But Basha as she unwound the tight bandage
from the shattered arm, kept muttering to herself
like a rising tempest, until at length the man having
come quite to himself, detected her feeling, and with
great effort said, “I am wot a British soldier.”

“Then what to goodness have you got on their
uniform for?” queried Basha.

Little by little the pitiful story was told. He was
an American soldier who had been doing duty as
a spy in the British camp. Up to the very last
day of his stay he had not been suspected; but
trying to get away he was suspected, challenged,
and fired at. The shot passed through his arm.
He was certain his pursuers had followed him till
night, and they would be likely to continue the
search the next day, and he begged Mrs, Heath
to secrete him for a day or two, if possible.

“T wouldn’t mind being shot, marm,” he said,
“but you know they’ll hang me if they get me. Of
course I risked it when I went into their camp,
but it’s none the pleasanter for all that.”

Now in the old Heath house there was a secret
chamber, built in the side of the chimney. Most
of those old colonial houses had enormous chimneys,
that took up, sometimes, a quarter of the ground
occupied by the house, so it was not a difficult thing
to enclose a small space with slight danger of its
existence being detected. This chimney chamber
in the Heath house was little more than a closet
eight feet by four. It was entered from the north
chamber, Abram’s room, through a narrow sliding
panel that looked exactly like the rest of the wall,
which was of cedar boards. An inch-wide shaft
running up the side of the chimney ventilated the
closet, and it was lighted by a window consisting
of three small panes of glass carefully concealed
under the projecting roof. In a sunny day one
could see to read there easily.

A small cot-bed was now carried into this room,
and up there, after his wound had been dressed
by Basha, who, like many old-time women, was
skilful in dressing wounds and learned in the prop-
erties of herbs and roots, and he had been fed
and bathed, the soldier was taken; and a very
grateful man he was as he settled himself upon
the comfortable bed and looked up with a smiling
“thank you,” into Basha’s face, which was no longer
grim and forbidding.

All this time no special notice had been taken
of Dorothy and Arthur. They had followed about

 

A HERO.

LIQ

to watch the bathing, feeding and tending, and when
Mrs. Heath turned to leave the secret chamber, she
found them behind her, staring in with very wide-
open eyes indeed; for, if you can believe it, they
never before had even heard of, much less seen,
this lovely little secret chamber. It was never
deemed wise in colonial families to talk about these
hiding-places, which sometimes served so good a
purpose, and I doubt if many adults in the town
of Hartland knew of this secret chamber in the
Heath house.

' The panel was closed, and Abram was left to
care for the wounded soldier through the night. It
was nine o'clock, the colonial hour for going to
bed, and long past the children’s hour, and Dotty
and Arthur in their prayers by their mother’s knee,
put up a petition for the safety of the stranger.

“ Would they hang him if they could get him,
mamma?” asked Arty.

“Certainly,” she replied. “It is one of the rules
of warfare. A spy is always hung.”

In the morning, from nine to eleven, Mrs. Heath
always devoted to the children’s lessons. Arthur,
who was eleven, was a good Latin scholar. He
was reading Cesar’s Commentaries, and he liked it
—that is, he liked the story part. He found some
of it pretty tough reading, and I need not tell you
boys who have read Cesar, what parts those were.
They had English readings from the Spectator, and
from Bishop Leighton’s works, books which you
know but little about. Dotty had a daily lesson in
botany, and very pleasant hours those school hours
were.

After dinner, at: twelve, they had the afternoon
for play. That afternoon, the day after the soldier
came, they went berrying. They did this almost
every day during berry time, so as to have what
they liked better than anything for supper—berries
and milk. Occasionally they had huckleberry “slap-
jacks,” also a favorite dish, for breakfast; not often,
however, as flour was scarce.

They went for berries down the road known as
South Lane, a lonely place, but where berries grew
plentifully. Their mother had cautioned them not
to talk about the occurrence of the night before,
as some one might’ overhear, and so, though they
talked about their play and their studies, about papa
and his soldiers, they said nothing about dhe soldier.

They had nearly filled their baskets, when a growl
from Caesar startled them, and turning, they saw two