"If they've ketched him," said Shorty fiercely, "we'll find out about it, and when we git able, we'll go out there and kill and burn everything for five miles around. I'll do it, if I have to spend the rest o' my life at hard labor on the Dry Tortugas." They heard the rattle of light wheels on the frozen ground outside, and the hoof-beats of a quickly-moving horse. "Buggy or spring-wagon," muttered Si with a farmer boy's instinctive interpretation of such sounds. "What's it doin' in camp? Strange horse. In better condition than any around here." The vehicle stopped in front of the corn-crib at the Deacon's command, "Whoa!" "Gracious--there's Pap now," ejaculated Si, with whom memory went in a bound to the many times he had listened for his father's coming and heard that order. "Hello, boys," called out the Deacon. "How are you? Shorty, come out here." Shorty sprang up with something of his old-time alacrity, and Si made an effort to rise, but was too weak. "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." By the light of the blazing pine, the Deacon pulled off the cedar boughs and developed his store. The boughs had kept in the heat, so that the food was not yet quite cold, though it had a resinous flavor, from its covering. The Deacon broke one of the cornpones in two and gave half of it to Shorty, with as much as he thought he should have of the meat and vegetables. Then he fed Si, who relished the new diet almost as much as he had relished the chicken broth. The Deacon made a hearty supper himself, and then stored away the rest in his "cellar" under the crib, rolling up some more large stones as an additional precaution. "Well, you beat me," said Shorty admiringly, as he studied over the Deacon's booty. "I used to think I was as slick a forager as there was in the army, but I simply ain't in the same class with a man that kin go out in this Sahara Desert o' starvation and bring in a four-year-old horse and a wagon-load o' cooked vittles. I'd never even see the distance pole runnin' with him. Gen. Rosecrans ought to know you. He'd appoint you Commissary-General o' the army at once. When I get a little stronger I want you to take me out and learn me the ABC's o' foragin'. To think that me and Si wuz grievin' about your being ketched by the guerrillas. What fools we wuz. It wuz lucky for the guerrillas that you didn't run acrost 'em, for you'd a ketched 'em, instid o' 'em you." "That's what I come purty nigh doin'," chuckled the Deacon. "But what in the world 'm I goin' to do with that hoss and buckboard? I must hunt around and find that poor beast some corn for tonight. He's bin driven purty sharp, and he needs his supper jest as bad as I did mine, and I won't feel right unless he has it. Then I must try to git him back to his owner termorrer."