TWO:THE disturbance in the Deacon's family when Shorty's note was delivered by little Sammy Woggles quite came up to that romance-loving youth's fond anticipations. If he could only hope that his own disappearance would create a fraction of the sensation he would have run away the next day. It would be such a glorious retribution on those who subjected him to the daily tyranny of rising early in the morning, washing his face, combing his hair, and going to school. For the first time in his life the boy found himself the center of interest in the family. He knew something that all the rest were intensely eager to know, and they plied him with questions until his young brain whirled. He told them all that he knew, except that which Shorty had enjoined upon him not to tell, and repeated his story without variation when separately examined by different members of the family. All his leisure for the next few days was put in laboriously constructing, on large sheets of foolscap, the following letter, in which the thumb-marks and blots were more conspicuous than the "pot-hook" letters:All were eager to do something toward the comfort of their departing comrades. They scanned the arrangement of the boughs in the wagon with critical eyes, and picked them over and rearranged them, so as to avoid every chance of uncomfortable knots and lumps. They contributed blankets from their own scanty supply, to make sure that there would be plenty, and so many were eager to help carry Si out and put him in the wagon, that the Orderly-Sergeant of Co. Q had to take charge of the matter and make a detail. The teamster was given strong admonitions as to careful driving, and fearful warning as to what would happen to him in case of an accident.

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