“I don’t know till I get there,” replied the Head Captain grandly. “Gold, I suppose, or treasures or something like that. Of course, if we’re caught——” The Lieutenant sucked in his breath with a peculiar whistling noise—one of his most envied accomplishments—and ran his finger-nail with a grating sound around his side of the barrel. “Jim Elder stole some apples from my father’s barn, and my father licked him good,” he suggested. “Apples! Apples!” The Head Captain frowned terribly, adding with biting irony: “I s’pose Jim Elder’s a Pirate! I s’pose he wears a uniform! I s’pose he knows the ways this gang knows! I s’pose he meets in a barrel like this! Huh?” There was no answer, and the Head Captain settled his mask more firmly. “Come on!” he said. They looked at the sharp edge of the hogshead; it was far away. They looked inquiringly at the Vicar; she dropped her eyes. Oh, Woman, in your hours of ease you can devise fine secret places, you can lead us to them, but can you bring us back to the outer world and the reality you seduced us from? There was an embarrassing pause. The seconds seemed hours. Would they die in this old, smelly barrel? The Head Captain smiled to himself. “I guess you kids never’d git out o’ here unless I showed you how!” he remarked cheerfully. “Forward! March!” He took the one step possible, and scowled because they did not follow him. “Don’t you see?” he said irritably. “When I say ‘three,’ fall over. Now, one—two—_three_!” He pushed the Lieutenant and the Vicar against the side of the barrel, and precipitated himself against them. The barrel wavered, tottered, and fell with a bang on its side, the subordinate officers jouncing and gasping, unhappy cushions for their Head Captain, who crawled out over them, adjusted his collar, and strode off across the chicken yard. At the gate they caught up with him. [Illustration: “’_Now, one—two—three!_’”] “Lieutenant!” “Aye, aye, sir.” “Go straight ahead and watch out for us. Whistle three times if the coast is clear. Beware of—of anything you see!” [Illustration: “_A peculiar caution in the slope of his shoulders._”] “Aye, aye, sir.” The Lieutenant slunk off, a peculiar caution in the slope of his shoulders and his long, noiseless stride. He rounded the barn and disappeared from sight. There was a moment of suspense. Suddenly he appeared again, his hand raised warningly. “_Sst, sst!_” he hissed. Promptly they skipped behind the woodhouse door. In a moment a man’s footsteps were audible; somebody was swinging by the barn, whistling as he went. He called out to the cook as he went by: “Pretty hot, ain’t it? Hey! I say it’s pretty hot!”