It was well on in the third week of my bitter experience, just as I had found it almost impossible to hope for deliverance, that, one afternoon, I heard the sound of loud voices approaching. As the door was being opened, I heard the voice of a man protesting loudly. He was saying-- 'I tell you again, I am on no side. I am an honest farmer, and wish to go back to my farm from which you dragged me. I am neither Whig nor Tory; I will not fight on the side of either King or people. I must work my farm, and support my wife and children.' As he spoke the last words, he was rudely pushed into the mine, where his feet splashed some of the muddy water upon my face. A moment later, and without a word from those outside, the door was closed, and the timbers were replaced against it. Chapter V The Trial and Escape I did not speak. For a time the man evidently considered himself alone. It was several minutes before--his eyes having become adjusted to the partial darkness--he discovered me. His jaw dropped, his hands went up, and I noticed some of the warm colour slip out of his face. He drew sharply back, and gazed at me in undisguised amazement for some moments. A little later the look of wonder shaded into one of sympathy. 'How long have you been here?' he said. 'Almost three weeks,' I told him. 'They've been usin' ye bad, haven't they?' He came nearer and looked at me more closely than before. I tapped on the door with my foot. 'This is my bed,' I said. 'The food is plain, to say the least.' Looking at my face, he said, 'It must be.' All the time he had been standing at the lower side of the mine, where the water was well up about his ankles. When I told him the rock was almost dry where I was, he came and stood beside me. There was a sincere, honest look in the fellow's homely face, and when he asked me how I came to be there, I told him my story without keeping anything back. 'What has been takin' place outside?' I asked, when I had finished. 'What has been takin' place outside,' he repeated in a voice that rose almost to a shriek. 'What hasn't been takin' place? Have ye not heard?' I assured him that I had heard nothing since the day of the funerals at Lexington. 'The day I sowed my oats,' he exclaimed; 'the very day, I mind it well. It was just after that they began scourin' the country. I lived three miles from here well back on my own small farm. Myself an' several of my neighbours had never taken any part in the disputes that were makin' so much trouble in Boston. It didn't concern us. We were poor, with families to keep, an' had no time to bother findin' out whether the King was right or wrong. We were gettin' a livin', an' were happy. The day o' the shootin', as well as the day o' the buryin', I went on with my farmin'.