Page:The Campaign of the Jungle.djvu/215

Rh "Yes, I reckon I can tell the colonel well enough," answered Barton Brownell. " For I saw Caspard often, as I mentioned before, and he never knew what it was to keep his tongue from wagging."

"And how did you escape? " asked Ben, with interest.

"In a very funny way," and the soldier laughed. "As I said before, we were kept up in the mountains, in a large cave. There were six of our troop, but all told the prisoners numbered twenty-eight. There was a guard of four rebels to keep us from escaping, and an old woman called Mother Beautiful, becavise she was so ugly, used to cook our food for us—and the food was mighty scanty, I can tell you that.

"Well, one day two of the guards went off, leaving the old woman and the other two guards in sole charge. There had been a raid of some kind the day before, and the guards had some fiery liquor which made them about half drunk. The old woman got mad over this, and she was more angry than ever when one of the guards refused to get her a pail of water from a neighboring spring. 'I'll get the water, mother,' says I, bowing low to her, and would you believe it,