not to put on any hemlock branches!" shouted my father from his heap. "The sparks may snap out into the grass!" Almost as he spoke a live coal popped out with a loud snap and fell at my feet, and little tongues of flame began to spread through the dead grass. A few blows from my pine bough had smothered them, when snap! snap! snap! went three more in different directions. As I rushed to the nearest I remembered throwing on several dead hemlock branches, entirely forgetting their snapping propensity.