There were a good many
holes to be patched in the roof where the shingles had been blown
off, and numerous others to be boarded up in the walls where the
chinking had fallen out, and the afternoon was half gone before their
work was done. They still had time to visit their traps, but all the
birds they took out of them could have been counted on the fingers of
one hand. Bob looked at them a moment, then thought of the big box
full he had seen Don and Bert take home that morning, and grew very
angry over his ill luck. He proposed to wring the necks of the
captives and have them served up for breakfast the next morning, but
Lester would not consent. Every one helped, he said, and these five
birds, added to the forty or fifty they were to steal that night,
would make a good start toward the fifty dozen they wanted.
After the boys had eaten supper, they secured four meal bags, which
they hid away in a fence corner, so that they could find them again
when they wanted them, and then adjourned to the wagon-shed to lay
their plans for the night's campaign. Of course their expedition
could not be undertaken until everybody about the General's
plantation was abed and asleep. That would not be before ten or
twelve o'clock--the negroes kept late hours since they gained their
freedom, Bob said--and they dared not go to sleep for fear that they
would not awake again before morning.
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