The forbearance of the captors to disturb their prisoners was puzzling to the three soldiers huddled together on the point of rocks. Through the telescope the men could now be plainly seen, in their rough mountain dress, moving to and fro on their stations, and apparently keeping under cover where trees or outhouses were available as a mask. At one point several men were grouped together behind a fodder-stack, as if in consultation, and on the road could be seen one who seemed to be watching impatiently for some expected arrival.

Holding the telescope soon grew tiresome, and they passed it from one to another, that no movement in the gruesome pantomime might escape their observation; and the observer for the time being broke the silence at intervals with details of what he saw.

"There!" cried Philip, at last, "the men are getting lively behind the fodder-stack. Now the fellow in the road is waving his hat. Hold on! There comes a man—two men—on horseback. Now the sentinels are moving in toward the cabin."

Thus the cordon was drawn close about the house, in which the inmates still showed no signs of life. The horsemen dismounted and tied their horses to the fence, and then, with an armed guard, advanced to the door. Lieutenant Coleman looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes after seven. At seven twenty-eight the old mountaineer appeared, and was passed down the line to the road. Next came the three officers, one after the other, and they were removed to one side under guard. Then the four women seemed to be driven out of the house by the soldiers, and forced along by violence into the road. Some of the men appeared to be breaking the windows of the cabin, and others were running out of the open door, appropriating some objects and ruthlessly destroying others. For the first time the soldier exiles realized how far they were removed, by their own will, from a world in which they had no part. The sufferers were their friends whom they knew not, and to help whom they had no power. They were like spirits looking down from a world above on the passions of mortals—as helpless to interfere as the motionless rocks.

After a brief consultation the mounted men rode away to the north, while the prisoners, with their guards, advanced in the opposite direction and soon disappeared behind that ridge up which Shifless had climbed to look over in the gray of the morning of the day before. A puff of smoke burst from the deserted cabin and rose like a tower into the frosty air. Fire gleamed through the broken windows, and red tongues of flame licked about the dry logs, and lashed and forked under the eaves and about the edges of the shingled roof. The reflection from the flames reddened the snow in the little clearing. The stacks caught fire. The boughs of the orchard withered and crisped in the fierce heat.

Now, as if satisfied with their work of destruction, the men who had remained at the house joined the others behind the ridge, and the armed guards, with their miserable prisoners, soon reappeared, moving over the snow under the bare trees. The three soldiers lay out on the rocks above to watch the poor captives picking their way down a stony, winding trail, forming one straggling file between two flanking columns of mountaineers. Knowing something of the stoical ways of these people, they could feel the silence of that gloomy progress. They even fancied they could hear the crunching of the snow, the rolling of displaced stones on the frosty hillside, the crackling of brittle twigs under foot, and the subdued sobbing of the women.

Steadily the procession of ill omen moved along over the snow under the thin trees, disappearing and reappearing and dwindling in the distance, until it was lost behind the spurs of the mountain called Chimney Top. By this time the roof of the house had fallen into the burning mass between the two stone chimneys; the sun had risen, and the dense column of smoke cast a writhing shadow against the snowy face of Sheep Cliff.

When the glass was brought to bear on the house and road below, it revealed Shifless and the Cove postmaster riding quietly home on their mules, doubtless well satisfied with the evil deed their heads had planned.

As the three soldiers turned back in the direction of their house, Bromley was in a rage, and Philip could no longer command himself. All three were worn and haggard with loss of sleep, and depressed by the outcome of the affair in the valley.

In fact, the disheartening effect of the experiences connected with this first Christmas continued to oppress our exiles well into the next year. If, in the narrow valley on which they were privileged to look down, three officers of the old armies had been thus hunted and dragged off before their eyes, they had reason to believe that fragments of those armies were receiving similar or worse treatment wherever they might be found. Time and their daily work gradually calmed their minds and helped them to forget the pain of what they had seen. They missed the company of the bear, too; for even before this great disturbance of their tranquillity that amusing companion of their solitude had burrowed himself away, to consume his own fat, where not even their telescope could discover him for several months.

Presently the winter snows became deeper on the mountain, and they were confined more and more to the house. The Slow-John was frozen up in the branch, and the fowls, which could no longer forage for their own living, hung about the door for the scraps from the table and an occasional handful of corn. They roosted in the cabin of the old man of the mountain, and now and then, in return for their keep, laid an egg, which was often frozen before it was found.

"THE FOWLS HUNG ABOUT THE DOOR."
"THE FOWLS HUNG ABOUT THE DOOR."

The soft, clean husks of the corn, added to the pine boughs, made comfortable beds, and the tents spread over the blankets provided abundant covering. Great bunches of catnip and pennyroyal for tea hung from the rafters, and even the wild gentian, potent to cure all ailments, was not forgotten in the winter outfit.

The prayer-book and Army Regulations, which formed their library, were read and re-read, and discussed until theology and the art of clothing and feeding an army were worn threadbare. Philip, who was blessed with a vivid imagination and great originality, made up the most marvelous ghost-stories and the most heartrending and finally soul-satisfying romances, which were recited in the evenings before the fire, to the huge enjoyment of his companions. If it was romance, a fat pine-knot thrust between the logs illumined the interior and searched the farthest corners and crannies of the room with a flood of light; and in case it was a ghost-story, the logs were left to burn low and fall piecemeal into the red coals before the eyes of the three figures sitting half revealed in sympathetic obscurity.

"PHILIP MADE UP THE MOST MARVELOUS STORIES, WHICH WERE RECITED BEFORE THE FIRE"
"PHILIP MADE UP THE MOST MARVELOUS STORIES,
WHICH WERE RECITED BEFORE THE FIRE"

One of the most interesting incidents of the first winter was the construction, by Lieutenant Coleman, of a map of the "old United States," and the plotting thereon of the Confederacy as they supposed it to be. When it is remembered that the map was drawn entirely from memory, the clear topographical knowledge of the officer was, to say the least, surprising.

The first reference to the map is found in Lieutenant Coleman\'s entry in the diary for the 24th of January, 1865:


"As we were sitting before the fire last night, George introduced a subject which, by common consent, we have rather avoided any reference to or conversation upon. This related to the probable boundaries of the new nation established by the triumphant Confederates. We had no doubt that the Confederacy embraced all the States which were slaveholding States at the outbreak of the Rebellion; and as they doubtless had made Washington their capital, it was more than probable that they had added little Delaware to Maryland on their northern border. We assumed that so long as there were two governments in the old territory, the Ohio River would be accepted as a natural boundary as far as to the Mississippi; but we were of widely different opinions as to the line of separation thence.

"George, who is inclined to the darker view, is of the opinion that the Southern republic, if it be a republic at all, would certainly demand an opening to the Pacific Ocean, and therefore must embrace a part, if not the whole, of California.

"February 16. We have been confined to the house two days by a driving snow-storm, and the territorial extent of the Confederacy has come up again, not, however, f............