As soon as our adventurers had gained a wood, at the distance of about half a mile, the sergeant relaxed his speed, and advanced at a pace a little above a walk.
"Andy," he said, "we have got rather a ticklish sort of a job before us, so I must give you your lesson, which you will understand better by knowing something of my plan. As soon as your mother told me that these thieving villains had left her house about fifteen minutes before the rain came on, and that they had gone along upon this road, I remembered the old field up here, and the little log hut in the middle of it; and it was natural to suppose that they had just got about near that hut when this rain came up; and then, it was the most supposable case in the world that they would naturally go into it, as the dryest place they could find. So now, you see, it's my calculation that the whole batch is there at this very point of time. We will go slowly along, until we get to the other end of this wood, in sight of the old field, and then, if there is no one on the lookout, we will open our first trench; you know what that means, Andy?"
"It means, I s pose, that we'll go right smack at them," replied Andrew.
"Pretty exactly," said the sergeant. "But listen to me. Just at the edge of the woods you will have to get down and put yourself behind a tree. I'll ride forward, as if I had a whole troop at my heels, and if I catch them, as I expect, they will have a little fire kindled, and, as likely as not, they'll be cooking some of your mother's fowls."
"Yes, I understand," said the boy eagerly,—
"No, you don't," replied Horseshoe, "but you will when you hear what I am going to say. If I get at them onawares, they'll be mighty apt to think they are surrounded, and will bellow, like fine fellows, for quarter. And thereupon, Andy, I'll cry out 'stand fast,' as if I was speaking to my own men, and
