Two Little Confederates by Thomas Nelson Page

The next day was Sunday. The General and Hugh had but one day to stay. / They were to leave at daybreak the following morning. They thoroughly / enjoyed their holiday; at least the boys knew that Hugh did. They had / never known him so affable with them. They did not see much of the / General, after breakfast. He seemed to like to stay "stuck up in the / house" all the time, talking to Cousin Belle; the boys thought this / due to his lameness. Something had occurred, the boys didn't / understand just what; but the General was on an entirely new footing / with all of them, and their Cousin Belle was in some way concerned in / the change. She did not any longer run from the General, and it seemed / to them as though everyone acted as if he belonged to her. The boys / did not altogether like the state of affairs. That afternoon, however, / he and their Cousin Belle let the boys go out walking with them, and / he was just as hearty as he could be; he made them tell him all about / capturing the deserter, and about catching the hogs, and everything / they did.

They told him all about their "Robbers' Cave," down in the / woods near where an old house had stood. It was between two ravines / near a spring they had found. They had fixed up the "cave" with boards / and old pieces of carpet "and everything," and they told him, as a / secret, how to get to it through the pines without leaving a trail. He / had to give the holy pledge of the "Brotherhood" before this could be / divulged to him; but he took it with a solemnity which made the boys / almost forgive the presence of their Cousin Belle. It was a little / awkward at first that she was present; but as the "Constitution" / provided only as to admitting men to the mystic knowledge, saying / nothing about women, this difficulty was, on the General's suggestion, / passed over, and the boys fully explained the location of the spot, / and how to get there by turning off abruptly from the path through the / big woods right at the pine thicket, -- and all the rest of the way.