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CASTLEMON'S WAR SERIES.

MARCY, THE REFUGEE

BY

HARRY CASTLEMON,

AUTHOR OF "GUNBOAT SERIES," "ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES," "SPORTSMAN'S CLUB SERIES," ETC., ETC.

Four Illustrations by Geo. G. White.

PHILADELPHIA:

PORTER & COATES.

COPYRIGHT, 1892,

BY PORTER & COATES.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. WHAT BROUGHT BEARDSLEY HOME, 1 II. ALLISON IS SURPRISED, 23 III. THE NEIGHBORHOOD GOSSIP, 42 IV. VISITORS IN PLENTY, 66 V. MARCY'S RASH WISH, 92 VI. THE WISH GRATIFIED, 116 VII. MARCY SPEAKS HIS MIND, 140 VIII. THE ARRIVAL OF THE FLEET, 164 IX. LOOKING FOR A PILOT, 190 X. BEARDSLEY IN TROUBLE, 214 XI. MARCY IN ACTION, 239 XII. HOME AGAIN, 264 XIII. A REBEL SOLDIER SPEAKS, 287 XIV. A YANKEE SCOUTING PARTY, 310 XV. MARCY SEES SOMEBODY, 340 XVI. A FRIEND IN GRAY, 361 XVII. MARCY TAKES TO THE SWAMP, 385 XVIII. CONCLUSION, 406

MARCY, THE REFUGEE.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT BROUGHT BEARDSLEY HOME.

In this story we take up once more the history of the exploits and adventures of our Union hero Marcy Gray, the North Carolina boy, who tried so hard and so unsuccessfully to be "True to his Colors." Marcy, as we know, was loyal to the old flag but he had had few opportunities to prove it, until he took his brother, Sailor Jack, out to the Federal blockading fleet in his little schooner Fairy Belle, to give him a chance to enlist in the navy. That was by far the most dangerous undertaking in which Marcy had ever engaged, and at the time of which we write, he had not seen the beginning of the trouble it was destined to bring him. Not only was he liable to be overhauled by the Confederates when he attempted to pass their forts at Plymouth and Roanoke Island, but he was in danger of being shot to pieces by the watchful steam launches of the Union fleet that had of late taken to patrolling the coast. But he came through without any very serious mishaps, and returned to his home to find the plantation in an uproar, and his mother in a most anxious frame of mind.

Although Marcy Gray was a good pilot for that part of the coast, and knew all its little bays and out-of-the-way inlets as well as he knew the road from his home to the post-office, his older brother Jack was the real sailor of the family. He made his living on the water. At the time we first brought him to the notice of the reader he had been at sea for more than two years, and it was while he was on his way home that his vessel, the Sabine, fell into the hands of Captain Semmes, who had just begun his piratical career in the Confederate steamer Sumter. But, fortunately for Jack, Semmes was not as vigilant in those days as he afterward became. He gave the Sabine's crew an opportunity to recapture their vessel and escape from his power, and they were prompt to improve it. By the most skilful manoeuvring, and without firing a shot, they made prisoners of the prize crew that Semmes had put on board the Sabine, turned them over to the Union naval authorities at Key West, and took their vessel to a Northern port. On the way to Boston, and while she was off the coast of North Carolina, the brig was pursued and fired at by a little schooner which turned out to be Captain Beardsley's privateer Osprey, on which Marcy Gray was serving in the capacity of pilot.

When Jack Gray found himself in Boston, the first thing he thought of was getting home. The Potomac being closely guarded against mail-carriers and smugglers who, in spite of all the precautions taken against them, continued to pass freely, and almost without detection, between the lines as long as the war lasted, the only plan he could pursue was to go by water. Being intensely loyal himself, Jack never dreamed that Northern men would be guilty of loading vessels to run the blockade, but there was at least one such craft in Boston—the West Wind; and through the good offices of his old commander, the captain of the Sabine, Jack Gray was shipped on board of her as second mate and pilot. Her cargo was duly consigned to some house in Havana, but the owners meant that it should be sold in Newbern; and there were scattered about among the bales and boxes in her hold, a good many packages that would have brought the vessel and all connected with her into serious trouble, if they had been discovered by the custom-house officers.

When the West Wind was a short distance out from Boston, the second mate learned by accident that one of his best foremast hands was also bound for his home in North Carolina. His name was Aleck Webster, and his father lived on a small plantation which was not more than an hour's ride from Nashville. Being a poor man Mr. Webster did not stand very high in the estimation of his rich neighbors, but that made no sort of difference to Jack Gray, and a warm and lasting friendship at once sprung up between officer and man. Although they belonged to a vessel that was fitted out to run the blockade they were both strong for the Union, and many an hour of the mid-watch did they while away in talking over the situation. All they knew about their friends at home was that they were opposed to secession; but they dared not say so, because they were surrounded by rebels who would have been glad of an excuse to burn them out of house and home. The two friends got angry as often as they talked of these things, but of course they could not decide upon a plan of operations until they had been at home long enough to "see how the wind set," and "how the land lay." We have told what they did when they got ashore. When they were paid off and discharged in Newborn they made their way home by different routes, Jack arousing his brother in the dead of the night by tossing pebbles against his bedroom window, and afterward going off to the Federal fleet to enlist under the flag he believed in. Aleck Webster remained ashore for a longer time; and finding that his father belonged to an organized band of Union men who held secret meetings in the swamp, and whose object it was to oppose the tactics pursued by their rebel neighbors, he joined his fortunes with theirs, and went to work with such energy that in less that two weeks' time he had the settlement in such a panic that its prominent citizens thought seriously of calling upon the garrison at Plymouth for protection.

It was Mrs. Gray's misfortune to have many secret enemies about her, and the meanest and most dangerous among them were Lon Beardsley, who lived on an adjoining plantation, and was the owner and captain of the schooner to which Marcy belonged, and her overseer, whose name was Hanson. Beardsley's enmity was purely personal; but with Hanson it was a matter of dollars and cents. The captain took Marcy to sea against his will, because he wanted to persecute his mother; while the overseer was working for the large reward Colonel Shelby had promised to give if Hanson would bring him positive information that Mrs. Gray was in reality the Union woman she was supposed to be, and that she had money concealed in her house. When Sailor Jack had been at home long enough to find out how and by whom his mother was being persecuted, he told Aleck Webster about it, and the latter stopped it so quickly that everybody was astonished, and the guilty ones alarmed.

While Marcy was gone to take his brother out to the fleet, a very strange and startling incident happened on Mrs. Gray's plantation. Sailor Jack had predicted that the morning was coming when the negroes would not hear the horn blown to call them to their work, for the very good reason that there would be no overseer on the plantation to blow it, and his prediction had been verified. One dark night, just after Marcy and Jack set out on their perilous voyage, a band of masked men came to the plantation, took Hanson, the overseer, out of his house and carried him away. Where he was now none could tell for certain; but Marcy had heard from Aleck Webster that he had been "turned loose with orders never to show his face in the settlement again." Perhaps he had gone for good; but the fear that he might some day come back to trouble her caused Mrs. Gray no little uneasiness.

While every one else in the settlement was so excited and uneasy, and wondering what other mysterious things were about to happen, Marcy Gray was as calm as a summer's morning. To use his own words, he was "getting ready to settle down to business." The overseer being gone, there was no one but himself left to manage the plantation; and he was glad to have the responsibility, for it gave him something to occupy his mind. When Aleck Webster told him that Hanson would not trouble him or his mother any more, he had also given him the assurance that he would never again be obliged to go to sea as Captain Beardsley's pilot. There was a world of comfort in the words, and Marcy hoped the man knew what he was promising when he uttered them; but he thought he would feel more at his ease when he saw Beardsley's schooner at her moorings in the creek, and Beardsley himself at work in the field with his negroes.

On the morning of the day on which our story begins, the leaden clouds hung low, and the piercing wind which came off the Sound, bringing with it occasional dashes of rain, and scattering the few remaining leaves the early frosts had left upon the trees, seemed to cause no little discomfort to the young horseman who was riding along the road that led from his father's plantation to the village of Nashville. He had turned the collar of his heavy coat about his ears, dropped the reins upon his horse's neck, and buried his hands deep in his pockets. It was Tom Allison, the boastful young rebel whom Marcy Gray, then the newly appointed pilot of Captain Beardsley's privateer schooner, had once rebuked and silenced in the presence of a room full of secession sympathizers.

Allison was on his way to the post-office after the mail, and to listen to any little items of news which the idlers he was sure to find there might have picked up since he last saw them; and, as he rode, he thought about some things that puzzled him. He went over the events that had taken place along the coast during the last few months, beginning with the bombardment and capture of forts Hatteras and Clark, and ending with the Confederate occupation of Roanoke Island, and he was obliged to confess to himself that things did not look as bright for the South now, as they did after that glorious victory at Bull Run. Finally, he thought of the incidents that had lately happened in his own neighborhood, and in which some of his acquaintances and friends were personally interested. In fact he was deeply interested in them himself, and would have given any article of value he owned for the privilege of holding five minutes' conversation with some one who could tell him what had become of Jack Gray and Hanson.

"I can tell you in few words what I think about it," said Tom to himself. "There's more behind the disappearance of those two fellows than the men folks around here are willing to acknowledge. That's what I think. I notice that Shelby, Dillon, and the postmaster don't talk quite as much nor as loudly as they did before Hanson and Gray left so suddenly, and when I ask father what he thinks of it, he shakes his head and looks troubled; and that's all I can get out of him. They are frightened, the whole gang of them; and to my mind we would all be safer if that Gray family was burned out and driven from the country. They know everything that is said about them, and it beats me where they get the news. The settlement is full of traitors, and probably I meet and speak to some of them every day."

While Allison was talking to himself in this strain his nag brought him to a cross-road, and almost to the side of another horseman who, like himself, was riding in the direction of Nashville. The two pulled their collars down from their faces, raised their hats, and looked at each other; and then Allison was surprised to find that he was in the company of Lon Beardsley, the privateersman and blockade runner. There had been a time when he would not have noticed the man any further than to give him a slight nod or a civil word or two, for he was the son of a wealthy planter, and thought himself better than one who had often been seen working in the field with his negroes. There used to be a wide gulf between such people in the South. For example, N. B. Forrest was not recognized socially while he was a civilian and made the most of his money by buying and selling men and women whose skins were darker than his own, but General Forrest, the man who massacred Union soldiers at Fort Pillow and took their commander, Major Bradford, into the woods and shot him after he had surrendered himself a prisoner of war, was held in high esteem. To Allison's mind, Captain Beardsley, who had smelled Yankee powder and run two cargoes of contraband goods safely through the blockade, was more worthy of respect than Lon Beardsley the smuggler, and he was willing to gain his good-will now if he could, for he believed the captain had it in his power to punish Marcy Gray—the boy who had dared to taunt Allison with being a coward because he did not shoulder a musket and go into the army.

"Why, captain, I thought you were miles away and making money hand over fist by running the blockade," said Allison, with an awkward flourish which was intended for a military salute. "I hope when you go out again you will be sure and take that so-called pilot of yours with you, for we don't want him hanging about here any longer. I don't believe his arm is so very badly hurt, and neither does anybody else. I am glad to see you back safe and sound. When did you get in?"

"In where?" said Beardsley gruffly; and then the boy saw that he was in bad humor about something.

"Into Newbern, of course. And when and how did you come up here?"

"I came up last night in the Hattie."

"You did? You don't mean to say that your schooner is in the creek, do you?" exclaimed Allison, who was surprised to hear it. "You did not do a very bright thing when you brought her there, for the first thing you know the Yankees will send some of their gunboats up to the island, and then you will be blocked in. I should think you would have stayed at Newbern, where you could run out and in as often as you felt like it."

"Don't you reckon I know my own affairs better'n you do?" snapped Beardsley. "I didn't quit a money-making business of my own free will and come home because I wanted to, but because I couldn't help myself."

"I don't understand you," answered Tom, who was all in the dark. "Our authorities didn't send you home, of course, and the Yankees couldn't. If your schooner is in good shape——"

"The Hattie is all right," said Beardsley, with a ring of pride in his tones. "She has been in some tight places, I can tell you, and if she hadn't showed herself to be just the sweetest, fastest thing of her inches that ever floated, I wouldn't be here talking to you now. And the Yankees did send me home too; or their friends did, which amounts to the same thing. What's become of Mrs. Gray's overseer, Hanson?"

"I can't make out what you mean, when you say that the Yankees or their friends sent you home," replied Allison. "We haven't heard of their making many captures along the coast lately."

"I dunno as it makes any sort of odds to me what you didn't hear. I know what I am talking about. What's happened to Hanson, I ask you?"

"How do you suppose I can tell? And if you only came home last night, how does it come that you know anything has happened to him?" inquired Tom, who thought he saw a chance to learn something. "I haven't seen that man Hanson for a long time."

"Nor me; but I know well enough that there's something went wrong with him," said Beardsley very decidedly. "I know that he was took out of his house at dead of night by a gang of men, that he was carried away, and that nobody ain't likely to see hide nor hair of him any more."

"That news is old, and I don't see why you should assume so mysterious an air in speaking of it," said Tom. "Your daughter has had time enough to tell you all about it since you came home."

"But I heard about it before I left Newbern."

"You did! Who told you?"

"Well, I heard all about it."

"What if you did? I don't see how Hanson's disappearance could interfere with your blockade-running."

"Mebbe you don't, but I do. If you had been in my place, and somebody had sent you a letter saying that if you didn't quit business and come home at once, some of your buildings would be burned up, what would you think then? Do you reckon it would bust up your blockade running or not?"

"Do you pretend to tell me that you received such a letter?" cried
Allison, who could scarcely believe his ears.

"That is just what I pretend to tell you—no less," answered the captain, tapping the breast of his coat as if to say that he could prove his words if necessary.

"Why—why, who could have sent it to you? Who do you think wrote it?"

"You tell. I don't know the first thing about it; I wish I did. I am here now, and if I could only put my finger on the chap who caused me all this bother, I'd fix him."

"Would you bushwhack him?" inquired Allison, wondering if there was any way in which he could prevail upon Beardsley to show him that letter.

"No; but I would put the authorities on to him tolerable sudden and have him forced into the army. Because why, I am scart of that chap myself. He's hanging around here now, waiting for a good chance to do some more meanness."

"You don't say!" exclaimed Tom, growing frightened. "He ought to be got rid of. But who is he? Is there any one about here that you know of who has reason to be down on you? Any one besides the Grays, I mean?"

Beardsley dropped his reins, pulled the collar of his coat down from his face with both hands, and looked hard at his companion.

"Why, of course the Grays are down on you heavy, and all your friends and mine know it," continued Tom. "You know it, don't you?"

"There, now!" exclaimed the captain, rearranging his collar and picking up his reins again. "I never once thought of blaming it on that there Marcy."

"I don't blame it on him, and I don't want you to think so for a moment," said Tom, who had not yet arrived at the point of being confidential with Beardsley. "I never hinted that Marcy wrote the letter; but just look at the way the thing stands. A man who knows as much about this coast as you do never wanted a pilot, but you did want to marry Mrs. Gray's plantation; and when she gave you to understand that she wouldn't have it so——"

"See here, young feller, you're going too fur," cried the captain, pulling his collar down with one hand and shaking his whip threateningly at Allison with the other. "You don't know what you're talking about, and I won't hear another word of it."

"What's the use of getting mad because somebody tells you the truth?" demanded Tom. "Every one says so, and what every one holds to can't be so very far wrong. You know you don't need a pilot, and I know it too. You have nothing against Marcy Gray personally——"

"I ain't, hey?" shouted the angry captain. "He's just the biggest kind of a traitor that ever——"

"That isn't what I am trying to get at, and you know it," interrupted Tom. "You want to hurt him and his mother by taking him to sea against his will and hers. Now if you were in Marcy's place, and knew all these things, as he most likely does, and you saw a good chance to get even with the man who was persecuting you, would you let that chance slip? I reckon not."

"But if it's Marcy who has been a-pestering of me, how can I prove it on him?" inquired Beardsley, who was as angry as Allison had ever known him to be.

"Let me see the letter," replied Tom.

"No, I reckon not. What do you want to see it fur?"

"I can tell you whether or not Marcy Gray wrote it, for I know his hand as well as I know my own."

Beardsley hesitated. Ever since the morning he took the letter in question from the office in Newbern, he had been burning with anxiety and impatience to find out whom he had to thank for sending it to him, and he was now on his way to call upon his friends Shelby and Dillon to see if they could not put him on the track of the writer. He wanted to ask them what they thought of the whole miserable business any way, and did not care to show the letter until he heard what they had to say about it.

"I know the handwriting of every man and boy in this settlement," continued Allison, "and if I can't tell you who wrote it no one can; not even the postmaster."

This settled the matter, to Allison's satisfaction. The captain opened his coat and drew out the letter, which was written in a hand that was plainly disguised, for the same characters were not formed twice alike. It was not very long, but it was to the point, and ran as follows:

This is to inform you that you have spent jes time enough in persecuting Union folks in this settlement on account of them not beleeving as you rebbels do, and likewise time enough in cheeting the government by bringing contraband goods through the blockade. And this is to inform you that if you do not immediately upon resep of this stop your disloyal practices and come home at once, you will not find as many buildings standing, when you do come, as you have got standing now at this present time of writing. And this is likewise to inform you that the first proof that we mean jes what we say, you will get in a letter from your folks, who will tell you that a letter something like this was found on the front gallery of your house on a certain night, and that a lot of dry weeds and stuff was likewise found piled against the back of said house. Proof number 2 will be in the same letter, which will tell you that Mrs. Gray's overseer has been toted away by armed men, and that he won't never be seen in this settlement again. For every day you delay in coming home immediately after this letter has had time to reach you in Newbern, you will loose a building of some kind or sort, beginning with the house you live in. This is from those who believe in defending the wemen and children you rebbels are making war on, and so we sign ourselves, THE PERTECTORS OF THE HELPLESS.

"Marcy Gray never had a hand in getting up this letter, more's the pity," thought Tom, as he again ran his eye over the plainly written lines in the hope of finding something that would give him an excuse for saying that Marcy did write it. "Look at the spelling and the bungling language! Marcy couldn't do that if he tried."

"Well, what do you reckon you make of it?" demanded the captain.

"It's perfectly scandalous the most outrageous thing I ever heard of!" exclaimed Allison. "Just think of the impudence this fellow shows in ordering you—ordering, I say——"

"Oh, there's more'n one feller mixed up in it," said Beardsley, with a groan.

"Perhaps there is, and then again, perhaps there isn't," replied Tom. "Couldn't I write a letter and sign a hundred names to it, if I wanted to? I say it is a burning shame that good and loyal Confederates should submit to be ordered about in this way, and you were foolish for paying the least attention to it. You ought to have gone on with your business and come home when you got ready."

Beardsley turned down the collar of his coat, threw his left leg over the horn of his saddle, and shook his whip at Allison as if he were about to say something impressive.

CHAPTER II.

ALLISON IS SURPRISED.

"Oh, I mean it," said Tom, and one would have thought by the way he shook his head and frowned and made his riding-whip whistle through the air, that it would be useless for anybody to try to order him around. "Just try me and see; that's all."

"And if you had been in my place you wouldn't have come home till you got good and ready?" said Beardsley.

"You bet I wouldn't. I wouldn't be guilty of setting such an example to the timid ones at home. This is the time when every man——"

"How many buildings have you got in this part of the country?" inquired the captain, shutting his right eye and laying his finger by the side of his nose. "Have you forgot the men who took Hanson away in the night, and piled up those weeds and stuff up agin my house?"

"Well, that's so; but still I don't think they would have been bold enough to do anything to you. You are a wealthy planter, while Hanson was nothing but a common overseer, without a friend or relative in the world so far as any one knows. Did you receive the proofs this letter speaks of?"

"You bet I did," answered Beardsley, shaking his whip in the air. "My daughter got old Miss Brown to write to me just as them Pertectors of the Helpless—dog-gone the last one of 'em—said she would, and sure as you live she found another letter on the gallery, and a whole passel of stuff piled up agin the house, ready to be touched off with a match; and the very same night Mrs. Gray's overseer was carried away. When she told me all them things and begged me to come home I thought I had best come. But I don't mean to let the matter drop here, tell your folks. The fellers who wrote that letter must be hunted down and whopped like they was niggers. Did Marcy Gray do it?"

"I can't swear that he didn't," replied Tom guardedly. "But if he did, he disguised his hand so that I do not recognize it. I can't find the first letter in it that looks like Marcy's work."

Beardsley seemed disappointed as he returned the letter to his pocket and buttoned his coat, and Tom Allison certainly was. Two or three times it was on the end of his tongue to declare that Marcy was the guilty one, but he lacked the courage. He was afraid of the mysterious men who had begun to carry things with so high a hand in the settlement, for he did not know how soon they might turn their attention to him or to his father's property.

"Marcy is quite mean enough to do a thing of that kind, hoping to bring you home so that you would not take him to sea any more," said Tom, who could not resist the longing he had to say something that would lead Beardsley to declare war upon the boy who had served as his pilot. "He may have written the letter, but he could not have piled that light stuff against your house, for he was not at home when the thing happened. Has it struck you that the work must have been done by some one who belongs on your plantation? Your dogs would have raised a terrible racket if a stranger——"

"No, it wasn't," said Beardsley earnestly. "The dogs made furse enough that night to wake up everybody in Nashville; but they didn't none of 'em do nothing, and that shows that they were afraid of the crowd that was there. My folks was that scared that they dassent none of 'em look out of the winder; but the next morning the letter that was put on the gallery and the stuff to burn the house was both there."

"It's very strange that I never heard of it before," said Tom, who could not help telling himself that the recital made him feel very uncomfortable. "It's just awful that things like these can go on in the settlement and nobody be punished for them."

"Well, it ain't so strange that you didn't hear of it, when you bear in mind that my folks didn't say much about it for fear that they might speak to the wrong person," said Beardsley. "I reckon it was done by the same fellers who took Hanson away to the swamp. Ain't nary idee who they were, have you?"

"Nary an idea. I wish I had, so that I could expose them. Why, just think of it, captain! If things like these are allowed to go on, who is safe? How do we know but you or I may be marched off in the same way some dark night?"

"I don't know it, and that's just what's a-troubling of me," said Beardsley, groaning again and rubbing his gloved hands nervously together. "Such doings is too shameful to be bore any longer. There's a heap of traitors right here amongst us, and I don't see how we are going to get shet of 'em."

"That's the thought that was running in my mind when I met you," said
Tom savagely. "I know who some of the traitors are, but the truth is,
they are so cunning you can't prove the first thing against them.
There's that Marcy Gray for one."

"Say!" whispered Beardsley, reining his horse a little closer to Tom's and tapping the boy's shoulder with his riding-whip, "you have hit the very identical idee I have had in my mind for a long time. If Marcy ain't a traitor, what's him and his mother keeping that money of theirn stowed away so quiet for?"

"Say!" whispered Allison in his turn, at the same time laying the handle of his own whip lightly upon the captain's knee, "that is something I have thought about more times than I can remember. If they haven't got money, and plenty of it, hidden somewhere, I am mistaken. You know that before Marcy came home from school his mother made a good many trips to Richmond, Newbern, and Wilmington; and everybody says those trips were not made solely for the purpose of buying supplies for the plantation."

"I know it," assented Beardsley.

"When Mrs. Gray came home she made a big show of parading all her niggers in bran' new suits of clothes," continued Allison. "But she did not have to go to three cities to buy the cloth those clothes were made of, did she? She's got money, and I am sure of it."

"I know it," said Beardsley again. "I tried my best to make Marcy say so, but he was too sharp for me. You see his share of the prize-money the Hollins sold for amounted to seventeen hunderd dollars."

"Great Moses!" ejaculated Tom. "What a plum for that traitor to put into his pocket! I wish I had it. But he told me he was to get eight hundred and fifty dollars."

"P'raps he did, for that was what the foremast hands got; but I promised to give Marcy more for acting as pilot and I done it, consarn my fule pictur'! I wanted to get on the blind side of him, so't he would sorter confide in me for a friend, don't you see? But I didn't make it. That boy might have cleared five thousand dollars if he had took out a venture the first time we run the blockade, but he wouldn't do it for fear he might lose the money. He said he might want to use them seventeen hunderd before the war was over."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Tom.

"That's what I thought," replied Beardsley.

"Seventeen hundred dollars are not a drop in the bucket to the sum he and his mother have on hand at this moment, and I'll bet on it," added Tom. "They've got thousands, and I wish I could have the handling of some of it."

That was what Captain Beardsley wished; but the trouble was he did not know where the money was concealed, or just how to go to work to get hold of it. He had a partly formed plan in his head, but he did not think that it would be quite safe to let Tom into the secret of it. At any rate, he would tell all his news first, and think about that afterward.

"That boy Marcy is a plum dunce to act the way he is doing now," said the captain, after a little pause. "If he would go into our navy, and this war should happen to last a year or so longer, he would make a big officer of himself."

"It won't last six months longer," said Allison confidently. "The Yankees can't stand more than one Bull Run drubbing. But tell me honestly, captain: Did Gray really show pluck on the night he got that broken arm?"

"He did for a fact," replied Beardsley. "He stood up to the rack like a man, and took the schooner through the inlet with that arm hanging by his side as limp as a dish-rag. I'm free to say it, though I ain't no friend of his'n."

"I am sorry you said it in the letters you wrote home to Shelby and Dillon. I wish that splinter, or whatever it was, had hit his head instead of his arm, for he carries himself altogether too stiff-legged on the strength of it. If he had whipped the whole Yankee fleet he could not throw on more airs. But why do you say he could win promotion by enlisting in our navy? Do you think he would go among the Federals if he wasn't afraid?"

"That's where he would go if it wasn't for his mother. It's where his brother Jack is at this minute."

"Captain," said Tom impressively, "you and I ought to be the very best of friends, for we think alike on a good many points. Somebody, I don't know who it was, gave it out through the settlement that Jack Gray went to Newbern to ship on a Confederate iron-clad; but I didn't believe it, and I don't think so now. If he and Marcy wanted to go to Newbern they would have gone by rail, wouldn't they? Instead of that they went in Marcy's schooner."

"I don't care what anybody has give out or what anybody thinks," said Beardsley doggedly. "I know what I know, and believe what I have seen with my own two eyes, don't I? While I was standing into Crooked Inlet on my way—say! I don't know as I had best tell you what I seen with my own two eyes."

"Why not?" demanded Allison, who was sure he was about to hear some exciting news. "You have already told me more than you had any business to tell, if you don't think I can keep a secret."

"Well, that there is a fact. Look a-here. I aint said a word to nobody about this, and you mustn't let on that I told you; but while I was running into Crooked Inlet on my way home from the last trip I made to Nassau, I didn't see the steam launch that I was afraid might be waiting there for me, but I did see Marcy Gray's schooner."

"Isn't that what I said?" exclaimed Tom gleefully. "What was Marcy
Gray's schooner doing outside, and in the night-time, too?"

"Hold on till I tell you how it was," replied the captain. "The first thing I see was that the schooner had been disguised, but that didn't by no means fool your uncle Lon. Them two boys, Marcy and Jack, had towed her through the inlet with their skiff and were just about to get aboard again and make sail, when I run on to 'em in the dark. I was that scared to see 'em that I couldn't move from my tracks, for a minute or two. I thought the Yankees had me sure."

"It almost takes my breath to have my suspicions confirmed in this way," said Tom. "Did you watch them to see where they went?"

"Listen at the fule!" exclaimed the captain, in a tone of disgust. "Not much, I didn't watch them boys. I had enough to do to mind my own business; and knowing what brung them outside at that time of night, didn't I know where they had started for without watching 'em? They didn't go nigh Newbern. They went straight out to the Yankee fleet, and there's where Jack Gray is, while me and you are riding along this road."

"Captain, I wouldn't have missed seeing you this morning for a bushel of money," declared Tom, whose first impulse was to whip up his horse and carry the joyful news to Nashville. "I've got a hold on Marcy Gray now that I shan't be slow to use."

"What are you going to do?" asked Beardsley anxiously.

"I'll let him know who he called a coward before a whole post-office full of people," said Allison savagely. "He will take that word back on his knees and do his best to make a friend of me, or I'll——"

"There, now!" cried Beardsley; and the tone in which he uttered the words was quite as savage as Tom's. "I knew well enough that I had no call to tell you all them things without first speaking to Shelby and Dillon about them."

"Of course I shall consult you, before doing or saying anything to Marcy," replied Tom, wishing he had net been so quick to speak the thoughts that were in his mind. "I don't want you to think that I am going to take these matters out of your hands, for I don't mean to do anything of the sort."

"You had better not. You are nothing but a boy, and you would be sure to make a mess of the whole thing if you tried it. Me and Shelby will deal with Marcy and his mother."

"I shall be satisfied, so long as you do something to him that he can feel. All I ask is to be around when it is done, so that I can see it. But you will have to be careful, captain. There are some about here who believe that the Grays are the best kind of Confederates."

"What makes them believe that when me and you know it aint so?"

"It's the way they worked things; and it was about the slickest scheme I ever heard of," replied Allison. "Why, captain, they ran down the river past Plymouth and Roanoke, with our flag flying from the Fairy Belle's masthead."

"Of all the imperdence! Where did they get a flag of our'n?"

"No one knows, unless Jack got it off the smuggler West Wind, that he piloted into Newbern. Anyhow he got it, and kept it hung upon the wall of his mother's house in plain sight of all who went there."

"It was nothing but a cheat and a swindle, I tell you," shouted the captain. "Both them boys is Union, and their mother is too. I'll fix 'em!"

"I say again that you had better be careful," cautioned Tom. "If it turns out that they are in favor of the South, you will burn your fingers if you touch them; and if they are Union, they have friends to watch over and see that no harm comes to them. Have you forgotten the men who carried Hanson away in the night?"

"No, I ain't; and that's what makes me so mad. We-uns about here can't do nothing with that money—— Say! mebbe I could tell you something else if you'll promise never to let on about it."

"All right. I never will," answered Allison, who was becoming impatient to hear all the man had on his mind. Nashville was in plain sight now, and of course there could be no more talking of this sort done after they got there. "Hold up a bit. Don't let your horse walk so fast."

"What I thought of saying to you is this," said Beardsley, once more sinking his voice to a whisper. "We-uns who live about here can't do nothing by ourselves, but we can hint—just hint, I say—to some outsiders that there's a pile of money in that there house of Mrs. Gray's that's to be had for the taking."

"Go on," said Tom, when Beardsley stopped and looked at him. "I am listening, but I don't catch your meaning."

"I could easy find half a dozen fellers right around here who would be up and doing mighty sudden if I should say that much in their private ears," continued the captain. "But mebbe that plan wouldn't work. I can't tell till I hear what Shelby thinks about it. But if it don't work, we might put the Richmond officers onto them."

"What good would that do? If there is money in Mrs. Gray's house the
Richmond authorities have no right to touch it."

"Aint they, now!" chuckled Beardsley. "Don't the law say that we-uns mustn't pay no debts to the Yankees, but must turn the money over to the fellers at Richmond?"

"But I am afraid Mrs. Gray doesn't owe any money to the Yankees."

"What's the odds whether you think so or not?" said the captain earnestly. "We can hint that she does, can't we? And can't we hint furder, that instead of turning that money over, like the law says she must do, she is keeping it hid for her own use!"

"Then why not make a sure thing of it by putting the government officers on the scent the first thing?"

"Because they won't divide, the officers won't. Don't you see? The other fellers will."

Tom Allison was astonished now, and no mistake. For a minute or two he looked hard at Beardsley, but he couldn't speak.

"What do you stare at me that-a-way for?" demanded the captain. "I don't see nothing so very amazing in what I said. Didn't you tell me a minute ago that you would like mighty well to have the handling of some of that there money?"

"Of course I did, and I say so yet; but I wouldn't dare touch it if it was got in that way. Don't misunderstand me now," said Allison, when he saw Beardsley gather up his reins and change his riding-whip to his right hand as if he were about to go on and leave Tom behind. "If you think it would be quite safe——"

"What other way is there to get it?" snarled Beardsley. "I wasn't joking. These here aint no times for joking, and I meant every word I said. Why aint it safe? The folks in the settlement are mostly our friends, and even if they knew that some of the money went into our pockets, they wouldn't say nothing about it."

"They would know it, and my father would say something to me, I bet you. But mind you," said Tom, as the two turned their horses toward the hitching-rack that stood across the street from the post-office, "if you and your friends think it can be done, I say go ahead and good luck to you. And if you make a success of it, as I hope you will, no one will hear from me that I knew a thing about it."

"And you won't let on about the other things I have told you?" said the captain, as he dismounted and spread a blanket over his horse. "I don't reckon I had oughter said so much. Mebbe Shelby won't like it."

"Will you tell me what he says after you have had a talk with him? Then you may depend upon me to keep a still tongue in my head. As for Shelby, I don't care whether he likes it or not. It is none of his business. I know, and have known for a long time, that he and his ring have some things in hand that they won't let me hear of, and I am as warm a friend to the South as they dare be, and just as ready to help her."

"But you see you're a boy; and some men don't like to take boys into their secrets," replied Beardsley.

"I know I am a boy, but all the same I am a wild horse in the cane and hard to curry. If Shelby and his gang don't pay a little more attention to me I will make them wish they had; and if Beardsley don't keep me posted in his plans, I'll knock them into the middle of next week. I'll find means to get Hanson's abductors after him. By George! That's an idea, and I'll think it over as I ride home."

So saying Tom Allison hitched his horse to one of the pins in the rack and followed Beardsley across the street toward the post-office.

CHAPTER III.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD GOSSIP.

The streets of Nashville were almost deserted, for the cold wind, aided by the driving rain that was falling steadily, had forced all the idlers to seek comfort within doors. The post-office was full of them, and when the captain walked in with Allison at his heels they greeted him boisterously, and asked more questions in a minute than he could answer in ten. First and foremost they wanted to know why Beardsley had come home so unexpectedly, but that was a matter he did not care to say much about. All they could get from him was that he had some important business to attend to.

"But of course you are going back again," said one. "I would if I had such a chance to make money as you have got. But perhaps you are rich enough already."

"Well, no; I don't reckon I'll ran the blockade any more," replied the captain. "My schooner is safe and sound now and I want to keep her that way. The Yankees are getting tolerable thick outside, and I don't care to have them run me down some dark night and slap me into one of their prisons."

There were at least a dozen persons in the post-office, besides Tom Allison, who knew that Beardsley had other and better reasons for quitting the profitable business in which he had been engaged, and three of them were Shelby, Dillon, and the postmaster. These men knew by the captain's manner, as well as by the way he looked at them now and then, that he had something of importance on his mind, and they left the store one after another, expecting Beardsley to follow and join them as soon as he could do so without arousing suspicion. A fourth man was Aleck Webster, who leaned carelessly against one of the counters and listened to what the captain had to say, although he did not seem to pay much attention to it. If Aleck had been so disposed he could have told Beardsley who wrote the letter that broke up his blockade running and brought him home so suddenly, and so could several other Union men who were in the office on this particular morning. They went there every day to hear their doings discussed; and it gave them no little satisfaction to learn that they had aroused a feeling of uneasiness and insecurity among the citizens which grew more intense as the days went by and nothing was heard from Hanson. Although Tom Allison knew nothing about the letter that had been left on Beardsley's porch until the latter told him, there were many in the settlement who knew about it and were wondering who could have put it there. The captain's negroes were the first to find it out, and Mrs. Brown, the neighborhood gossip who read the letter for Beardsley's daughter, was the second; and among them all they had managed to spread the story considerably.

Tom Allison was like Captain Beardsley in one respect—he could not keep a secret any longer than it took him to find some congenial spirit who was willing to share it with him. He was eager to tell all he knew, and sometimes he told a good deal more; consequently, the first thing he did after Beardsley received his mail and left the office to find the three men who had gone out a while before, was to give his particular friend and crony Mark Goodwin, a swaggering, boastful young rebel like himself, a wink and a nod that brought him across to Tom's side of the store.

"What is it, old fellow?" whispered Mark. "Your face is full of news."

"And so is my head," replied Tom. "I am loaded clear to the muzzle, and anxious to shoot myself off at your head. I am going to ride down to exchange a few yarns with Mrs. Brown; will you go along?"

"What's the use?" exclaimed Mark, looking through the moist windows into the street. "You won't get anything but lies out of her. And just see how it rains!"

"It doesn't rain to hurt anything, and we can't talk here," said Tom. "I don't care whether Mrs. Brown tells me the truth or not, so long as she will aid me in spreading a few items of news that came to my ears this morning. Better go, for I promise that I will surprise you. You know I rode down with Beardsley."

"And I rather wondered at it. I can remember when you used to speak of him in a way that was anything but complimentary. Did he tell you what brought him home?" said Mark, in a whisper. "Come along then. I am ready to be surprised."

The two boys mounted their horses and rode away through the driving rain, and as they rode, Tom Allison electrified his friend by making a clean breast of everything Beardsley had told him, and which he had promised to keep to himself; and observing that Mark was interested and excited by the narrative, Tom added to it a few details of his own invention. He declared that Hanson had told Beardsley, in confidence, that Mrs. Gray owed a big pile of money to Northern men, and instead of turning it over to the government, as the law provided, she was keeping it for her own use.

"And how does it come that Hanson could learn so much of Mrs. Gray's private affairs?" demanded Mark. "He didn't live in the house, but in the quarter with the niggers."

"Probably some of the house servants posted him," answered Tom. "You know that prying darkies sometimes find out a heap of things."

"That's so," assented Mark. "Tom, you have told me great news—Mrs. Gray with a gold mine hidden somewhere in her house, and Marcy taking his brother Jack out to the Yankee fleet to give him a chance to enlist under the old flag! What are we coming to? What are you going to do about it? You must have some plan in your head, or you wouldn't be going to see Mrs. Brown. You had better be careful what you say in the presence of that old witch, or she may get you into trouble."

"That is the very thing I wanted to talk to you about," replied Tom. "What do you think we ought to do? I don't know whether I have the straight of the story or not, but I am sure Mrs. Brown has, for Beardsley probably told her all about it as soon as he got home last night. That man can't keep a thing to himself to save his life. I thought it might be a good idea to see what Mrs. Brown thinks about it, and to ask her if there is any truth in the report that a band of men has been got together to rob Mrs. Gray's house."

"I will tell you one thing confidentially," said Mark. "If that part of the story isn't true, a few wags of Mrs. Brown's tongue will make it true. There are dozens of men right here in this country, and you and I are acquainted with some of them, who would jump down on that house this very night if they were sure they could make anything by it."

"I know that, but I don't care; do you? I always did despise those Grays, and now that they have shown themselves to be traitors, I say let them suffer for it. You heard Marcy tell me to put a uniform on before I presumed to speak to him again, didn't you?"

"Yes; and I heard his brother Jack call you a stay-at-home blow-hard. I looked for you to tackle the pair of them the moment they insulted you; but you surprised me and all the rest of your friends by keeping perfectly still," observed Mark, who knew well enough that Tom lacked the courage to "tackle" the brothers, either of whom could have tossed him half-way across the post-office without very much trouble.

"I was biding my time," replied Allison, making his riding-whip whistle viciously through the air just above his horse's ears. "It has come now, and if Marcy Gray doesn't take that insulting word back as publicly as he gave it to me——"

"Oh, you needn't look for him to do that. Marcy isn't that sort of a fellow."

"He'll wish he was that sort before I am done with him," said Tom, with spiteful emphasis. "That's one reason why I am going to see Mrs. Brown. I want her to spread it around that Marcy took Jack out to the blockading fleet."

"She is just the one to do it," said Mark, with a laugh. "And the way to make her go about it as though she meant business is to tell her your story under a pledge of secrecy."

"And there is another matter that I want to speak to you about," continued Tom. "What scheme have Shelby and Dillon and the postmaster and your father and mine got in hand that they take so much pains to keep from us boys?"

"I wish I knew," answered Mark, whose face showed that his companion's words had made him angry. "They talk about something or other as often as they get together, and if I take a step in their direction they either send me about my business, or stop talking. And I tell you I don't like to be treated that way."

"That is just the way they treat me, and I don't like it either," said
Tom. "More than that, I won't stand it."

"I don't see how you are going to help yourself."

"Perhaps you don't, but I think I do. Beardsley belongs to the ring, of course, and if he doesn't keep me posted in all their plans, I'll go to work to upset them."

"Why, Tom, are you crazy?" exclaimed Mark, who had never been more amazed.

"No; but I am mad clear through. I am not willing to go into the army unless I can have an office of some kind, but I am eager to fight traitors here at home; and if those men won't give me a chance to help them, I shall fight on my own hook."

"But how can you? And how will you go to work to upset their plans when you don't know what they are? You take a friend's advice and behave yourself. Why, Tom, I wouldn't willingly incur the enmity of the Union men about here for all the money there is in the State. They are too desperate a lot for me to fool with. Nobody knows for certain who they are, and that makes them all the more dangerous."

About this time the boys dismounted in front of Mrs. Brown's humble abode—a small log-cabin which Beardsley had built for her in the edge of a briar patch on his own plantation. That was the only neighborly act that anybody ever knew the captain to be guilty of; but then it was not entirely unselfish on his part. Beardsley received important letters now and then. He was not good at reading all sorts of writing, and when he came upon a sentence that he could not master, it was little trouble for him to run over to Mrs. Brown's cabin and ask her to decipher it for him. And—it is a remarkable thing to tell, but it is the truth—the contents of those letters were safe with Mrs. Brown. She would tell any and every thing else that came to her knowledge, no matter how it might hurt somebody, but who Beardsley's correspondents were and what they wrote about, no one could learn from her.

Having sheltered their horses in some fashion behind the cabin, the boys opened the door without knocking, and went in. There were two persons in the single room the cabin contained—a little, dried-up woman who sat in a low rocking-chair in front of the fire with a dingy snuff-stick between her toothless gums, and one of Beardsley's negro girls who had come over to "slick up things."

"How do you find yourself this fine morning, mother?" said Tom familiarly. "We thought we would drop in to warm by your comfortable blaze, and see if you are in need of any little things we can get for you. By the way," he added, putting his hand into his pocket, "it's a long time since I gave anything toward buying a jar of snuff. Take that till I come again."

"I see the captain has returned; and quite unexpectedly, too, I am told," said Mark, pulling off his dripping overcoat and hanging it upon a wooden peg in the chimney-corner. "I wish he might find the man who wrote him that threatening letter and broke up his business. I am sure he would make it warm for him."

"Every one of them triflin' hounds had oughter have a hickory wore out on their bare backs," said the old woman, in tones which sounded so nearly like the snarl of some wild animal that Tom Allison shuddered, although he had often heard her speak that way before.

"Do you know who they are?"

"Of course she knows who they are," exclaimed Mark. "The question is, is she at liberty to tell."

"Mebbe I know, an' mebbe I don't," said the woman, with a contortion of her wrinkled face that was intended for a wink and a smile. "I aint one of them folks who tells all they know. I am a master-hand to keep things to myself when they are told to me for a secret."

"Everybody knows that, and it is the reason why everybody is so willing to trust you," said Tom; and seeing that he had not given the old woman quite enough to loosen her tongue, he turned to Mark and added: "I was sure we would forget it, we are so careless. We came away from your house without ever once thinking of that side of bacon we were going to bring to Mrs. Brown."

"I knew we had forgotten something," said Mark regretfully, "and sure's you live that's it. But it will keep till we come again, won't it, mother? Who did you say wrote that letter?"

"You're very good boys to be always thinkin' of a poor crippled body like me, who can't get about to hear a bit of news on account of the pesky rheumatiz that bothers me night an' day," whined the old woman. "Now when I was a bright, lively young gal——"

"Did I understand you to say that Jack Gray had something to do with the abduction of his mother's overseer?" interrupted Mark, who knew it would never do to let the old woman get started on the story of her girlhood. "You astonish me; you do for a fact!"

"I disremember that I have spoke Jack Gray's name at all sense you two have been here," said Mrs. Brown cautiously.

"But you did, though. Didn't she, Tom?"

"I thought so, certainly; and I told myself at the time, that I did not see how Jack could have had any hand in Hanson's taking off, for I have heard that he was not at home when the thing was done."

"No more he wasn't to hum. He was on his way to jine the Yankee navy, dog-gone him an' them," snapped the woman, whose tongue was fairly loosened now. "But he left them behine who works as well fur him when he aint to hum as when he is."

"We know that very well," said Tom, who was surprised to hear it, "but we don't know for certain who they are. Mark, don't you see that Mrs. Brown is looking for her pipe?"

Mark hadn't noticed it, but all the same he hunted around on the mantel until he found the well-blackened corn-cob, but he could not bring himself to light it. He filled the bowl with some natural leaf he saw in a box and handed it to the woman, who set it going with the aid of a live coal which she took from the hearth in her bony fingers.

"You two aint furgot the stranger who popped up in Nashville all on a sudden like, about the time that Jack Gray came hum from Newbern, have you?" continued the old woman, after she had assured herself by a few long, audible puffs that her pipe was well lighted. "Lemme see if I have disremembered his name. No; sounds to me like it was Aleck Webster."

"Don't know him," said Tom, in a disappointed tone.

"I don't know him either," chimed in Mark, "but I have seen him. You know old man Webster, Tom, who lives about six miles down the main road. Well, Aleck is his son."

"Now I do think, in my soul," exclaimed Allison, "things have come to a pretty pass when Crackers like those Websters can throw a settlement like this into a panic, and order prominent and wealthy planters like Captain Beardsley to quit business and come home on penalty of being burned out in case of disobedience."

"You're mighty right," said Mrs. Brown, who was pleased to hear the captain called a prominent and wealthy planter. "Sich trash aint no call to live on this broad 'arth. They're wuss than the niggers, an' a heap lower down."

"But have you any evidence against the Websters?" inquired Mark.

"I've got a plenty. In the fust place they don't say nothing; an' folks as don't say nothing these times ain't fitten to live. Now is the day when every man oughter come out an' show their colors," said the woman, quoting from Beardsley.

"That means Marcy Gray," said Tom. "I wish I could see a gang of armed men take him out of the house and carry him off."

"He mustn't be teched," said the woman very decidedly.

"Who mustn't—Marcy?" exclaimed Tom and Mark in a breath. "Who said so?
What's the reason he mustn't be touched? He's a traitor."

"I don't know whether he is or not; but he mustn't be pestered.
Leastwise by folks living around here in the settlement."

Tom looked at Mark, and Mark looked about for a chair and sat down. Then they both looked at the old woman. This was something mysterious, and they wanted to have it explained.

"I aint got no more to say on that there p'int," said Mrs. Brown, her tone and manner showing that the question did not admit of argument. "He'll be teched fast enough when the time comes, Marcy Gray will, an' don't you furget to remember what I'm tellin' you. But them as goes for Marcy will be folks that can't be pestered by the men who toted Hanson off to the swamp."

"Ah! Now I see daylight," said Tom, with something that sounded like a sigh of relief. "I thought you meant that Marcy was to be left alone altogether for the reason that he was believed to be a good Confederate. And when these friends of ours, whoever they may be, go for him, I suppose they'll not neglect to look for the money that Mrs. Gray is known to have in her house?"

"I aint heared that anybody knows for sartin that the money is there," said Mrs. Brown. "Leastwise, they don't know it yit. There won't be nothing much done till that there is settled fur a fact."

"Then Marcy will never be molested," declared Tom, throwing a chip spitefully into the fire. "He can go out to the blockading fleet as often as he pleases and ship a dozen brothers in the Yankee navy if he wants to, and nothing will be done to him. If Jack Gray left men behind to work for him while he is at sea, Marcy must know who they are and where to find them, and he can set them on to Mark's father or mine whenever he feels like it. I'll touch him the first good chance I get, and don't you forget to remember that. He is a traitor, and I wouldn't let him alone if all the Captain Beardsleys in the country should say so. And how is any one to find out for certain that his mother has money concealed in her house? She isn't going to publish it to the world, is she?"

The longer Allison talked the more his anger rose, and when he got through he was stalking about the narrow limits of the cabin, shaking his fists over his head in the most frantic manner. The old woman waited patiently for him to sit down again, and then she took her pipe from her mouth long enough to say:

"Kelsey is out of a job jest now."

"That's no news. He's always that way. He won't work when he gets the chance. He would rather beg his living or steal it."

"I know that he's mighty shiftless an' triflin', but he's a tol'able overseer, Kelsey is, when he onct makes up his mine to do something," said the woman. "Now that Hanson has went off the Grays aint got nobody to boss the hands."

"The idea!" cried Tom, who began to "see daylight" once more. "Does Captain Beardsley labor under the delusion that Marcy Gray will hire that man Kelsey, who is next door to a fool, and allow him——"

"Yes, Kelsey is tol'able triflin', an' that there is a fact," interrupted the woman. "But he aint nobody's fule. He's as sly an ole fox as you can meet in a day's travel."

"Marcy Gray will not have him on the place, I tell you," said Tom. "And even if he should be dunce enough to hire him, how could Kelsey find out whether or not there was any money in the house? If the captain has anything against Kelsey, and wants him to disappear some dark night as Hanson did, he is taking the right course to bring it about. That's what will happen to Kelsey if he goes to work on that plantation, and I want you both to remember my words."

"And let me tell you another thing," added Mark. "No one man is going to find the hiding-place of that money if there is any about the house. When the building is down and the foundations are torn up, then it will be found, and not before."

"That there is a fact," observed the woman.

"Where do you think it is concealed, any way?" inquired Tom. "I had an idea that it might be buried in the garden."

"I am willing to bet my horse against your jack-knife that it isn't," replied Mark. "It is so close to the house that the family can keep an eye on all the approaches to it, and it is where fire can't touch it."

"Then it must be buried in the cellar," exclaimed Tom. "I declare! I believe you have hit the exact spot. I should like to be left alone in that place for about an hour with a shovel to work with. I would be rich when I came out."

"You jest keep away from that there suller," said the old woman sternly.
"Don't go nigh the house, nary one of you."

The two boys elevated their eye-brows and looked at each other, and it was as much as half a min ate before Mark Goodwin continued:

"You would be fooled if you looked anywhere but in the walls for it. So a shovel would be of no use to you. I have been in that cellar when Marcy and I were on better terms than we are now, and I know that the floor is laid in cement. It would be a job, I tell you, for a woman to dig it up and put it down again, and she couldn't do it so that the spot would not show itself to the first person who might happen to go in there."

"A woman!" exclaimed Allison.

"Yes, for a woman did the work," answered Mark, who could not have spoken with more confidence if he had been in Mrs. Gray's company on the night the thirty thousand dollars were concealed. "You know Marcy was not at home when his mother made those trips about the country."

"What of that? Didn't she take some of her old servants into her confidence?"

"No, sir. When people are trying to carry water on both shoulders as
Mrs. Gray is, they don't let one hand know what the other does."

"And I believe," said Allison, getting upon his feet again and walking about the cabin, "that if somebody should go for Mrs. Gray's coachman in the right way, he would find out all about it. But I say, Mark, it's time for us to be riding along. What shall we bring you when we come again, mother? Snuff and smoking tobacco are always acceptable, I suppose?"

"And don't forget to say that you haven't seen either one of us for more than a week," chimed in Mark. "Doings of some sort are liable to happen in the settlement at any hour of the day or night, and we don't want our names mixed up with them. We shall attend strictly to our own business, and hope that those ruffians who carried Hanson away will do the same."

"I am mighty glad to hear you say that, and I don't want you to disremember what I have tole you," answered the old woman, with some earnestness. "You aint to go a-pesterin' of Marcy Gray an' his maw, kase there is folks about here who won't by no means take it kind of you if you do."

The boys promised that they would bear her warning in mind, but Tom Allison told himself that he thought he should do as he pleased about heeding it. He was not obliged to consult anybody's wishes, in dealing with such a traitor as Marcy Gray had shown himself to be. He turned his back to the fire while Mark was putting on his overcoat, and just then a gentle snore reminded him that there was one person in the cabin whom he had forgotten. It was the negro girl who, having cleared away the late breakfast dishes and put the little furniture there was in the room to rights, had drawn a chair to the table and fallen fast asleep with her head resting on her folded arms. Tom took one look at her, and then he and Mark went out. Neither of them said a word, until they had mounted their horses and ridden into the road, and then Mark inquired:

"What do you know now more than you did when you came here? All I have learned is that Beardsley is afraid of Marcy Gray, and don't want anything to happen to him, if he can help it, for fear that the blame would be laid at his door. I tell you, Tom Allison, as long as those men who carried Hanson away are at large, we have got to look out what we say and do. It's an awful state of affairs, but that is the way it looks to me."

That was the way it looked to Tom also; and as he could not say anything encouraging, he held his peace, and rode on with his eyes fastened upon the horn of his saddle.

CHAPTER IV.

VISITORS IN PLENTY.

Although we have said that Marcy Gray appeared to be as calm as a summer's morning, he was not so in reality. He had the most disquieting reflections for company during every one of his waking hours, and they troubled him so that he found it next to impossible to concentrate his mind on anything. On this particular morning he felt so very gloomy that he did not ride his filly to town, as was his usual custom, but sent old Morris and a mule instead. What was the use of going to the post-office through all that rain just to listen to the idle boasts of a few stay-at-home rebels who could not or would not tell him a single reliable item of news? He and his mother had been talking over the situation—it was what they always talked about when they were alone—and the conclusion to which they came was, that their affairs could not go on in this way much longer, and that a change for better or worse was sure to come before many days more had passed away.

"I suppose our situation might be worse, but I can't see how," said Marcy, rising from his seat on the sofa and looking out at one of the streaming windows.

"Would it not be worse if we had no roof to shelter us in weather like this?" inquired Mrs. Gray.

"It would be bad for us if our house was burned, of course," answered Marcy. "But as for a roof, we shall always have that. If they turn us out of here we'll go to the quarters; and if they burn us out of there, we'll go into the woods and throw up a shanty. As long as they leave me or a single darky on the place the weather will never trouble you, mother."

"But I am afraid they will not leave you with me," replied Mrs. Gray. "You know that General Wise has asked the Richmond authorities to re-enforce him at Roanoke Island, and they have told him to re-enforce himself. You know what that means?"

"Yes; it means a general drumming up of recruits among the lukewarm rebels hereabouts. But it doesn't scare me. When I see such fellows as Allison, Goodwin, Shelby, and Dillon, and a dozen others I could mention, shoulder a musket and go to the defence of the Island, then I shall begin to worry about myself, and not before. Mother, Captain Beardsley and his friends will not permit me to be forced into the army, and neither will they let harm come to you, if they have influence enough to prevent it."

"Marcy, I am afraid you are placing too much reliance upon Aleck Webster and his friends," said his mother. "They have not brought Beardsley home yet. Suppose he has the courage to defy them?"

"But he hasn't," said the boy earnestly. "He hasn't had time to answer that letter yet, but he will do it, and he will answer it in person. I know he would have the courage to brave an open enemy, especially if he was driven into a corner and couldn't run, but it worries him, as it does everyone else, to have people work against him in secret. He will come home before he will allow his property to be destroyed, and Aleck assured me that if anything happens to us, Beardsley will have to stand punishment for it. But I do wish he had not caught Jack and me at Crooked Inlet. He will tell all about it the minute he gets home—he would die if he had to keep it to himself—and I am afraid the folks about here will do something to us in spite of all Beardsley and his friends can do to prevent it. I wonder where those two horsemen are going in such haste. Why, mother, they are rebel officers, and they are turning toward the gate. Yes, sir; they are coming in. Now what do you suppose they want here?"

This was a startling piece of news, and a question that Mrs. Gray could not answer. Although there were two garrisons within a few miles of the plantation, one being located at Plymouth and the other at Roanoke Island, Marcy and his mother seldom saw any soldiers, unless they happened to be neighbors who had enlisted, and come home on a few days' furlough. These furloughed men never came near the house, but rode by without looking at it; while the two men who were now approaching were headed straight for it, and their actions seemed to indicate that they had business with some member of the family. Marcy glanced at his mother's pale but resolute face, and then he looked up at the Confederate banner—the one Captain Semmes hoisted at the Sabine's peak when he put his prize crew aboard of her, and which Sailor Jack had captured and brought home with him. That flag had twice taken the little Fairy Belle in safety past the rebel fortifications down the river, and Marcy had great hopes of it now.

"It may not serve you this time as well as it did before," said his mother, who seemed to read the thoughts that were passing in his mind. "I was afraid you would miss it by passing those batteries in broad daylight, but I do not understand these things, and did not think it best to raise any objections to Jack's plans."

"Why, mother, we never could have run those works in the dark without being seen and fired at and perhaps sunk," replied Marcy. "The very impudence of the thing was what disarmed suspicion and saved us from being searched. We'll soon know the worst now, for here they are at the bottom of the steps. I shall ask them right in here."

So saying Marcy opened the door that gave entrance into the hall, and called for Julius to run around to the front door and take charge of a couple of horses he would find there, after which he stepped out upon the gallery just as the Confederates were getting ready to hail the house.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," said he. "Alight, and give your nags over to this boy."

The officers replied in courteous tones, and when they had ascended the steps to the gallery and turned down the wide collars of their gray overcoats, Marcy was somewhat relieved to find that they were both strangers, and that they did not look at him as though they had anything unpleasant to say to him.

"I am Captain Porter, at your service, and my friend here is Lieutenant Anderson; no relation, however, to the Yankee hero of Fort Sumter, who, so I am told, is about to be canonized by the Northern people," said the elder of the two; and then he waited a moment for his subordinate to laugh at his wit. "If you are Marcy Gray and the head man of the plantation, you are the man we are looking for. Who wouldn't be a soldier this fine weather? How is your arm coming on by this time?"

Marcy was beginning to feel a little at his ease in the presence of his unwelcome visitors, but this abrupt question aroused his fears on the instant. Did the captain know what was the matter with his arm? and if he did, which one of their gossiping neighbors told him about it? He was anxious to know, but afraid to ask.

"It is getting better every day, thank you," was his reply. "Will you not come and speak to my mother? Julius will put your horses under shelter."

"We are 'most too muddy to go into the presence of a lady," said the captain, looking down at his boots, "but as I don't want to blot my notebook by taking it out in the rain, I think we'll have to go in. We had a short but interesting chat with your captain a while ago."

"Beardsley?" Marcy almost gasped. "Has he got home?"

"Of course he has. You didn't think the Yankees had captured him, I hope. He gave us a good account of you, and since you can't run the blockade any more, I wish you would hurry up and get well so that you can join——"

Right here the captain stopped long enough to permit Marcy to introduce him and his lieutenant to Mrs. Gray. They sat down in the easy-chairs that were brought for them, made a few remarks about the weather, and then the captain resumed.

"Yes; we saw Beardsley this morning, and would have been glad to spend a longer time with him, but business prevented. He says you are a brave and skilful pilot, and I happen to know that they are the sort of men who are needed on our gunboats; but, of course, you can't go just now. Hallo!" exclaimed the captain, whose gaze had wandered to the rebel flag that hung upon the wall. "Where did you get that, if it is a fair question?"

"It is one my brother brought home with him," answered Marcy, speaking with a calmness that surprised himself. "He was second mate and pilot of the blockade runner West Wind that was fitted out and loaded in the port of Boston."

"Oh, yes; we heard all about him too," said the captain, and Marcy afterward confessed that the words frightened him out of a year's growth. "He went down to Newbern to ship on an ironclad he didn't find; so I suppose he went into the army, did he not?"

"Not that I know of," answered Marcy, looking first one officer and then the other squarely in the eye. "Almost the last thing I heard him say was, that he was going to ship on a war vessel."

"Then he will have to come back here to do it, for there is no ironclad building at Newbern, and I don't see why he did not ship with Commodore Lynch in the first place," said Captain Porter. "But doubtless he wanted to serve on deep water. Now to business. We want negroes to work on the fortifications on and about the Island, and Captain Beardsley sent us here to get some. He said he thought you might spare, say fifty or more."

Marcy was suspicious of everything Beardsley said and did, and wondered if this was a new move on the man's part to bring him and his mother into trouble with the Confederate authorities. If it was a trap Marcy did not fall into it.

"You can call on my mother for double that number," said he without an instant's hesitation. "We can't spare them, of course, for there's work enough to be done on the place; but all the same you will have to get them."

"All right," answered the captain, pulling out his notebook. "Send them down to Plymouth as soon as you can and in any way you please, and we will furnish them with transportation and take care of them after that. By the way, it's rather queer about that overseer of yours. Where do you imagine he is now?"

If Marcy had not been fully on the alert this question would have struck him dumb; but the captain, whose suspicions had not been in the least aroused, and who believed Marcy and his mother to be as good Confederates as he was himself, had unwittingly paved the way for it by talking so freely about Captain Beardsley.

"It was a very strange as well as a most alarming proceeding," admitted
Mrs. Gray, who thought it time for her to take part in the conversation.
"I have not yet fully recovered from the fright it gave me," she added,
with a smile, "and we have not the faintest idea where Hanson is now."

"What was Hanson anyhow? Which side was he on?"

"I don't know," replied Marcy. "Sometimes he claimed to be one thing, and then he claimed to be another."

"Captain Beardsley thinks he was in favor of the South."

"That proves my words, for he assured me that he was a Union man, and wanted to know if I was going to discharge him on account of his principles. I told him I was not, and added that if Shelby and Dillon and their friends wanted him driven from the place they could come up and do the work themselves, for I would have no hand in it. I desire to live in peace with all my neighbors."

"Oh, you can't do that, and it's no use to try," exclaimed the captain, getting upon his feet and buttoning his heavy coat. "Beyond a doubt your overseer was a Confederate in principle; and if that is so, his abductors must have been Union men. If Confederates had carried him away they would not hesitate to say so. Those Unionists must be your near neighbors, and if I were in your place, I should not show my colors quite so plainly," added the captain, pointing to the banner on the wall. "I am surprised to learn that there are so many traitors in my State, and we shall turn our attention to them as soon as we have beaten back the Yankee invaders of our soil."

"Do you think there will be any more fighting, captain?" asked Mrs. Gray anxiously.

"Yes, madam, I do. I am not one of those who believe that the North is going to be easily whipped. They do not belong to our race, I am glad to say, but they are a hardy, enduring people, and although they don't know how to fight they think they do, and they are going to give us a struggle. We must hold fast to Roanoke Island, for the possession of that important point would give the enemy a chance to operate in the rear of Norfolk. We expect to have a brush with them soon, and when it comes, we intend to make another Bull Run affair of it. I wish we could remain longer, but our duties call us away. I trust you will have those negroes down to us to-morrow."

Mrs. Gray replied that they should be sent without loss of time, and Marcy went out to tell Julius to bring up the horses. When he came back and followed the officers to the front door, he inquired if they had heard what Beardsley's reason was for quitting a profitable business and coming home so unexpectedly.

"Oh, yes; Beardsley told us all about it. He said he was afraid of the Yankees, and he didn't act as though he was ashamed to confess it. Their cruisers are getting so thick along the coast that a sailing vessel stands no chance. I asked him if he was going to enlist and he thought not. He wants to do his fighting on the water."

"He wants to do his fighting with his mouth," was what Marcy said to himself. "He will neither enlist nor ship; but he will stay at home and try by all the mean arts that he is master of to keep mother and me in trouble." Then aloud he said: "I am glad he came home, for it lets me out of the service. I have no desire to face any more steam launches that carry howitzers."

"I suppose not," said the captain, giving Marcy's hand a hearty farewell shake. "The more I see of those people the less I like to face them in battle. I hope you will soon have the use of your arm again, and that I shall see you by my side fighting for the glorious cause of Southern independence. Good-by."

The two officers mounted and rode away, Marcy remained upon the gallery long enough to wave his hand to them as they passed through the gate, and then he went into the house and to the room in which he had left his mother.

"What did I tell you?" were the first words he uttered. "Didn't I say that Beardsley would not let harm come to us if he could help it? I tell you, mother, he is afraid of the men who carried Hanson away and ordered him to come home."

"Well, then, is he not aware that we are looking to those same men for protection?" inquired Mrs. Gray.

"If he doesn't know it he suspects it pretty strongly. Aleck Webster told me that Beardsley had been warned to cease persecuting Union people in this settlement. That includes you and me, for the minute Beardsley saw and recognized my schooner in Crooked Inlet, that very minute he knew where to place us. He knows where Jack is now as well as we know it ourselves."

"And will he not tell of it?"

"Of course, for it is to his interest to do so. If he has been home long enough to ride into Nashville, he has told Shelby and Dillon of it before this time. I wish I could see a copy of the letter that was sent to him by Aleck and his friends. I am sorry to lose all our best hands at the very time we need them most, but all the same I am glad those officers came here. They didn't say money once, and that proves that Beardsley could not have spoken of it in their hearing."

"O Marcy," exclaimed Mrs. Gray, rising from her chair and nervously pacing the room. "I little dreamed that that money would be the occasion of so much anxiety to all of us. I almost wish I had never seen it. I can't sleep of nights for thinking of it, and sometimes I imagine I hear someone moving about the cellar."

"I don't wish you had never heard of it," replied Marcy. "We can't tell how long it will be before a dollar or two of it may come handy to us. Say, mother," he added, stepping to her side and placing his arm about her waist, "do you think you would be any easier in your mind if you did not know just where that money was, so long as you knew it was safe?"

"I know I should," was the reply, given in cautious tones. "But, my son, you must not attempt to remove it to another hiding-place. There seem to be so many who are on the watch, that I am sure you would be detected at it. That would mean ruin for you and arrest and imprisonment for me."

Marcy Gray was surprised, frightened, and angered by the words—surprised to learn that his mother was tormented by the very fear that had been uppermost in the mind of the absent Jack; frightened when he reflected how very easy it would be for some of their secret enemies to bring evidence to prove that every dollar of the money that was concealed in the cellar-wall rightfully belonged to Northern men, and that Mrs. Gray was hoarding it for her own use in violation of the law in such cases made and provided; and angered when he thought of the many indignities that would be put upon his mother by the Confederate authorities, who had showed themselves to be brutally vindictive and merciless in dealing with those whose opinions differed from their own. He drew a long breath which was very like a sob, and led his mother back to her seat on the sofa.

"All right," said he, with an appearance of cheerfulness that he was far from feeling. "I thought it would be a load off your mind if you could say that there is no money about the house except the little you carry in your pocket."

Mrs. Gray noticed that the boy did not promise to let the money alone, but before she could call his attention to the fact Marcy faced about and went into the hall after his coat and cap.

"It is almost time for the hands to have their dinner," said he, "and when I get them together I will tell them the news. Of course they will be delighted with it."

"I am afraid they will put them under some old overseer who will abuse and drive them beyond their strength," observed Mrs. Gray.

"I think it likely that they will see the difference between working for you and working for somebody else," admitted Marcy. "But these are war times, and when we can't help ourselves we must do as we are told. Our darkies ought to be glad of an opportunity to labor for the government that is fighting to keep them slaves. I wonder how many Captain Beardsley will send!"

"You said a while ago that it would be to the captain's interest to tell of his meeting with you and Jack at Crooked Inlet," observed Mrs. Gray. "I didn't quite understand that."

"Well, you see Beardsley needs help to carry out his plans, and his game now is to do nothing that will cause Hanson's abductors to turn their attention to him and his buildings. He believes, and he has good reason to believe, that certain men around here have it in their power to damage him greatly; and if he can bring Shelby and Dillon and the rest of the gang to his way of thinking, they will be apt to let us alone. Now I will go out and make a detail of the men we need about the place, and tell the others that they must be ready to march at daylight in the morning. I am not going to send them off in this rain."

"The captain said nothing about picks and shovels," suggested Mrs. Gray.
"Perhaps it would be well——"

"Picks and shovels cost money," interrupted Marcy, "and we are not going to send any down there to be stolen. Let the Confederate government furnish its own tools. Now I am beaten again! Here are two more visitors, and this time they are Captain Beardsley and Colonel Shelby."

This very unwelcome announcement brought Mrs. Gray to her feet in a twinkling. "What do you think they can want here?" she almost gasped, with a good deal of emphasis on the pronoun.

"They are coming to make friends with you, so that you will not tell the
Union men to destroy their property," replied Marcy.

"But, my son, I never would do anything of the kind. And besides, I do not know the Union men, or where to find them."

"No difference so long as they think you do. Now sit down and be as independent as you please, and I will let them in. Julius, stand by the front door to take those horses."

These men were admitted as the others were, but with very different feelings on the part of those they came to visit. Captain Porter and his lieutenant had donned uniforms and were ready to risk their lives for the cause in which they honestly believed, but these two lacked the courage to do that. Beardsley was ready to do anything that would bring him a dollar, provided there was no danger in it, while Shelby would not have enlisted if he knew that he could thereby earn a right to the title that was now given him out of respect to his wealth. They were ready to urge or drive others into the army, but it hurt them to be obliged to send their negroes to work on the fortifications. Colonel Shelby entered the room and seated himself with an air of a gentleman, while Beardsley acted the boor, as he always did. He gave Marcy's well hand a tremendous grip and shake, and said, in the same voice he would have used if he had been hailing the masthead:

"Well, how do you find yourself by this time? Ain't you sorry now that you didn't take out a venture when I wanted you to, so that you might be shaking thousands in your pocket at this minute, when you've only got hunderds? My respects to you, Mrs. Gray; but when me and this boy of yourn get to talking we don't know when to stop. Hope you have been well since I saw you last, and that the carrying away of your overseer didn't scare you none."

Marcy was well enough acquainted with Captain Beardsley to know that he did not rattle on in this style for nothing. The man was excited and nervous, and tried to conceal his feelings under a cloak of hearty good nature and jollity that ill became him. Marcy sat down and looked at him in a way that made Captain Beardsley mutter to himself:

"I'd like the best in the world to wring that there brat's neck. He's got the upper hand of me and Shelby and all of us, and dog-gone the luck, he knows it. I'd give a dollar to know what he's got on his mind this very minute."

After a little talk on various subjects that were of no particular interest to anybody, Captain Beardsley introduced the subject of blockade running, and gave a glowing description of the manner in which he had hoodwinked the Yankee cruisers by dodging out of Ocracoke Inlet while they were busy fighting the forts at Hatteras. He seemed to look upon it as a very daring and skillful exploit, and yet it was nothing more than any alert shipmaster would have done under the same circumstances.

"After that we had fun alive," added the captain; and Marcy was surprised to see him put his hand into the pocket of his overcoat and bring out a good-sized canvas bag which was filled so full of something heavy that it would not hold any more. "All we had to do was to run down to Nassau, discharge our cargo, and load up and come back again; and all the while we was making money till I couldn't eat nor sleep on account of it, and the Yankees never showed up to bother us."

"You were fortunate," said Marcy, when Beardsley stopped and looked at him.

"That ain't no name for it. We had the best kind of luck. I kept a bright watch for that steam launch when we passed through Crooked Inlet, but she had got tired of waiting and went off somewheres. We seen one or two little blockade runners like ourselves, but no Yankees. Now there's your share of the profits, Marcy," said the captain, and he got up and placed the canvas bag upon the table. "We made two runs, and I promised you I would give you five hunderd dollars——"

"But, Captain," exclaimed Marcy, while Mrs. Gray looked troubled, "I have no right to take that money. I wasn't aboard the Hattie when she made those two runs."

"That's the gospel truth; but didn't I say I would keep your place open for you while you was laid up in ordinary with your broken arm? I did for a fact, and I always stand to what I say."

"But I haven't done the first thing to earn that thousand dollars, and I hope you will believe that I am in dead earnest when I assure you that I'll not touch it," replied Marcy.

There was no doubt about his earnestness, and the captain looked disappointed. He settled back in his chair and nodded at Shelby, and that was a bad thing for him to do. It told Marcy as plainly as words what their object was in coming there to call upon him and his mother.

"Even if you were not on board the Hattie when she made those successful trips, you belonged to her, and have a right to demand pay according to contract," said the colonel.

"And while I belonged to her I took pay according to contract," said
Marcy quickly. "I was paid by the run and not by the month."

"I have never heard that the pay of an enlisted man ceases the moment he is injured," added the colonel.

"Nor I either; but I am not an enlisted man, and what's more, I do not intend to be."

"Well, if you won't take the money, you will acknowledge that I tried to do the fair thing by you? 'said Beardsley.

"I am willing to say that you offered me some money and that I declined to take it," answered the boy, who knew very well that Beardsley was not trying to do the fair thing by him. "As it is nobody's business, I never expect to be questioned about it."

The captain took little share in the conversation that followed. He put the canvas bag into his pocket, folded his arms and went into the dumps, where he remained until the name of the missing overseer was mentioned, and then he brightened up to say:

"That there was a little the strangest thing I ever heard tell of.
What's went with Hanson, do you reckon?"

"I haven't the least idea where he is," was Marcy's answer.

"I know you wasn't to home when he was took off—leastwise I have been told so," said Beardsley, "but I didn't know but mebbe you and your maw might suspicion somebody. Now what you going to do for an overseer? There's that renter of mine, Kelsey his name is. I know you don't collogue with no such, but mebbe you know who he is."

Marcy started, and looked first at his mother and then at Captain Beardsley. The latter sat with his bearded chin on his breast, regarding Marcy through his half-closed eyelids, and there was an expression on his face that had a volume of meaning in it. Taken by surprise at last, the usually sharp-witted boy had betrayed the secret he was most anxious to keep from the knowledge of everybody.

CHAPTER V.

MARCY'S RASH WISH.

"I know mighty well that Kelsey is trifling and lazy when he ain't got nothing much to occupy his mind," said Beardsley, who was not slow to catch the meaning of the frightened glances which mother and son so quickly exchanged, "but when he was working on my place and bossing my hands, I found him——"

"Are you in earnest in proposing him for my mother's overseer?" cried Marcy, as soon as he could speak. "Our fields can grow up to briars first."

"But really, he wants work," began the colonel.

"Then let him go down to the Island and work in the trenches," replied
Marcy. "He can't come here."

"But Kelsey is the only support of his family," the colonel remarked. "He is loyal to our cause, and would enlist in a minute if he had enough ahead to support his wife and children during his absence; but he hasn't got it."

"They will fare just as well without him as they do with him. If they get hungry, my mother will no doubt feed them as she has done a hundred times before; but Kelsey can't come on this place to work. There isn't money enough in the State to induce us to agree to that."

"But what you uns going to do for an overseer?" said Beardsley again.
"You'll need one if you intend to run the place."

"Not until the hands return from the Island," replied Marcy, "and then I shall take hold myself."

Having done all they intended to do when they came there the visitors were ready to leave, and Colonel Shelby gave the signal by arising from his chair and pulling his collar up about his ears.

"I still think, Mrs. Gray, that Marcy ought to take this money," said he. "The captain does not offer it to him as a gift but as his due."

"We perfectly understand the object he had in mind," answered the lady; whereupon the colonel opened his eyes and looked at her very hard. "But if Marcy thinks he ought not to receive it I have nothing to say."

"I hope you will not regret it," said the colonel. "Some people seem to think that we are about entering upon a long conflict, and that money will be a necessary thing to have after a while."

"But if you get hard up, which I hope you won't, don't forget that this thousand dollars is all yourn, Marcy," exclaimed the captain.

Marcy assured him that he would bear it in mind. If Beardsley hoped to hear him declare that his mother had more money in the house than she was likely to need, he was disappointed.

"And don't forget either, that if at any time you stand in need of such assistance as the captain and I can give, you must not hesitate to say so," continued the colonel, as he bowed to Mrs. Gray and followed Marcy to the door. "Our little settlement, I am sorry to say, is full of the meanest of traitors, and it may comfort you to know that there are a few persons in it to whom you can speak freely."

"We know that, and it certainly is a very great comfort to us," replied Marcy, thinking of Aleck Webster. "It will take more than a thousand dollars to keep roofs over your heads if anything comes of this day's work," was what he added to himself when he had seen the men ride out of the yard. "I saw through your little game from the first, and yet I went and gave myself away. That was about the biggest piece of foolishness I was ever guilty of; but I suppose it was to be so. I was all in the dark before, but I know what I am going to do now."

In order that we may know whether or not Marcy's fears were well founded, let us ride with Beardsley and his companion long enough to overhear a few words of their conversation. The moment they rode out of the gate, and were concealed from the house by the thick shrubbery and trees that surrounded it, Beardsley threw back the collar of his coat, giving the cold rain and sleet a fair chance at him, and almost reeled in his saddle, so convulsed was he with the merriment that could no longer be restrained.

"I done it, by gum!" he exclaimed, shaking his head and flourishing his riding-whip in the air. "I done it, didn't I?"

"You did not purchase his good-will, if that is what you mean," answered his companion. "He wouldn't touch your gold. He knew why you offered it as well as I did, and I was satisfied from the start that you would not catch him that way. He will put those Union men on you if you so much as crook your finger."

"But I aint a-going to crook no fingers," said Beardsley, with a hoarse laugh. "Let him sick 'em on if he wants to, but he'd best watch out that I don't get there first. Say, colonel, that there money is in the house all right, just as we uns thought it was."

"How do you know?" exclaimed his companion. The colonel had not noticed the frightened glances that Marcy and his mother exchanged when Kelsey's name was mentioned, and he was surprised to hear Beardsley speak so positively.

"Say!" answered the captain. "You aint forgot how you sent Kelsey up to Mrs. Gray's, while I was at sea, to make some inquiries about the money she was thought to have stowed away, have you? Well, Marcy and his mother aint forgot it nuther; and when I spoke Kelsey's name, and said mebbe he would be a good one to take Hanson's place, Marcy jumped like I had stuck a pin in him."

"Well, what of it?"

"What of it? Marcy knowed in a minute that I wanted to have that man took on the plantation for to snoop around of nights and find out all about that money. But I aint a caring. I know the money is there, and that's all I wanted to find out. The ways I have talked and schemed and planned to make that there boy say that him and his maw had as much as they wanted to tide them through the war that's coming, is just amazing, now that I think of it; but not a word could I get out of him. He was too smart to be ketched; but all on a sudden he gives out the secret as easy as falling off a log. The money is there, I tell you."

"And you intend to get it, I suppose?" added the colonel. "Well, now, look here, Beardsley; don't say a word to me about it."

"All right, Colonel," said Beardsley, who could scarcely have been happier if he had had the whole of Mrs. Gray's thirty thousand dollars where he could put his hand upon it at any time he pleased. "I know what you mean by them words. Of course you are too big a man and too rich to go into business with me, but I know some who aint. I'll show them Grays that they aint so great as they think for."

"Have you so soon forgotten what that letter said?" inquired the colonel. "If anything happens to Marcy's mother or her property some of us will be sure to suffer for it, unless you are sharp enough to lay the blame upon some one else."

"Say!" replied Beardsley, in a whisper. "That's what I'm thinking of doing. Your time's your own, I reckon, aint it? and you don't mind a little mite of rain, do you? Then come with me and see how I am going to work it."

So saying the captain urged his horse into a lope, and Colonel Shelby followed his example. After a while they turned into one of the narrow lanes that ran through Beardsley's cultivated fields to the woods that lay behind them, galloped past Mrs. Brown's cheerless cabin, and at last drew rein before the door of one that was still more cheerless and dilapidated. It stood in one corner of a little patch of ground that had been planted to corn and potatoes, and which had received such slight care and attention of late years that the blackberry briars were beginning to take possession of it. A small pack of lean and hungry coon dogs greeted the visitors as they stopped in front of the cabin, and their yelping soon brought their master to the door. He was the same lazy Kelsey we once saw sitting on the front porch of Mrs. Gray's house, only his hair was longer, his whiskers more tangled and matted, and his clothes worse for wear.

"Alight and hitch," was the way in which he welcomed Captain Beardsley and his companion. "Git out, ye whelps!"

"Can't stop so long," replied the captain. "Been over to Mrs. Gray's to see how my pilot was getting on, and tried to scare up a job for you at overseering, in the place of that chap who was took off in the night time."

"I dunno's I am a-caring for a job of that sort," answered Kelsey. "I've got a sight of work of my own that had oughter be did."

"That's so," said Beardsley, glancing at the broken fences, the bare wood-yard and the briars that were encroaching upon the borders of the little field. "But there's no ready money in your work, while there is a sight of it up to the Grays."

"I won't work for no sich," declared Kelsey. "They think too much of their niggers."

"They set a heap more store by them nor they do by such poor folks as you be. But you needn't bother. They won't take you and give you a chance to keep your head above water, and put a bite of grub into the mouths of your family and a few duds on their backs. They allowed that they wouldn't have no such trifling hound as you on their place."

"Did Mrs. Gray use them words about me?" exclaimed Kelsey, growing excited on the instant.

"I heard somebody say them very words, but I aint naming no names; nor I aint been nowheres except up to Mrs. Gray's to-day. One of 'em allowed that if you wasn't too doggone useless to live, you'd go and 'list on the Island."

"I'm jest as good as they be," said the man, who by this time was looking as though he felt very ugly.

"That's so. And some of 'em likewise said that a man who was too lazy to keep a tight roof over his own head, when he could have nails and boards by asking for 'em, wouldn't do no good as an overseer," added Beardsley, counting the holes in the top of the cabin through which the rafters could be seen, and glancing at the stick chimney, which leaned away from the wall as if it were about to topple over. "But that aint what I come here for, to carry tales about my neighbors. I want to say I'm glad to see you doing so well, and that if you are needing a small side of meat and a little meal, you know where to get 'em."

"Sarvant, sah," replied Kelsey. "That there is more neighbor-like than demeaning a man for a trifling hound because he is pore, and I'll bear it in mind, I bet you. As for my roof, it's a heap better'n the one them Grays will have to cover them in a week from now; you hear me? That big house of theirn will burn like a bresh-heap."

"Well, take care of yourself," answered the captain. "But if I'd suspicioned you was going to fly mad about it, I wouldn't 'a' spoke a word to you."

"Kelsey will never carry out his threat," said Colonel Shelby, as the two rode away from the cabin. "He is too big a coward."

"I know that mighty well, but you can say that you heard him speak them very words, can't you?"

Captain Beardsley was very lively and talkative after that, and plumed himself on having done a neat stroke of work that would turn suspicion from himself, when the results of a certain other plan he had in his head should become known in the settlement. But perhaps we shall see that he forgot one very important thing. As to the colonel, although he approved the work that was to be done, he had the profoundest contempt for the man who could deliberately plan and carry it out. He had little to say, and was glad when his horse brought him to a bridle-path that would take him away from Beardsley and toward his own home.

Meanwhile Marcy Gray was in a most uncomfortable frame of mind. When he saw the visitors ride out of the gate, he closed the door and went back to his mother. "The captain never spoke of meeting you and Jack at Crooked Inlet," were the first words she uttered.

"Of course not," replied Marcy. "You did not expect him to, did you? But I rather looked for him to give some reason for coming home, and to hear him say that he would have no further occasion for my services; but he was so disappointed because I would not take that hush-money——"

"O Marcy!" exclaimed his mother. "I was afraid that that was what the money was intended for."

"That was just it, and how the colonel stared when you said you understood the object Beardsley had in view in offering it. Those men think we can destroy their buildings or protect them, just as we please."

"But, Marcy, we cannot do it."

"Let them keep on thinking so if they want to. And another reason Beardsley didn't say all he meant to was because I was foolish enough to give him something else to think about. I was frightened when he mentioned Kelsey's name, for I knew in an instant what he wanted the man on the place for, and I showed that I was frightened."

"So did I, Marcy," groaned Mrs. Gray. "So did I."

"Well, it can't be expected that a woman will be on the watch all the time, but I ought to have had better sense. I gave Beardsley good reason for thinking that there is something on or about the place that we don't want a stranger to know anything about, and of course he believes it is money. But don't you worry. We'll come out all right in the end."

So saying Marcy put on his coat and cap, kissed his mother, and left the house to tell one of the hands to put the saddle on his horse. At the door he met old Morris, who was just coming in with the mail. He saw at a glance that the darky was frightened.

"Marse Marcy, dere's going be great doings 'bout dis place," he began.

"Never mind. I can't stop to hear about it now, for I am in a hurry. Give those papers and letters to one of the girls, and let her carry them in. I wouldn't have you go into my mother's presence with that face of yours for anything. Say nothing to nobody, and I will see you again as I can go to the quarter and back."

From his earliest boyhood Marcy had always been glad to go among the field hands when he was troubled, for they were so full of fun, and had so many quaint and amusing things to say to him that gloomy thoughts could not long keep his company in their presence; but it was not so this time. He silenced all their laughter by the very first words he spoke to them. All the able-bodied men among them (and Marcy designated them by name) were to start for Plymouth before daylight the next morning, to work on the Confederate fortifications. Some of them rebelled at once, and declared that they wouldn't stir a step, but thought better of it when Marcy told them that, if they did not go willingly, they would be marched down by a squad of soldiers, who would not hesitate to help them along by a prod from a bayonet if they showed the least disposition to lag behind. It took him longer to get through with this disagreeable duty than he thought it would, for the blacks hung around him, and clung to his hands as though they never expected to see him again; but it was accomplished at last, and then Marcy turned about, and rode back to the house to interview the coachman. He found him wandering disconsolately about among the horses, too dispirited to work. The two went out in the rain together, taking care to keep out of sight of the sitting-room windows, and the faithful old darky astonished the white boy by describing, almost word for word, as we have told it, what had been said and done in Mrs. Brown's cabin that morning while Tom Allison and Mark Goodwin were there. He said not a word until Morris finished his story, and then he inquired:

"Where did you hear all this?"

"Marse Beardsley's niggah gal, Nancy, was dar, and heared and seen it all wid her own eyes and ears," replied Morris. "She met me on de road when I was coming home wid de mule and de mail, and done told me. Is dat a fac' 'bout de money, Marse Marcy?"

The boy did not in the least doubt the truthfulness of the story. He knew that the girl Nancy looked out for Mrs. Brown's comfort in a shiftless sort of way; that long association with the old gossip had made her a tolerable gossip herself; and that, although she was often sent to the overseer on account of it, she kept on talking just the same. Besides, Nancy could not have known about the money unless she had heard somebody speak of it. And Mark Goodwin was sure it was concealed in the cellar wall! That was the worst piece of news Marcy Gray had ever listened to. He stood for some minutes looking down at the ground in deep study, and then he seized the black man's arm and drew him closer to him. He gave him some rapid whispered instructions, old Morris now and then nodding, as if to show that he understood them perfectly, and then they shook hands, as two brothers might have done, and separated.

At daylight the next morning there was not a single able-bodied black man to be seen on Mrs. Gray's plantation, if we except the few who found employment about the house, the working party having left hours before. Marcy saw them from his window as they marched out of the gate with their bundles on their backs, but he did not go down to speak to them. He had taken leave of them once, and had no desire to go through the same ordeal again. He rode into Nashville that morning, as he did every other morning for the next two weeks, but the only news he heard related to the fortifications at Roanoke Island, which grew in size and strength every day, and were to be held at all hazards. He thought it strange that he did not see Aleck Webster, but, of course, he dared not ask after him. He saw Allison, and Goodwin, and others of that stamp, who went out of their way to profess friendship for him; but Marcy never lingered long in their company until one day when they followed him to the hitching-rack, after he had secured his mail, to warn him that he had better have an eye on that man Kelsey, who meant harm to him.

"What does he think he has against me?" was the first question Marcy asked. "Doesn't he want me to feed him any more?"

"He doesn't want grub so much as he wants work," replied Goodwin. "And you wouldn't hire him to take Hanson's place."

"Hadn't we a right to say who shall work for us and who shall not?" demanded Marcy. "But we don't need anybody. I am going to act as my mother's overseer; that is, if I ever have any hands to oversee."

"But Kelsey doesn't like to be called a lazy, trifling hound; and you wouldn't like it either," said Allison.

"I never called him that. I simply said that I would let the fields grow up to briars before I would have him on the place, and I say so yet. Let him enlist, if he wants something to do."

"But he can't enlist. The doctors wouldn't pass him."

"Has he tried them?"

"What would be the use? Can't you see for yourself how he is bent almost double with rheumatism?"

"I can see how he bends over because he is too lazy to straighten up, but I never heard that he had rheumatism. What is he going to do to me?"

"He has threatened to burn you out."

"I expect to be burned out, but not by that man Kelsey. Now mind what I say, you two. When that thing happens you will see some disappointed men and boys right here in this settlement, and our house will be in good company when it burns. Good-morning."

"Hold on!" exclaimed Mark. "Don't go off mad. What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say," answered Marcy, who wanted to say more, but thought it would not be prudent. "And there is no need that I should enter into explanations with you and Tom Allison."

Marcy rode away, wondering if he had done wrong in letting those young rebels see that he was so well posted. If he had made a mistake in speaking so plainly it was too late to mourn over it now. He wished he might have opportunity to exchange a few words with Aleck Webster, and sometimes, during the week that followed, he was strongly tempted to ride by his house in the hope of seeing him there; but prudence always interposed in time to keep him from doing anything so rash. Then he waited and hoped for a sign from some of the other members of the band; but, although he was sure that he met and spoke to them every day in the post-office, they said no word to him that could not have been uttered in the presence of a third party, nor did they give him a chance to speak to them in private. Marcy told himself that it was little short of maddening to live in this way to know that there were enemies all about him and not a single old-time friend of his family to whom he could go for advice or comfort. The state of suspense he was in day and night was hard to bear, and Marcy was almost ready to do some desperate deed to bring it to an end.

A few days more passed and once more Colonel Shelby and Captain Beardsley came to visit the family. This was nothing unusual, for they and others often came now to keep up an appearance of friendship, and to inquire if there was any way in which they could be of assistance to Mrs. Gray. They stayed an hour, and when they went away, and Marcy and his mother reviewed the conversation that had taken place during the visit, to see if they had been entrapped into saying anything they ought not to have said, the only news they remembered to have heard was that Shelby and Beardsley, and some others whose names they mentioned, were going down to the Island to inspect the works, and see how their hands were getting along under their military overseers. They would probably be gone three or four days, and if Marcy or his mother desired to send a word of remembrance to any faithful old servant, they should be pleased to take it.

"I am getting heartily tired of visits of this sort," said Marcy. "I wish they would keep away, and let us alone, for I don't care to talk to men I have to watch all the time. I am afraid there is something back of these friendly calls."

There was something back of this one at any rate—something that was very like a tragedy; and the first act was performed that night a little after dark. Marcy was just rising from a late supper, when the sound of hoofs was heard on the carriage-way, and Bose challenged with all his might. When Marcy opened the door he saw the horseman bending down from his saddle, and waving his hand at the dog as if he were trying to quiet him. He was so far away that Marcy could not see who he was, although the light from the hall lamp streamed brightly out into the darkness. When he heard the boy's step upon the porch the man straightened up, but did not offer to come any nearer.

"What is wanted?" demanded Marcy.

"Does this yere road lead to Nashville?" asked a hoarse, gruff voice that Marcy had never heard before.

"The one outside the gate leads to Nashville, but the one you are on leads up to this door," answered the boy, who, for some reason or other, began to feel uneasy.

"You aint overly civil to strangers in these parts, seems like," said the man. "I've been out lookin' for niggers to work on the forts, an' got lost, if it will do you any good to know it." And, with the words, he turned his horse about, and galloped out of the yard.

It was a very simple incident—one that was likely to happen at any time—but all that evening Marcy could not get it out of his mind. He could not read, either, and did not want to talk, so he went to bed at an early hour; but before he did so, he made the rounds of the house with a lighted lantern in his hand. Bose was in his usual place on the rug in front of the door, and so fast asleep that he did not move when his master stepped over him, and the doors and windows in the lower part of the house, as well as those in the cellar, were closed and fastened, and, having satisfied himself on these points, Marcy bade his mother good-night, and went to his room. But he did not close his door. He took pains to leave it wide open, and called himself foolish for doing it.

"I am getting to be afraid of the dark," was what he thought, as he turned down his lamp and tumbled into bed. "There isn't a darky on the plantation who hates to have night come as bad as I do, and I don't know that there is anything surprising in it. If there is danger hanging over this house, I wish it would drop, and have done with it."

Marcy went to sleep with this rash wish half formed in his mind.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WISH GRATIFIED.

Marcy Gray slept like a boy who had eaten heartily of mince pie for supper, that is, uneasily. But still he must have slumbered soundly or he would have heard the faint scream and the hoarse, muffled voice that came up from his mother's room shortly after midnight, or been awakened by the swift rush of the two figures who hastened up the stairs and through the wide-open door into his room. The figures were there, but the first Marcy knew of it was when one turned up the lamp and the other laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder. Then he opened his eyes and tried to sit up, but was pressed back upon his pillow at the same instant that the cold, sharp muzzle of a revolver was put against his head.

"Keep still now, you pore white trash, and you is all right," said the man who held the revolver. "Make a noise, and you is all wrong, kase you'll be dead quick's a cat can bat her eye. You heah me? Git up!"

[Illustration: THE MASKED ROBBERS.]

Any sense of fear that might have come upon Marcy Gray, if he had been given time to think twice, was lost in profound astonishment. The man talked like a negro; but in those days negroes were not given to doing desperate deeds of this sort. Hardly realizing what he was doing, Marcy threw off the bedclothes and sat up; and as he did so, the man who had turned up the lamp snatched the pillows from the bed and took possession of the brace of revolvers he found under them. Marcy looked at the pillows that were flung upon the floor, and saw that there were dark stains on both of them. He took short, searching glances at the two men, and saw the white showing through the black on their faces. By this time he was wide awake, and trying to nerve himself for the ordeal he saw before him.

"Git up an' climb into them dry-goods of yourn" commanded the robber, standing first upon one foot and then on the other, and swaying about after the manner of a field hand who had suddenly found himself in an embarrassing situation. "Git into 'em lively. I tol' you, chile. I is de oberseer now, an' you is de niggah. Hustle 'em on."

"How do you expect me to dress rapidly with only one hand to work with?" demanded Marcy, who was not frightened out of his senses, even if he was powerless. "You must give me a little time."

"Well den, what for you go in the wah an' fight the Yankees what want to give us pore niggahs our freedom?" said the robber. "You done got your arm broke, an' it serves you jes right. Wisht it had been your head."

Marcy dressed in much less time than he generally did, and when he had thrown his coat over his shoulders and slipped his well arm into one of the sleeves, he was ready to follow the robbers downstairs and into the cellar; for he thought that was where he would have to go sooner or later. He drew a long breath of relief when he was conducted into the sitting-room, where his mother was waiting for him guarded by two more robbers, whose hands and faces were covered with something that looked like shoe-blacking. Although she was pale she did not appear to be badly frightened, for she smiled pleasantly as the boy seated himself on the sofa by her side, and said:

"I hope they did not handle you very roughly, Marcy."

"Oh, no; they didn't put a hand on me."

"An' what's more, missus, we aint going to, if you do jes like we tell you," said the robber who had thus far done the talking. "You white folks is rich, an' we black ones is pore. You've got money, an' we aint got none."

"And you want us to give you some, I suppose," added Marcy, putting his hand into his pocket and drawing forth the small buckskin purse in which he carried his change. "There's my pile. How much have you, mother?"

"Look a-here!" exclaimed the man, forgetting himself in his rage and speaking in his ordinary tone of voice. "That won't go down. You've got more, an' we know it; an' if you don't trot it out without no more of this foolishness——"

"So far as I know, these purses contain every cent of money there is in the house or about it," interrupted Marcy, taking both the articles in question in his hand and extending them toward the robber. "The darkies may have some, but if they have I don't know it."

With a muttered curse the man hit Marcy's hand a heavy blow and sent the purses flying to the farthest corner of the room. He expended so much strength in the blow that he almost pulled the boy from his seat on the sofa, and drew an involuntary exclamation of surprise and indignation from his mother.

"Look a-here, ole woman! You'll say 'Oh, my dear boy!' a good many times afore we uns is done with you if you don't trot out that money," declared the robber, in savage tones. "We know jes what we're doing, an' you might as well give in without wasting no more time over it. Where is it? I ask you for the last time."

"It is in those purses," replied Marcy. "If you want it, go and pick them up. You knocked them there."

"We'll take some of that there sass out of you in two minutes by the watch," snarled the robber, glancing up at the heavy chandelier which, depended from the center of the high ceiling. "Where's that rope, Jim? Do you reckon that there thing will pull out or not?"

"What are you ruffians going to do?" gasped Mrs. Gray, when she saw the man Jim pull a rope from his pocket.

"We're going to see if we can choke some sense into this boy of yourn," was the answer. "If you don't want to see him hung up afore your face an' eyes, make him tell where that money is. We uns have got to have it afore you see the last of us."

Mrs. Gray turned an appealing look upon Marcy, who said stoutly:

"I told nothing but the truth when I said that there is no money in the house except the little in those purses. Why don't you men look around and satisfy yourselves of the fact?"

"We aint got time, an' more'n that, we've knocked off work for the night. Throw one end of the rope over that thing up there, an' make a running noose in the other. I said I wouldn't ask him agin, an' I meant every word of it."

Things began to look serious, and the resolute expression on Marcy's pale face showed that he understood the situation. His mother knew he told the truth that he had secretly removed her treasure to another hiding-place, and she longed to throw herself upon his neck and beg him to tell what he had done with it. But she did not do it, for that would only have made matters worse. It would have encouraged the robbers and disheartened the boy, who was so calmly watching the preparations that were being made to pull him up by the neck. He knew that the men were working on a supposition; that they had no positive proof that there was money in the house; and hoped that they would soon weary of their useless demands, or that something would frighten them away. But he was obliged to confess to himself that neither contingency seemed likely to happen. The robbers acted as though they were in earnest, and there was nothing to interfere with their work. None of the servants had showed themselves, and even Julius and Bose, who never failed to be on hand when there was anything unusual going on, had not once been seen or heard. The house was as silent as if it had been deserted. After a few unsuccessful attempts the man Jim managed to throw the rope over one of the branches of the chandelier at the same time that a second robber finished the work of putting a running noose on the other end.

"Now I reckon we're about ready for business," said the leader grimly. "Mebbe you'd best bear down on it first, Jim, to see if the thing will hold you up."

Jim's prompt obedience came near costing him his life. Seizing the rope with both hands he jerked his knees up toward his chin and swung himself clear of the floor; whereupon the hook which held the chandelier, and which was not intended to support so heavy a weight, was torn from its socket and the ponderous fixture came down upon the head of the robber, crushing him, bleeding and senseless, to the floor. But the room was not left in darkness, as Marcy wished it had been; for the single lamp that lighted it was on a side table, safely out of the way. Every one in the room was struck motionless and speechless with amazement and alarm, and if Marcy Gray had only had two good hands to use, the disaster to the robber band would have been greater than it was. Their leader was so nearly paralyzed with astonishment that a quick, dexterous fellow, such as Marcy usually was, could have prostrated and disarmed him with very little trouble; but under the circumstances it would have been foolhardy to attempt it.

As was to have been expected, Mrs. Gray was the first to recover herself and the first to act. In less than two seconds after the robber struck the floor she was by his side, trying with both hands to remove the chandelier from his prostrate form. The sight brought Marcy to his senses.

"Are you lubbers going to stand there and let the man die before your eyes?" he shouted. "Why don't you bear a hand and get him out?"

These words proved to be almost as magical as the "whistle shrill" with which Roderick Dhu was wont to summon his Highland clan. Before they had fairly left Marcy's lips the boy Julius danced into the room through the door that led into the hall, shouting at the top of his voice:

"Here dey is! Here dey is! Shoot——" Then he stopped stock still, and rolled the whites of his eyes toward the wreck in the middle of the floor—the shattered lamps, the broken chandelier with the robber's legs sticking out from under it—and finished by saying, "Dere's a muss for de gals to clean up in de mawnin. Why don't you shoot 'em?"

Almost at the same instant the doorway behind the prancing darky was filled by armed and masked men, who filed rapidly into the apartment, turning right and left along the wall to give their companions in the rear room to follow them. Not a word was said or a thing done until a dozen or more had entered, and then the robbers were disarmed, without the least show of resistance on their part, and the heavy chandelier was lifted off their injured and still senseless comrade. It was all done in less than two minutes, and the rescuers were about to pass out, as quickly and silently as they came, taking the robbers with them, when Mrs. Gray said:

"Will you not tell us who you are, so that we may know whom to thank for the inestimable service you have rendered us?"

"We are friends," replied a voice that was plainly disguised.

"We know it; and if that is all you care to have us know, of course we shall have to be satisfied with it," said Marcy, who had received a slight nod from one of the masked men, whom he took to be Aleck Webster. "But it's mighty poor consolation not to be able to call our friends by name. I wish you would do me another friendly act by going through that wounded robber's pockets and getting my revolvers back for me. They jumped on to me and took them away before I was fairly awake."

This request was quickly and silently complied with, and then the masked men started out again, taking the four would-be robbers with them. Mrs. Gray wanted much to ask what they intended to do with the prisoners, but a look and a few words from Marcy checked her.

"Let us show our gratitude by respecting their wishes and asking no questions," said he earnestly. "They have saved me from a choking, and if they ever want anything I can give them, I know they will not hesitate to let me know it. Good-night, friends, if you will not tell us what else to call you."

A dozen voices, which sounded strange and hollow under the thick white masks that covered the faces of the rescuers, responded "good-night," and Marcy, filled with gratitude for his deliverance, stood on the porch at the side door and saw them disappear down the lane that led through the almost deserted negro quarter. Then he walked around to the front door to see what had become of Bose, and discovered him curled up in his usual place on the mat.

"You rascal!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean by lying here fast asleep, while——"

Marcy's impulse was to kick the dog off the mat in the first place and off the porch in the second; but remembering how faithfully the devoted animal had served him in the past and that this was his first offence, he bent over and grasped him by the neck, only to let go his hold the very next instant. Bose was stiff and cold—as dead as a door nail.

"Poisoned!" ejaculated Marcy. "And to think that I was on the point of kicking the poor beast! I deserve to be kicked myself for doubting him. The chap who rode into the yard to-night to inquire the way to Nashville is the villain who is to blame for this. He is the fellow who captained the robbers to-night, and no doubt he was feeding Bose something, when I thought he was trying to quiet him. Poor old Bose!"

The boy's heart was heavy as he faced about and went into the house, where he found his mother pacing the floor, more frightened and agitated now than she had been at any time while in the presence of the robbers. She laid her head on Marcy's shoulder, and cried softly as he put his arm around her and led her to a seat.

"What's the good of taking on so now that the trouble is all over?" said he. "But that's always the way with a woman. She will stand up to the rack when there is need of it, and cry when there is nothing to cry for. What's the use of doing that?"

"Marcy," said his mother, "did I not tell you to let that money alone?"

"No, ma'am; you said you were afraid that if I tried to take it to a new place some one would catch me at it; but I wasn't afraid. I was sure I could do it without being seen, I knew you would sleep better if it was put somewhere else, and so, while you and every one on the plantation, except the man who was helping me, were in the land of Nod, I took the bags out of the cellar wall and put them where nobody will ever think of looking for them. Whenever you want any of it say the word, and I will see that you get it; and in the meantime, if you are asked where it is, you can truthfully say that you don't know."

"But, Marcy, the events of the night, which seem more like a terrible dream than a reality, prove conclusively that the story has got abroad; and I don't see how I can muster up the courage to pass another night in this house," said Mrs. Gray with a shudder. "How could they have got in without alarming Bose?"

"Poor old Bose will never act as our sentry again," replied the boy, with tears of genuine sorrow in his eyes; and then he went on to tell how he had found the companion and friend of his childhood dead at his post, and his mother said that she would willingly surrender the money, that had been nothing but a source of trouble to her ever since she drew it from the bank, if by so doing she could bring Bose back to life again.

"What bothers me quite as much as his death is the thought that I wanted to hurt him because he did not awaken me," said Marcy. "And one thing I should like to have explained is how those masked men happened to be on the watch on this particular night, and get here as they did just in the nick of time. I tell you, mother, I was glad to see the chandelier knock that villain endways, and if I could have snatched the weapon the robber captain had in his hand, I would have made a scattering among them."

"I don't suppose you have any idea who the robbers were?"

"I am sure I never saw one of them before. I didn't pay much attention to their voices, for I knew they would not betray themselves by talking in their natural tones, but I took notice of the way they acted and carried themselves, and was obliged to put them down as strangers. They do not belong about here."

"Marcy, you frighten me!" cried Mrs. Gray. "You surely do not wish me to think that some of our neighbors brought them here to rob us?"

"That is what I think myself, and there is no use in denying it. Didn't Shelby and Beardsley take particular pains to tell us that they would be away from home to-night? Hallo, there!" exclaimed Marcy, who just then caught sight of the boy Julius standing in a remote corner, pulling his under lip and gazing ruefully at the ruins of the chandelier. "What do you mean by keeping so quiet when you know that I want to have some serious talk with you? Come here, sir."

Julius had learned by experience that when he was addressed in this style he was to be taken to task for something, probably for lying or stealing. He could not remember that he had been guilty of telling lies very lately, but as for picking up things he had no business to touch that was a different matter. When Julius was certain that he knew what the offence was for which he was to be reprimanded, he always tried to make it lighter by offering some sort of a confession; and he did so in this instance.

"I know I aint going steal it, Marse Marcy," he began, putting his hand into his pocket. "I jes want look at it and den I going give it back."

"So you've got it, have you?" said Marcy, who had not the slightest idea what the black boy meant. "I knew I'd find it out sooner or later. Give it to me, sir!"

The boy took his hand out of his pocket and placed in Marcy's extended palm a bright, new fifty-dollar gold piece. Mother and son looked at each other in silent amazement, both being startled by the same suspicion. Cautious as he thought he had been, Marcy had not succeeded in removing the money from the cellar to a new hiding-place without being seen. Julius knew all about it.

"What for dey make all dem sharp corners on dar?" asked the boy, pointing to the gold piece. "What for dey don't make 'em roun' like all de res'?"

"Where are the rest?" demanded Marcy. "Hand them out."

Julius obeyed, but this time he produced a twenty-dollar piece.

"Go on. Pull out some more," said Marcy.

"Dat's all," replied the boy. "When de bag bus' you and ole Morris pick up all but two, and dere dey is."

Marcy remembered now, although he might never have thought of it again, how startled he was when one of the little bags in which his mother's treasure was packed became untied in his hand, and the gold pieces rattled down upon the hard floor of the cellar. The coachman, who was working with him, was prompt to extinguish the lantern, while Marcy alternately groped for the money and sat up on his knees and listened for the sound of footsteps on the floor overhead. It seemed to him that all in the house ought to have been aroused by the racket, but when he became satisfied that such was not the case, the lantern was again lighted and the work went on. He thought he had picked up all the pieces, but it seemed he hadn't. And where was the boy Julius when this happened? That was a point that could be cleared up at some future time; but just now Marcy wanted to talk about something else.

"Where were you when those robbers came into the house?" he inquired.
"Were you in bed!"

"Oh, no, sar; I wasn't in bed," replied Julius.

"Where were you?"

"I was out dar," said the boy, giving his head a circular nod, so as to include nearly all the points of the compass at once.

"Out where?"

"Jest out dar in de bresh."

"Julius," said Marcy, getting upon his feet, "are you going to answer me or not?"

"Oh, yes sar," exclaimed the boy, backing off a step or two. "I going answer ebery question you ax me. I was jest out in de gyarden."

"What were you doing out there at that time of night?"

"Nuffin, sar."

"Did you see the robbers come into the house?"

"Yes, sar; I done seed 'em come in."

"Then what did you do?"

"I jest went 'round out dar."

"And did you see those other masked men, who came in and rescued us from the power of the robbers?"

"Yes, sar, I seed dem too," replied Julius, becoming interested. "And I done tol' 'em to come in quick."

"Did you know they were out there in the garden?"

"Yes, sar; I knowed it."

"Who told you they were there?"

"Nobody."

"Julius," said Marcy sternly, "I am going to know all about this. I shall give you no peace until you answer every one of my questions, and I shall begin by putting a grubbing-hoe into your hands at daylight in the morning. Have you any more money in your pockets?"

"No, sar; I gib you de lastest I got."

"Then hurry off to bed and be ready to go to work when I call you."

"Well, sar, Marse Marcy," said the boy, plunging his hands into his pockets and swinging himself about the room as if he was in no particular hurry to go to bed, "if you wuk Julius till he plum dead you can't make him tell what he don't know."

At this juncture a new actor appeared upon the scene. It was old Morris, who had been in the hall for the last five minutes, waiting as patiently as he could for Julius to give him an opportunity to speak to Marcy and his mother in private. His patience was pretty well exhausted by this time, and when he saw that Julius had no intention of going away until he got ready, the coachman stepped into the room.

"See here, niggah," he began, and that was enough. Julius knew the old man, and when the latter pointed to the door he lost no time in going out of it. Morris followed him to the end of the hall and closed and locked that door behind him, and then came back to the sitting-room. He was badly frightened, and so excited that he hardly knew what he was doing, but he was laughing all over.

"How is you, missus?" said he, as he shut the door and backed up against it.

"Morris," exclaimed Mrs. Gray, "do you know who the robbers were?"

"No, missus, I don't; but I does know that they don't 'long around in dis part of the country. That Cap'n Beardsley, he brung 'em up from Newbern."

"Do you know what you are saying?" demanded Marcy. "Who told you that improbable story?"

"G'long now, honey," answered Morris good-naturedly. "Mebbe de niggahs all fools, but they know a heap. Marse Marcy, dat gal Nance didn't tell no lie when she say how that Allison and Goodwin boy come to Miss Brown's house and talk about de money, did she? And she didn't say no lie nudder when she tol' me that these men coming up here some night to get that money, did she? Aint they done been here dis night? What for the cap'n and all the rest of dem white trash gone to the Island this night? Kase they don't want to be here when the thing happen."

"Did you know that the robbers were to come here to-night?"

"No, sar, Marse Marcy. I didn't know that. I know they was coming some night."

"Well, some one must have known that they had made up their minds to come to-night and told the Union men to be on the watch for them," said Marcy.

"That's a fac'," assented Morris.

"Who was it?"

"I—I don't know, sar; 'fore the Lawd——"

"Morris!" said Mrs. Gray reproachfully.

"Yes, missus; I does know, but I don't want to tell."

"That is more like it," said Marcy. "What is the reason you don't want to tell?"

"Kase I don't want to get nobody in trouble with Cap'n Beardsley," replied the coachman; and he might as well have told the full particulars, for Marcy and his mother knew that they had one of the captain's own servants to thank for their rescue.

"And does Julius know all these things?"

"Ye-yes, sar," exclaimed Morris, becoming so angry that he could not talk half as fast as he wanted to. "Dat niggah all the time snooping around, and you nebber know when he aint hear all you saying."

"He knows that you and I removed that money," said Marcy. "He was somewhere about when that bag became untied, and here are two pieces that he picked up after we left the cellar."

Old Morris was profoundly astonished. He leaned heavily against the door, and gazed at the glittering coins in Marcy's hand as if he had been deprived of the power of speech.

CHAPTER VII.

MARCY SPEAKS HIS MIND.

"Julius also knew that those Union men—I don't know any other name to give to those who turned the tables on the robbers—were out there in the garden, and he told them to hurry up," continued Marcy. "Now, where were you at the time?"

"Marse Marcy," said Morris, recovering himself with an effort, "you had best sell that niggah, kase if you don't Ise bound to kill him."

"You will be careful not to touch him," said Mrs. Gray. "It is not your place to discipline any one."

"But, missus, you don't know that niggah," began Morris.

"We know that he was brave enough to send those men to our rescue, while you were too badly frightened to do anything to help us," said Marcy.

"I couldn't be two places," protested Morris. "I was in the stable looking out for the hosses. There's whar I belong."

"Did you see them when they took their prisoners away? And was that poor fellow who was knocked down by the chandelier very badly injured?" inquired Mrs. Gray.

"Pore fellow!" repeated the coachman. "No, he wasn't bad hurt. They jest chuck him in the hoss trough and he come back to his right mind mighty quick."

"I hope they did not abuse him?"

"No, missus; dey didn't 'buse him at all. They jest say 'Come along here! We fix you.' And that's all they done."

"And you did not see what became of him and the others?"

Morris replied that he watched the rescuers and their prisoners from the stable door until they disappeared in the darkness, and that was all he knew about them. And we may add that that was all any one in that house ever knew about them. Although Marcy Gray afterward became acquainted with all the men who had taken an active part in this night's work, and daily mingled with them, he never learned what they did with their captives. Indeed he never inquired, for he was afraid that he might hear something unpleasant if he did.

"If you have told all you have on your mind you can go back to bed," said Marcy, after a little pause.

"That's all," answered Morris. "I wish you a very good evening, sar—you and the missus." And he passed into the hall, closing the door behind him. Marcy waited until he heard the outer door shut, and then he walked over and took a look at the fallen chandelier.

"Wouldn't Beardsley be hopping if he knew that one of his own negroes had upset his plans?" said he. "I really believe he would be the death of that girl Nancy. Julius is wide awake, but I do wish he would not keep so much to himself, and that I could place more dependence on what he says."

"But you do not mean to put him to work?" said his mother.

"Oh, no; and the rascal knows it. He would not stay in the field two minutes without some one to watch him, and he is of use about the house. Now, go and get some sleep, mother, and I will see that things are secure."

Once more Marcy made the rounds of the building, and this time he did not find things just as they ought to be. He found how the robbers had effected an entrance. They had cut a hole through the side door so that they could reach in and turn the key in the lock and draw back the bolt. Probably Morris was hiding in the stable when they did it, too badly frightened to give the alarm; but the robbers would not have done their work entirely undisturbed if Bose had not been dead on his mat around the corner.

"If Morris and Julius knew this thing was going to happen, I do not understand why they did not warn us," said Mrs. Gray, when Marcy came back to the sitting-room.

"Because they are darkies, and darkies never do what they ought," answered Marcy. "They did not want us to be frightened until the time came, and so they stayed awake and watched while we slept. Good-night."

When Marcy went up to his room he took his pillows from the floor, and put them on the bed where they belonged. He pushed his revolvers under them, smiling grimly when he thought of the little use they had been to him when their services were really needed, turned down the lamp, and was about to throw himself upon his couch, without removing his clothes, when he heard something that had startled him once before—the noise made by a pebble striking against his window. That was the way in which Sailor Jack attracted his attention on the night he came up from Newbern, after piloting that Northern blockade runner safely into port; but who could this person be? The dread of danger, that was uppermost in his mind when he stepped to the window and opened it, gave way to indignation when he looked out and saw the boy Julius standing on the ground below.

"Look here, you imp of darkness," he exclaimed.

"Hursh, honey, hursh!" said Julius, in an excited whisper. "Go fru de hall, and look out de oder side."

"What's out there?" asked Marcy, in the same low whisper.

"Nuffin. But you go and look."

Marcy put down the window and went, knowing that it would be a waste of time to question such a fellow as Julius. When he stepped into the hall he was alarmed to see that it was lighted up so brightly by a glare which came through the wide, high window at the other end that he could distinguish the figures on the wall-paper. He reached the window in two jumps, stood there about two seconds looking toward two different points of the compass, and then faced about, and ran down the stairs.

"Mother, mother!" he exclaimed, as he rapped on her bedroom door. "Get up and tell me what to do. Here's the mischief to pay. Beardsley's house is in flames."

"O Marcy!" was all Mrs. Gray could say in reply.

"Yes. And there's a little blaze just beginning to show above the trees in the direction of Colonel Shelby's," continued Marcy.

"This is a dreadful state of affairs," said his mother.

"I believe you; but Aleck Webster told the truth, and those Union men are bricks. Jack will be tickled to death when he hears of it."

"I hope he isn't heathen enough to rejoice over any one's misfortune.
But how can I tell you what to do? What do you want to do?"

"I want to know if you will be afraid to remain here with the girls while I run over there," answered Marcy.

"Certainly not. Take every one on the place, and save what you can. But,
Marcy, you cannot do any work with only one hand."

"No matter. I can show my good will. I don't expect to have a chance to save anything. The house has been burning so long that the roof is about ready to tumble in. Good-by."

Marcy buttoned his coat to keep it from falling off as he ran, caught his cap from the rack as he hurried through the hall, and opened the front door to find Julius waiting for him at the foot of the steps.

"Wake up everybody!" commanded Marcy. "Tell the girls to go into the house to keep their mistress company, and bring the men over to the fire. Hurry up, now!"

Marcy ran on in the direction of the gate, and, as soon as he was out of sight, Julius whirled around and seated himself on the lower step. He sat there about five minutes, and then rose and sauntered off toward the road.

"What for I want wake up everybody?" said he to himself. "I jes aint going take no men ober to de fire to holp save de cap'n's things, when de cap'n done sick de robbers on us. Luf him take keer on he own things; dat's what I say."

Marcy was right when he told his mother that he would not be in season to assist in saving the captain's property. The roof of the house fell in about the time he reached the road, and when he ran into the yard he could do no more than follow the example of Beardsley's frightened household, and stand by and look on while the fire burned itself out. He caught one glimpse of the captain's grown-up daughter standing beside the few things that had been saved, but she straightway hid herself among the negroes, and gave him no opportunity to speak to her. He looked toward Colonel Shelby's plantation, and saw that his house, too, was so far gone that there was no possible chance of saving it. This was the important thing that Captain Beardsley forgot, and of which we spoke a short time ago. He forgot the band to which Aleck Webster belonged, or perhaps he would have contrived some way to make them believe that the man Kelsey, and not himself, was to blame for the raid that had that night been made upon Mrs. Gray's house.

"Aleck and his friends must have had the strongest kind of evidence, or they never would have done such work as this," thought Marcy, as he turned his steps homeward after satisfying himself that there was nothing he could do at the fire. "I wish I knew what that evidence is, and how all this is going to end. I wish from the bottom of my heart that the fanatics who are responsible for this state of affairs could be in my place for a few days."

"I hope you asked the captain's daughter to come over here," said Mrs.
Gray, when her son entered the room in which she was sitting.

"Well, I didn't," was the reply. "I meant to, but she didn't give me a chance to say a word to her. Let her go and bunk with Mrs. Brown, and then there will be two congenial spirits together."

By this time it was getting well on toward morning, and sleep being quite out of the question, Marcy and his mother sat up and talked until breakfast was announced. The burden of their conversation, and the inquiry which they propounded to each other in various forms, was: What should they say to their neighbors regarding the events of the night? Should they tell the story of the attempted robbery, when questioned about it, or not? There were many living in the settlement who had not been taken into Beardsley's confidence, who did not know that the Union men were banded together for mutual protection, and some of them were Confederate soldiers; and what would these be likely to do if they learned that there was a little civil war in progress among their neighbors? The situation was an embarrassing one, and Marcy and his mother did not know how to manage it.

"I am a-going to trust to luck to help me out," said the boy, who had been gazing steadily into his cup of coffee as if he there hoped to find an answer to the question that had been under discussion for the last two hours. "I don't believe there will be anything done, one way or the other, until the battle that is going to be fought at Roanoke Island is decided."

"Why, Marcy?" said Mrs. Gray, in surprise. "What direct influence can a great battle have on our private affairs?"

"I thought you wouldn't fall in with my notions, but I think I am right," replied Marcy. "If the rebels win, look out for breakers. This part of the State will be overrun with soldiers, who will shoot or drive out every one who is suspected of being friendly to the old flag, and such fellows as Beardsley and Shelby and Allison will be out in full force to hie them on. If the Federals win, as I hope they may, and occupy the Island and Plymouth and other points about here, our stay-at-home rebels will crawl into their holes, and you will not hear a cheep from them."

"But all that is in the future," said Mrs. Gray.

"And what we want to know is how to conduct ourselves to-day," added
Marcy. "I know that, and, as I said before. I am going to trust to luck.
I can tell better what to say after I have mingled for a few minutes
with the crowd I shall meet at the post-office."

"Do any of the Union men ever go there?" inquired Mrs. Gray.

"I have seen Webster there once or twice, but as to the rest, I cannot say; for I do not know them."

"I shouldn't think they would go there for fear of being arrested."

"Who is there to arrest them?"

"I don't know; but I suppose the postmaster could bring a squad of soldiers from Plymouth, could he not?"

"Yes, but he would have to bring another squad to watch his house and store after the one that made the arrest went away," answered Marcy. "If the Nashville people attempt to manage this thing themselves, I am afraid their town will go up in smoke."

Going to the post-office, on this particular morning, was one of the hardest tasks the boy had ever set for himself. He wished he could hit upon some good excuse for sending Morris in his place, and indeed the old fellow offered to go when he brought up Marcy's horse, adding:

"I'm jubus that they will ask you a heap of questions that you won't want to answer. They won't say nothing to Morris, kase a pore niggah never knows nothing."

"I've got to face them some time, and it might as well be to-day as next week," replied Marcy, slipping into the coachman's hand one of the gold pieces that Julius had given him the night before. "Let Julius entirely alone, and the next time you hear of any plans being laid against us, don't keep us in ignorance. Come to us at once, so that we may know what we have to expect."

"Thank you kindly, sar," said Morris, taking off his hat. "I'll bear that in mind; but you see, Marse Marcy, I didn't want for to pester you and your maw. I was on the watch."

"But you were frightened to death, and that little imp Julius was the one who helped us," thought Marcy, as he swung himself into the saddle, with the coachman's assistance, and rode away. "Well, I was frightened myself, but I couldn't run and hide."

When Marcy came to Beardsley's gate, he thought it would be a neighborly act for him to ride in and ask if there was anything he could do for the captain's daughter; but she was not to be seen. Marcy afterward learned that she had taken up her abode with Mrs. Brown, with whom she intended to remain until her father could come home and make other arrangements for her comfort. There were a few negroes sauntering around in the neighborhood of the smoking ruins, and among them was the girl Nancy, who looked at him now and then with an expression on her face that would have endangered her life if her master could have seen and understood it. The boy was glad to turn about and ride away from the scene, for it was one that had a depressing effect upon him.

"Beardsley brought it upon his own head," was what he told himself over and over again, but without finding any consolation in the thought. "It is bound to make him worse than he was before—it would make me worse if I were in his place—and nobody knows what he will spring on us next."

As Marcy had expected, his arrival at the hitching-rack in front of the post-office was the signal for which Tom Allison, Mark Goodwin, and a few others like them had been waiting. They opened the door and ran across the street in a body, highly excited of course, and all talking at once.

"What happened out your way last night?" was the first question he could understand.

"Fire," was the reply. "Didn't you see it?"

"You're right, I did," said Tom.

"Then why didn't you come out?" inquired Marcy. "I didn't see you or any other white man about there."

"I'll bet you didn't," exclaimed Goodwin. "When two houses owned by prominent men, and standing a mile and a half apart, get on fire almost at the same moment in the dead hour of night——"

"And while their owners are absent from home," chimed in Tom.

"And while their owners are away from home on business," added Mark, "it means something, doesn't it? We stayed pretty close about our hearth-stones, I bet you, for we didn't know how soon our own buildings might get a-going. Where were you when it happened?"

"I was at home, where you were," replied Marcy.

"And wasn't your house set too?"

Marcy said it was not; or if it was he hadn't found it out.

"That's mighty strange," remarked one of the group who had not spoken before.

"What is strange?" demanded Marcy. "Explain yourself."

"Why, if there was a band of marauders about, as every one seems to think," said the boy——

"Well, there was," interrupted Marcy. "They came to our house, and made preparations to hang me up by the neck, when the——"

"Oh, get out!" exclaimed Allison and Goodwin in concert.

Marcy had pushed his hat on the back of his head and squared himself to tell the story of his adventure; but when these words fell upon his ear, he put his hands into his pockets and started for the post-office.

"Hold on," cried Tom, catching at his arm. "Don't go off that way. Tell us all about it."

"I will, if you will ride home with me so that I can prove my story," said Marcy. "When you see the chandelier that was pulled out of its place in the ceiling by the rope——"

"Were you hanging to the rope when it pulled out?" exclaimed the impatient boys.

"No. If I had been I would have a broken head now. One of the robbers put his weight upon the rope to see if it would hold me up, when the thing came down on his head and knocked him senseless."

"Well now, I am beat! Did they go off without getting any money?" inquired Tom, who would not have asked the question if he had been in a calmer mood.

"They certainly did. They never took a cent."

"And they didn't fire your house afterward?"

"Not that we know of. Our house is standing this morning."

"Who were the robbers?"

"That's a conundrum to give up," replied Marcy. "All I know is that they were white men who had made a bungling attempt to disguise themselves as negroes; but they did not put black enough on their hands and faces."

Tom Allison looked at his friend Mark, and when he moved away Mark followed him. As soon as they were beyond ear-shot of the rest of the group, Tom said:

"Let's shake those fellows, and wait for a chance to speak to Marcy alone. What do you think you make of the situation just as it stands?"

"I don't make anything of it," answered Mark. "I can't see through it, and I don't believe Marcy told the truth."

"I do. In the first place he is not given to lying, and besides he asked us to go home with him. He wouldn't have done that if he had been telling us a funny story. I believe Beardsley sent those robbers to Mrs. Gray's house and then took himself off so that he could say he wasn't at home when the robbery was committed, just as Marcy and Jack could say they were not at home when their overseer was abducted."

"There may be something in that," said Mark reflectively. "But the captain made a mighty poor selection when he took men who permitted themselves to be scared away by the breaking down of a chandelier. A brave lot of fellows they were."

"But perhaps that wasn't what frightened them away," said Tom. "How do you account for the burning of Beardsley's house and Shelby's, while Gray's was allowed to stand?"

"I don't account for it. It is quite beyond me."

"You don't think those robbers set the buildings on fire?"

"It isn't likely, when they were in Beardsley's employ. Still they might have done it to revenge themselves for the loss of the money they expected to find in Mrs. Gray's house."

"They might, but I don't believe they did. Have you forgotten what was in the letter Beardsley received while he was in Newbern?"

"By gracious, Tom! You don't think——"

"Yes, I do. They said they would jump on him if he didn't stop persecuting Union people, and they have done it. The men who wrote that letter were the men who burned those houses."

"Tom, you frighten me. I'll tell you what's a fact, old fellow: You and I made a big mistake in calling on that old gossip Mrs. Brown. We didn't get a thing out of her beyond what we knew when we went there, and I'm going to keep clear of that shanty of hers in future. It may be your father's turn next, or mine."

"That is what I am afraid of," said Tom honestly. "And that is the reason I want to hang around and see Marcy alone—to ask if he saw anything of those Union men last night."

Marcy remained in the post-office for nearly half an hour, for he was surrounded by an excited and anxious group there, and plied with the same questions he had been called on to answer outside; but about the time that Allison and his companion were becoming so impatient that they were on the point of going in after him, he came out with his mail in his hand, and, what was a comfort to them, he came alone.

"Are you two going to ride out with me?" said Marcy, when he reached the hitching-rack, where they were waiting for him.

"We may go out some day, but not for proof," replied Tom. "What would be the use, when we know that you told us nothing but the truth? But, Marcy, you don't mean to say that those robbers were frightened from their work by the simple breaking down of the chandelier?"

"Oh, no; they had better reasons than that for letting us alone," replied the boy, who knew that he might as well tell the whole story himself as to leave them to hear it from somebody else. "A moment or so after the chandelier came down on the head of one of the robbers, a party of armed and masked men came into the room and rescued us."

It was right in the point of Tom Allison's tongue to say to Mark, "Didn't I tell you so?" but he caught his breath in time, and tried to look surprised. "Who were they?" he managed to ask.

"Didn't I say they were all masked?" inquired Marcy.

"Well, they said something, didn't they."

"They spoke about half a dozen words."

"And didn't you recognize their voices?"

"I did not. Let Mark put his handkerchief over his mouth and speak to you, and see if you can recognize his voice."

"But haven't you an idea who they were?"

"You know as much about them as I do," answered Marcy; and he knew by the expression of astonishment that came upon Tom's face that he had hit the nail squarely on the head.

"How do you explain the burning of those two houses?" inquired Mark.

"In the same way that I explain the raid that was made upon our house.
The men who were responsible for one were responsible for the other."

"You don't mean to say that the robbers did it!" exclaimed Tom.

"I mean to say that they were the cause of it. If you won't ride with me
I shall have to say good-by."

"What do you think now?" asked Tom, as he and Mark stood watching
Marcy's filly spatter the mud along the road.

"I hate to say what I think," was Mark's reply. "I'm sorry to say it, but it is a fact that that villain holds every dollar's worth of property in this county between his thumb and finger."

"Well, he shall not hold it there forty-eight hours longer," said
Allison savagely.

"How are you going to help it?"

"By writing a note to the commanding officers at Plymouth and Roanoke, and telling them what sort of a fix we are in," replied Tom.

"Don't you do it!" cried Mark. "Don't think of it, for if you do you will see worse times here than you ever dreamed of. If you are not hanged to one of the trees on the common you will be driven out of the country."

Wait a few minutes, and we will tell you whether or not Mark Goodwin had reason to be frightened at Tom's reckless words.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE FLEET.

Marcy Gray had passed through the ordeal he so much dreaded, and was as well satisfied with the way he had come out of it as he had hoped to be. Of one thing he was certain: every person to whom he had spoken that morning was suspicious of him, but that was no more than he expected. Some people in Nashville believed that he had not only instigated but ordered the destruction of Beardsley's house and Shelby's, and that he could in like manner command the burning of any house in the settlement if he felt like it, and that was what he thought they would believe. He knew it wasn't so, and it troubled and vexed him to have such things laid to his charge; but how could he help it, and what single thing had he done to bring it about?

"Heaven knows I wish they would let us alone," was what Marcy said to himself as he galloped along the road, "but I'll not stand by and see my mother worried and tormented without doing something to stop it; and if Beardsley or Shelby or anybody else tries it on, I will have him punished for it if I can."

Just then a low but shrill whistle, sounding from the woods which came down close to the road on the left hand, attracted Marcy's attention and caused him to draw rein gradually and bring his horse to a stand-still. He pulled a paper from his pocket, and while pretending to read, looked sideways toward the woods, and saw Aleck Webster making his way up through the bushes. You will remember that these two once held a short private interview at this very spot.

"Good-morning, sir," was Aleck's greeting. "We didn't like to break up your night's rest, but I suppose we did."

"You may safely say that," answered Marcy. "We never slept a wink, or even tried to, after we saw that Beardsley's house was on fire. My mother and I are sorry you did that. After you had rescued us, why couldn't you go away satisfied?"

"And let the same thing happen again?" exclaimed Aleck. "I suppose you know that Beardsley was to blame for the robbers coming to your house?"

"We don't know it, but we think so," replied Marcy.

"We had as strong evidence as we needed that he meant to do that very thing, and when he was ready to spring his plans, he found us waiting for him. Perhaps you don't know it, but your house has been watched every night for a week past."

"I wish I could find words to thank you," began Marcy.

"Belay that, if you please, sir," said Aleck hastily. "We are helping ourselves while we are looking out for you. You are Mr. Jack Gray's brother, and that is enough for me to know. Our letter brought the cap'n home in a tolerable hurry, and ought to have been a warning to him to keep still after he got here. Perhaps he will see now that we meant what we said to him."

"I certainly hope he will, for I don't want to see any more of his buildings destroyed. I suppose you had reason to connect Colonel Shelby with Beardsley's schemes?"

"You're right, we did. He was knowing to them and didn't try to stop them, and so we thought we'd best tell him not to go too far. They thought, if they left home for a spell, we would not blame them, but we were onto them all the same. They can't make a move or do a thing that we don't know it."

Marcy wanted much to ask what means Aleck and his friends used to keep themselves so well informed; who those friends were and how many there were of them; but on second thought he decided that the best thing he could do would be to listen and say nothing. He would have been glad to know what had been done with the four prisoners the rescuing party carried away with them; but as Aleck did not once refer to them, Marcy contented himself with asking about the wounded one.

"Was the man who was knocked down very much hurt?" said he.

"Oh, no. He came around all right in a few minutes," answered Aleck; and then, as if to show Marcy that he did not intend to say more on that subject, he hastened to add, "My object in stopping you was to inquire if you are satisfied with the way I have kept the promise I made Mr. Jack. I told him I would always stand his friend, and yours. You don't often get letters from him, I suppose?"

"Not often," replied Marcy, with a smile. "The mail does not run regularly between our house and the Yankee fleet."

"No, I reckon not; but if you get a chance to write to him, tell him what I have told you."

"Look here, Aleck," said Marcy suddenly. "Do the members of your band ever hang about the post-office? I know I have seen you there a few times."

"Of course; and you will, no doubt, see me there again. We have to go among people to keep suspicion away from us."

"That's what I thought," continued Marcy. "Now, are you not afraid that some one will bring soldiers there to make prisoners of you?"

"No, I don't think they will," said Aleck indifferently. "If the soldiers should come, there are men in that town who would run so fast to meet and send them back, that you couldn't see them for the mud they would kick up in the road."

"You mean that they would not permit the soldiers to molest you?"

"They wouldn't, if they could help it, for they know their town would be destroyed if they did," replied Aleck; and Marcy was frightened by the spiteful emphasis he threw into his words. "They will be sorry enough, before we are done with them, that they ever tried to break up this government. We want peace and quiet, and we're going to have 'em, if we have to hang every rebel in the country."

This was what we meant when we said, at the close of the last chapter, that we should soon see whether or not Mark Goodwin had reason to be alarmed by Tom Allison's reckless proposition. It seemed that every contingency had been thought of and provided for by the long-headed Union men who held secret meetings in the swamp, and that, if Allison possessed ordinary common sense, he would not say a word to the commanding officers at Plymouth and Roanoke regarding the situation in and around Nashville. Marcy did not like to hear the stalwart young sailor talk in this savage strain, so he switched him off on another track, by saying:

"I want to ask one other question before I forget it: Were you the man who nodded to me last night, when you and your friends came in, and saved me from a choking?"

"I reckon so; and I was the one who got your revolvers back for you. They didn't do you much good, did they? That little nig of yours is as sharp as they make 'em. Didn't he tell you who we were?"

"He gave us to understand that he didn't know."

"That was all right. It shows that he can be trusted to keep his mouth shut. But, I am afraid, if we don't quit talking, somebody will ask you what you found in your paper that was so mighty interesting; so good-by. Don't be alarmed on account of Beardsley and the rest. I have a notion that the fear of punishment will make them let you and every other Union man about here alone after this."

Aleck disappeared among the bushes, and Marcy rode on with his eyes still fixed upon his newspaper; but he did not see a word in it. He was thinking of the Union men, who had showed themselves brave enough to punish their enemies almost under the noses of two strong Confederate garrisons.

"They are a desperate lot, whoever they are," was his mental reflection, "and I would rather have them on my side than against me. What will be the next thing on the programme?"

There was not much work accomplished on the plantation that day, for the excited negroes, some of whom did not know a thing about the raid of the previous night until it was over, had too much talking to do among themselves, and with Morris and Julius, who held their heads high and threw on airs because they had been prominent actors in the thrilling scenes that took place in Mrs. Gray's sitting-room. Julius thought himself of so much consequence that it was all Marcy could do to persuade him to give the dead Bose a decent burial, and then he was obliged to go with him to see that the task was well done. But he was not as impatient with the black boy as he would have been if Aleck Webster had not spoken so well of him. They had visitors, too; and Marcy knew that their object in coming was not to sympathize with his mother and denounce the "outrage" as they called it, but to gain her good will if they could. As Marcy bluntly expressed it—"They would not come near us if they thought we were friendless and helpless, but they know we are not, and so they want to get on our blind side." They fairly "gushed" over the Confederate flag that was hung upon the wall of the sitting-room, but when they went away they told one another that that banner did not express Mrs. Gray's honest sentiments, and that it would not protect her or her property for one minute if the Richmond authorities would only yield to the importunities of General Wise, and send a strong force to occupy Roanoke Island and the surrounding country. If that time ever came, the general's attention should be called to the fact that one of the sons of that house was a sailor in the Yankee navy.

After another almost sleepless night Marcy Gray rode again to the post-office, to find there the same talkative, indignant, do-nothing crowd he had long been accustomed to meet at mail time. This morning, if such a thing were possible, they were more excited and angry than they had been the day before; but they did not fail to meet Marcy at the hitching-rack, or to talk to him as though they looked upon him as one of themselves. He noticed that they all held papers in their hands.

"This thing is going to be stopped now, I bet you," said Mark Goodwin, who was the first to speak.

"Do you mean the war?" inquired Marcy. "If you do, I am heartily glad to hear the news."

"I mean the war right around here," answered Mark. "It's got into the Newbern papers, and they are giving us fits on account of it. They say it serves us just right."

"What does?"

"Why, having our houses burned and—and all that."

"Do they say anything about robbery?" asked Marcy. "Or about threatening to pull a law-abiding boy up by the neck because he does not happen to have a pocketful of money with him?"

"No," replied Mark, rather indignantly; and then, seeing by the curious smile on Marcy's face that he had spoken too quickly, he added, "I suppose of course that they do say something about that outrage, but I can't tell for certain, for I have only had time to read what my papers say concerning the burning of Beardsley's house and Shelby's."

"Probably they don't refer to the way those four villains conducted themselves in my mother's house," said Marcy, in a tone of contempt. "It's altogether too insignificant a thing to have travelled as far as the city of Newbern."

"It isn't, either!" exclaimed Tom Allison, glaring savagely at Marcy. "Nothing is too insignificant to attract attention these times. My paper says—but there it is. Read it for yourself."

"Thank you; I can't stop," answered Marcy, moving toward the office.
"I'll get my own, and read it on the way home."

Contrary to his expectations he did not find a very belligerent crowd in there. The space between the counters was filled with men, and they were all talking at once; but they had learned wisdom by past experience, and however much they might have desired to threaten somebody, they were careful not to do it. They denounced Yankees and their sympathizers in a general way, and declared that it was a cowardly piece of business to burn houses while their owners were absent, but they did not mention any names. Marcy loitered about until he found that he was not going to hear anything more than he had heard a score of times before, and then mounted his horse and set out for home. Dropping the reins upon his filly's neck and allowing her to choose her own gait, he drew his Newbern paper from his pocket, and began looking for the article of which Mark Goodwin had spoken. He could not run amiss of it, for the black headlines were too prominent. They took up more than half the column, and after Marcy had run his eye over a few of the leading ones, he had a very good idea of the article itself. He read: "A Reign of Terror.—Civil War Inaugurated in a Sovereign State. —Cowardly Citizens Who Allow a Handful of Traitors to Work their Sweet Will of Them.—Armed and Masked Incendiaries Abroad at Night."

"There now!" exclaimed Marcy, when he read the last line. "That is as good proof as I want that the man who wrote this knew the whole story. Mother and I were the only white persons who saw those men, and nobody would have known that they were armed and masked if I hadn't said so. I'll bet you the paper doesn't say a word concerning the 'cowardly citizen' who sent those robbers to our house."

Swallowing his indignation as well as he could, Marcy turned his attention to the article, which ran as follows:

"We have learned, from what we think to be reliable sources, that a reign of terror exists in certain portions of this Commonwealth that is a burning shame and a disgrace to the cowards who permit it. They claim to be loyal Southern gentlemen up there, but they will have to furnish better proof than they have thus far given before we will believe it. When the gallant Wise was placed in command of this district in December last, Secretary Benjamin desired him to bring his legion up to 10,000 strong by recruiting in North Carolina. There was reason for this order, and for anxiety regarding Roanoke and adjacent points, because as early as September, 1861, General McClellan requested the Yankee Secretary of War 'to organize two brigades of five regiments each of New England men, for the general service, but particularly adapted to coast service.' That means that he intended to turn a horde of red-hot abolitionists and nigger-lovers loose upon our almost defenceless shores. Wise saw and realized the danger, tried hard to obey Secretary Benjamin's order, and failed; and now we know the reason why. How could he make brave soldiers out of men who will permit armed and masked traitors to ride about their county of nights, wreaking vengeance upon those who are so unfortunate as to incur their displeasure? While we deeply sympathize with Messrs. Shelby and Beardsley, whose dwellings were burned last night, and wish that the incendiaries might have chosen some less out-spoken and liberal citizens as their victims, we are constrained to say that the lesson that community has received is well deserved. Now let them arouse and stamp this lawlessness out with an iron heel; and let us warn those Union men in the same breath, and all others who feel disposed to follow in their lead, that their day will be a short one. They will not be driven from the country they will be hunted down like dogs, and hanged to the nearest tree. They will not be shot. That is the death the loyal soldier dies, but we save the rope for traitors."

"The editor's pen was so mad it stuttered when it wrote this rambling article," thought Marcy. "It couldn't talk straight. If he owned about fifty thousand dollars' worth of houses in these parts, he would not write so glibly about hanging Union men. Now, let us see what sort of language he used in denouncing the raid that was made upon our house."

He looked the paper through without finding any reference to it, but that was no more than he expected. The outrages of every description that were perpetrated upon Union people during the days of the war, by "loyal Southern gentlemen," were of so common occurrence, and of so little consequence besides, that they were never mentioned in the newspapers. The oft-expressed verdict was that Unionists had no rights that any white man was bound to respect.

"If our house had been burned and everybody in it hanged, this rebel sheet would not have said a word against it." thought Marcy, shoving the paper into his pocket and starting up his horse. "Mark Goodwin says that these things have got to be stopped now, which means that Beardsley and Shelby will set something else afoot as soon as they return from the Island. Now, let us see what it will be. Shall I show this paper to mother, or not?"

This was the question that Marcy pondered during his ride, and the conclusion he came to was that his mother had as much right to know the worst as he had to know it himself; so he handed out the paper as soon as he reached home, and rode on to the field to see how his small force was getting on with the work he had assigned it.

Then came several days of suspense that were hard to bear. Beardsley and Shelby came home as soon as they heard of the loss they had sustained, but what they had to say, and what they made up their minds to do about it, never came to Marcy's ears. They did not take the trouble to call upon Mrs. Gray. Evidently they did not think it worth while, because she could not restore to them the property they had lost; but others, who had roofs that they wanted to keep over their heads, came every day or two, although they did not bring much news that was worth hearing. About all Marcy learned was that Beardsley and his companion had returned filled with martial ardor, that they were working night and day to send recruits to Roanoke Island, although they did not show any signs of going back there themselves. They declared that the Island was as strong as Gibraltar, and if the Yankees were foolish enough to send an expedition against it, there wouldn't be a man of them left to tell the story of the fight; and they wanted all the youngsters in the country to go there and enlist, so that they could be able to say that they had assisted in winning the most glorious victory of modern times. They were very enthusiastic themselves, and they made some others so; but Marcy Gray, who kept a close watch of all that went on in the settlement, did not see more than a dozen young men and boys fall in in response to their earnest appeals.

"It's a disgraceful state of affairs," said Tom Allison one morning, when Marcy met him at the post-office. "The Southern people deserve to be whipped, they are so lacking in patriotism."

"Did you ever think of going into the army yourself?" inquired Marcy.

"I can't go," replied Tom. "We have sent our overseer, and that is as much as we can do at present. I wanted to enlist weeks ago, but father said I must stay at home and help him manage the place."

Marcy found it hard to keep from laughing outright when Tom said this. The latter had never done a day's work at overseeing or anything else, and it is doubtful if he could have told whether or not a corn furrow was laid off straight. He was too indolent to do anything but eat, sleep, and ride about the country.

"There are plenty around here who could go as well as not," continued Tom, "and I might go myself if I could only get a commission. But I won't go as a private soldier."

"Have you tried to get a commission?" asked Marcy.

Tom replied that he had not. He did not know how to go about it, and was not acquainted with any one who could tell him.

"Then hunt up General Wise, and ask his advice," suggested Marcy. "He can, and no doubt will put you on the right track at once."

But Tom Allison was much too sharp to do a thing like that. He was well aware that enlisted men had no love for "cits" who could go into the army and wouldn't, and the promise of a colonel's commission would not have induced him to go among them. He meant to remain at home and let other and poorer men's sons do the fighting, and Marcy knew it all the while.

The latter did not put much faith in the stories that Captain Beardsley and Colonel Shelby had spread through the country, and when his mother's negroes began coming home in companies of twos and threes, he put still less faith in them. They were a sorry-looking lot, ragged and dirty; and the first thing they asked for as they crowded about the kitchen door was something to eat.

"Oh, missus, don't eber luf dem rebels take we uns away agin," was their constant plea. "Dey 'buse us de wust you eber see. Dey whop us, an' dey kick us, an' dey don't gib us half 'nough to eat. We all starve to def. We been prayin' night an' day dat de Yankees may come an' shoot dat place plum to pieces."

"But the trouble is that the Yankees can't do it," said Marcy, as he bustled about in search of bread and meat to satisfy the demands of the hungry blacks. "Captain Beardsley says the Island is too strong to be captured."

The negroes confessed that they did not know much about military matters, but they did know that there was much dissatisfaction among the soldiers composing the garrison, many of whom declared that they would make tracks for home as soon as their year was out, leaving the Confederacy to gain its independence in any way it pleased. The Richmond authorities would not help them, the people along the coast were too cowardly or too lazy to shoulder a musket, and they were not going to stay in the army and eat hard-tack while other able-bodied men stayed at home and lived on the fat of the land. They would do their duty until their term of enlistment expired, and then they would stand aside and give somebody else a chance to fight the Yankees. That was what a good many deluded and disappointed rebels thought and said about this time; but those who have read "Rodney, the Partisan," know how very easy it was for the Confederate authorities to bring such malcontents to their senses.

But at last the time came when at least one of these vexed questions was to be solved by a trial at arms. While the scenes we have attempted to describe were being enacted on shore, others, that were of no less interest and importance to Marcy Gray and the people who lived in and around Nashville, were transpiring on the water. On the 11th day of January a formidable military and naval expedition, consisting of more than a hundred gunboats, transports, and supply ships, set sail from Fortress Monroe. Its object was to obtain possession of Roanoke Island, which the Confederates had spent so much time and care in fortifying, and which their General Wise called "the key to all the rear defences of Norfolk." Two days later the expedition arrived off Hatteras just as a fierce northeast gale was springing up, and two days after that the Newbern papers brought the encouraging news to Nashville. We say encouraging, because there was not a man or boy in town who did not honestly believe that those hundred vessels were doomed to certain and swift destruction. As in the case of a former expedition, Tom Allison was much afraid that the wind and the waves would do the work which the gunners at Roanoke Island were anxious to do themselves.

"Oh, don't I wish this wind would go down!" was the way he greeted Marcy on the morning on which the news of the arrival of the fleet reached Nashville. "Here we've gone and worked like beavers to fortify the island, hoping and expecting to give the Yankees a Bull Run licking there, and now Old Hatteras has taken the matter out of our hands, and is pounding the expedition to pieces on the shoals. Half of the enemy's tubs have gone to smash already, and the rest will go back as soon as they can. Not one of them will ever cross the bar, I tell you."

For two weeks a furious gale raged along the coast, and, during that time, Marcy Gray lived in a state of suspense that cannot be described. He could not bring himself down to work, so he went to town twice each day, and always came back to report the loss of another ship belonging to the expedition.

"Why, Marcy, if they keep on losing vessels at this rate, there will not be any expedition left after a while," said his mother one day.

"These reports are all false," declared Marcy. "I tell them to you because they are told to me, and not because I expect you to believe them. Don't worry. Those ships are commanded by Yankees, and Yankees are the best sailors in the world."

For a time it looked as though Tom Allison's prediction would be verified; for it was only after fifteen days' struggle with the elements, and the loss of four vessels, that Burnside and his naval associate, Flag-officer Goldsborough, succeeded in passing through Hatteras Inlet to the calmer waters of Pamlico Sound. It was an exhibition of patient courage and skill on the part of the Union officers and men that astonished everybody; and even Tom Allison was willing to confess that things were getting serious. There was bound to be a terrible battle at the Island, and the citizens of Nashville would hear the guns. And if the Island should be captured, as Forts Hatteras and Clark were captured, then what? The thought was terrifying to the timid ones, who straightway hid their clothing, and began carrying the contents of their cellars, smoke-houses, and corn-cribs into the woods, as they had done when the news came that Butler and Stringham had reduced the fortifications at the Inlet; but, on this occasion, Mrs. Gray's neighbors were all so busy with their own affairs that they did not have time to run over and find fault with her because she did not hide anything.

A few days of inactivity followed, during which the fleet was repairing the damages it had received during the storm, and then a hush seemed to fall upon the whole nation as the news was flashed over it that the final struggle for the possession of those waters was about to begin. The low, swampy shores of the Sound being but sparsely settled, and nearly all the able-bodied men in the country, both white and black, having been summoned to the Island, some as soldiers and the others to work on the forts and trenches, there were few to witness the grand and imposing spectacle the fleet presented as it moved into position on the evening of February 5, and dropped anchor within a few miles of the entrance to Croatan Sound; but among those few was one who was destined to bring Marcy Gray into deeper trouble than he had ever known before, and the reader will acknowledge that that is saying a good deal. It was Doctor Patten's negro boy Jonas. He lay flat behind some obstruction near the water's edge, and took in the whole scene as if it had been a review arranged for his especial benefit. He saw the waters of the Sound splash as the heavy anchors were dropped into them, and could even hear the shrill tones of the boatswains' pipes. When darkness came and shut the nearest vessel out from his view, he scrambled to his feet and hastened toward his master's house, muttering under his breath:

"Jonas been prayin' hard fur de Yankees to come, an' bress de Lawd, here dey is! Now, what Jonas gwine do?"

CHAPTER IX.

LOOKING FOR A PILOT.

Bright and early the next morning the captain of one of the twenty-seven gunboats that were attached to the Burnside expedition, came out of his cabin to take a breath of fresh air before sitting down to his breakfast. He was a large, full-bearded man, had a broad and a narrow band of gold lace around each sleeve of his coat, a lieutenant's straps on his shoulders, and wore his hands in his pockets. When he went up the ladder he lifted his cap to the quarter-deck, and was in turn saluted by the acting ensign on watch.

"Anything new or strange to tell me, Mr. Robbins?" asked the captain carelessly.

"Nothing at all, sir, except that a lone contraband came off to us in a leaky skiff, when I first took charge of the deck," was the reply.

"Does he know anything?" was the captain's next question.

"I did not interrogate him, sir, only just enough to find out that he is not a pilot."

"Perhaps he knows where we can get one, so you might as well bring him aft."

A messenger-boy was sent forward to obey this order, and presently brought to the quarter-deck the lone contraband of whom the ensign had spoken, and who was none other than Doctor Patten's boy Jonas, whom we saw watching the Union vessels from his hiding-place on the beach. The captain asked him who he was and where he belonged, what his master's politics were, and why he ran away from him and came off to the fleet, and then he said:

"You told my officer here that you are not a pilot for these waters; but you must know where I can find one. There ought to be any number of them on the mainland, for I happen to know that many of you black people make the most of your living on the water."

"Dat's a fac', moster," replied Jonas, "but I aint no pilot. Dey used to be some on de mainland, but dey aint dar now. Dey up to de forts on de Island."

"All of them?" inquired the captain. "Can't you think of a single man hereabouts who knows the channel through Croatan Sound?"

"Not about here, I can't," answered the black boy, "an' I tell you dat fur de truth. Dey is all on de Island waitin' for you uns to come wha' dey is; but dey's two back in de country a piece."

"How far back in the country, and who are they?"

"It's a right smart piece, sar; twenty mile suah, an' mebbe mo'. Name
Mahcy Gray an' Cap'n Beardsley, sar."

"Are they Union or secesh?"

"Well, sar, dere's Mahcy Gray, he's de best kind of a Union boy; but de other one, he's——"

"Boy!" interrupted the captain. "I don't want any boy to take charge of my ship. This is no boy's play," he added, returning the salute of his executive officer, who just then came up the ladder. "If I understand the flag-officer's plans, we are to lead one division of the fleet in the attack; and if we go on until we are aground, and the division follows in our wake, there will be the mischief to pay, for the other vessels draw more water than we do."

"Sakes alive, moster! Mahcy Gray won't nebber run you on de groun'," exclaimed the negro, with so much earnestness in his tones that the captain turned about and listened to him. "He de bes' boy fur de Union you eber see, an' he take you right fru de Sound, wid his eyes shet, on de blackest night you eber was out in. But dat rebel Beardsley you don't want no truck wid him. He know wha' de deep watah is mighty well, but he aint gwine to take you dar. He run you on de groun' suah's you live and breathe."

"Never mind talking about that. You called him captain a minute ago.
What is he captain of?"

"Well, sar, moster, previous to de beginning of de wah he was cap'n ob a trader; but endurin' de wah he run a privateer an' blockade runner; de Osprey he call her."

"What?" exclaimed the gunboat captain, so suddenly that Jonas jumped, and the executive and the officer of the deck looked surprised. "Did you call him Beardsley, and say that he commanded the Osprey?"

"Dat's de name, moster," replied Jonas. "He cotch some Yankee vessels outside, an' when de gunboats get too thick on de bar, he take de two big guns out, load up wid cotton, an' run de blockade."

"What was his object in taking the guns out?" inquired the captain; and the negro went on to explain what the reader already knows—that Beardsley had disarmed and disguised his little vessel in order to deceive the cruisers along the coast. If he had been captured with nothing but cotton on board, the Federal authorities would not be likely to hang him and his men as pirates, which they might have done if they had caught him while he had two howitzers on his gun-deck and a supply of small-arms and ammunition in his cabin. The gunboat captain listened attentively, and seemed very much impressed by what the negro had to say; and when the latter ceased speaking he turned his back upon him, and said to his executive officer:

"Mr. Watkins, I have wanted to meet that man for—for an age, it seems to me now. He is the villain who robbed me of the Mary Hollins, and ironed my crew like felons—like felons, sir, and in spite of my earnest protest." Then turning once more to the negro, he inquired, "Can you guide a squad of my men to Beardsley's house and Gray's to-night? You told me, I believe, that they live twenty miles or more inland."

"Dat's about de distance of de journey you will have to travel, sar," answered Jonas.

"I kin go da', kase I know de house whar dey resides. But de cap'n don't live da' no more sense de Union men riz up in de night an' burn him out."

"I don't care how many times he has been burned out, nor who did it. What I want to know is if you can take my officers where they can put their hands on him to-night."

Yes; Jonas was quite positive he could do that.

"All right; but look here, boy," said the captain, shaking his finger at
Jonas. "Tell me the truth now, or you will never see another sunrise.
Are there any rebels ashore between here and the place where those two
pilots live?"

"Oh, yes, sar; dere's plenty of dem at Plymouth, moster."

"I am as well aware of that fact as you are," interrupted the captain. "What I want particularly to know is if there are any cavalry scouting around who would be likely to pick up the men I shall probably send ashore to-night."

"Not now, dey aint, sar; but a while ago dey was piles of dem. Dey go round to all de plantations an' tooken away de black ones en' make 'em wuk on de forts. I wuk on dem myself."

"Consequently there may be some cavalry out there now," said the captain. "But I warn you, boy, that if you lead my men among them——"

"Who? Me?" exclaimed the negro, in accents of alarm. "'Fore de Lawd, moster, you don't think Jonas would do dat? Why, sar, Ise been prayin' fur you uns to come, an' so has all de black ones. Dem rebels kill me suah, if dey see me wid de Yankees."

"And so will I if you take my men where the rebels can get hold of them; so that will make twice you will be killed. That will do for the present, but I may want to ask you some more questions by and by. Go for'ad. Beardsley, Beardsley!" continued the captain, turning again to his chief officer, who wore an acting-master's uniform. "I remember that when I was a prisoner on board the Osprey I heard one of the mates address my captor by that name, and it somehow runs in my mind that this pilot we have been talking about is the same man. I made the best effort at escape that I could, but the Hollins was so heavily loaded that she moved through the water as though she had a hawser dragging over the stern; and besides he had the weather gauge of me. I showed him some pretty fair seamanship, and he might have given me and my men kind treatment in return for it."

"Certainly, sir," answered the executive. "A brave man always respects a brave foe."

"But he didn't, Mr. Watkins. On the contrary, when we got into Newbern, and the mob on the wharf began howling and calling us names, as they did the minute they caught sight of us, Captain Beardsley made no effort to stop them. He rather seemed to enjoy it. Give me a chance to take a good look at him when he is brought on board, and if he is the man I think he is, I want you to have him put into the brig without the loss of a moment and into double-irons besides. That was the way he served my crew. As soon as I have taken my coffee I will go down and tell the flag-officer what I have learned and what I intend to do with his permission; so I shall want my gig presently."

The captain went into his cabin, and when he came out again, a short time afterward, he was dressed in full uniform and wore his side-arms. He seemed to be in no particular hurry to leave the vessel, for although breakfast had been served and eaten, the long red meal pennant was still floating from the masthead, and the blue-jackets were smoking their pipes on the forecastle; but Jonas was loitering around, looking as happy as a darky always does after he has enjoyed a hearty repast, and when he saw the captain beckoning to him he came aft. What the Union officer wanted to question him about this time was as to the quickest and safest methods that could be employed to take a company of, say fifty men, through the country to Beardsley's house and Gray's, and bring them back to the fleet. Would it be necessary for this company to march overland, or could it go the whole or a part of the way in boats? and was there any danger that the men would be forced to fight their way? Jonas answered all his questions as readily as though he had known beforehand what they were going to be; and when the captain brought the interview to a close by sending the negro forward again, he held in his hand a rude map of all the principal waterways that intersected the mainland south of Plymouth and north and west of Middletown, and had learned how the garrison at the first-named town could be easily and safely avoided. Then he stepped into his gig, which was called away when the meal pennant was hauled down, and was taken on board the flagship.

His superior officer must have approved of the plans which Captain Benton (for that was the name of the Yankee skipper who had once been Lon Beardsley's prisoner) submitted for securing the services of a pilot who was familiar with the waters through which the fleet was to sail to victory, although not very much was done toward carrying them out until after dark. The day was not a favorable one for a movement on the part of the Union forces, for a thick fog came rolling in from the sea and covered the waters of the Sound. Once during the forenoon it lifted long enough to disclose the rebel fortifications on the Island, and the double rows of piles and sunken ships through which the Fairy Belle had sailed a few weeks before, with Commodore Lynch's eight boats above, and then it settled down again thicker than ever. But two of the Union commanders at least were not idle, and when darkness came to conceal its movements, the expedition which they had quietly prepared during the day put off for the shore. It consisted of four cutters filled with small-armed men, two being from Captain Benton's vessel and the others from the gunboat that lay next astern. The work of securing the pilots was to be done by two squads of twenty men each, one under command of Captain Benton's executive officer, the second being led by an acting ensign from the other vessel. Mr. Watkins's boat was first in the line and the boy Jonas, who crouched in the bow of his cutter, was the guide and pilot.

A second expedition, which put off from the flag-ship an hour later, held straight for the shore and stopped when it got there; but the one in whose fortunes we are at present most interested did not stop. It turned into the mouth of a little river which was seldom navigated, even by the fishing and trading boats that were so numerous in the Sound. It was known as Middle River; and if Jonas, who had lived upon its banks ever since he could remember, had been asked how long it was and where it took its rise, he would have been obliged to say that he did not know. But he did know that by following some of its numerous tributaries the expedition could pass in the rear of the forts at Plymouth into Seven Mile Creek, and land within a few hundred yards of Captain Beardsley's house and Marcy's. And that was just what it did.

Although the strictest silence and caution were observed, the progress of the blue-jackets was not as slow and laborious as those who knew where they were going thought it would be, and neither did they see or hear anything to be afraid of. Only once during the long hours they passed in those narrow, crooked streams did they hear a sound to tell them where they were, and that was when a distant sentry on the right bank, and a little astern of them, shouted the number of his post and called out that all was well. Then the blue-jackets drew a long breath of relief, and congratulated themselves and each other on having passed Plymouth without knowing it. Perhaps this was a fortunate thing for Jonas. It might have frightened the wits all out of him if he had dreamed of such a thing, but the two sailors who crouched by his side in the leading cutter held revolvers in their hands, and were under orders to shoot him down at the first sign of treachery. He knew, however, that they were watching him, for on several occasions, when it was found necessary to change the course of the boat in order to follow the windings of the stream, they had cautioned him to clap a stopper on his jaw-tackle and pass his instructions aft in a whisper, like any other white gentleman.

"Da' now! Da' now!" said Jonas suddenly.

"Not so loud, you black rascal," commanded one of the guards, emphasizing his words with a crushing grip on the negro's shoulder. "What's the row?"

"Cap'n Beardsley used to live right ober da', 'fore de Union men riz up an' burn' him out," replied Jonas.

"We don't care where he used to live," growled the tar. "Where does he live now?"

"Right ober da'," repeated the negro. "An' you uns got ter lan' heah on de lef' han' side ob de bayou."

This information was duly passed aft to Mr. Watkins, who sat in the stern-sheets by the side of the coxswain, and the first cutter was turned in toward the bank, the others following close in her wake. When Mr. Watkins stepped ashore, he demanded of Jonas why he had landed the expedition in those dark woods where there was not a sign of a house to be seen; and the negro hastened to explain that the road lay about a quarter of a mile straight ahead, and that the house in which Beardsley formerly lived stood on the other side of it. The drive-way, which ran close by the ruins of the dwelling, led into a lane that passed through the quarter; and there, in the overseer's house, was where Beardsley lived now. This much having been learned, and a guard being left in charge of the boats, forty sailors, with Jonas and his keepers at their head, began threading their way through the thick bushes in the direction in which the road lay. Twenty minutes' time sufficed to bring them to it, but when Jonas began giving further instructions and directions Mr. Watkins interrupted him.

"Right da' is de drive-way," said he, "an' down da' is de lane dat goes fru de quarter. Look out fur de houn' dogs, an' don't waste no time in foolin', kase Beardsley's niggers say he mighty timersome sense you Yankees come on de coast, an' de fust thing you know he run out de back do' an' take to de bresk. Now, sar, moster——"

"Take the boy with you and go ahead, Mr. Burnham," commanded the executive officer. "And it might be well for you to act upon the hint he has given, and surround the house as quickly and quietly as possible. Remember the signal, and when you are done with the boy send him back to me under guard."

In obedience to these orders Mr. Burnham's squad moved through the open gate at a quick but noiseless pace, Jonas and his keepers leading the way, and in a few minutes disappeared in the darkness. Ten minutes were passed in silence, and then the angry protests of a small army of dogs, mingled with the doleful yelps of one which had been knocked endways by a savage blow from the butt of a Spencer carbine in the hands of a blue-jacket, whom he had tried to seize by the throat, arose on the still air, being almost immediately followed by a single shrill note from a boatswain's whistle. This was the signal agreed upon, and it brought to Mr. Watkins' ears the intelligence that if Captain Beardsley was in his house, he was now shut up in it and could not escape. In less than ten minutes more Jonas and his two guards were heard coming back along the drive-way at double-quick; whereupon Mr. Watkins's own squad, which up to this time had remained motionless in the road, set out at a brisk walk for Mrs. Gray's dwelling.

"This is the place where the Union pilot lives, is it?" said Mr.
Watkins, when Jonas halted and pointed out the house.

"Yes, sar, moster, dat's de place. No dogs heah to pester you, kase ole Bose done killed by de robbers. I speck Mahcy Gray mighty dubersome sense dem robbers been heah, an' mebbe he fight; but you uns luf Jonas talk to him, an' clem you see him open de front do' too quick. No need to circumroun' dis house. Marse Mahcy aint gwine run off."

Mr. Watkins's men were moving toward the house while the negro was talking in this way, and now they were drawn up in line in front of the gallery by the master's mate, who was second in command, while Mr. Watkins mounted the steps and pounded upon the door with such effect that he awoke echoes in all the wide halls. The startling summons frightened old Morris so badly that he drew his head under the bed-clothes; sent Julius like a shot out of the back window and scurrying barelegged through the garden; reached the ears of a pale but resolute woman, who hastily began arraying herself in such garments as she could find in the dark, and brought out of bed an excited, determined boy who opened an upper window with a crash, and shoved the muzzles of two heavy revolvers down at the blue-jackets. This was Marcy Gray. When his eye fell upon the double line of men in front of the house he made up his mind that the robbers had come out in full force this time.

"Get out of that, or I will blow some of you to kingdom come!" said he, without a quiver in his voice. "One—two——"

"Avast there!" exclaimed the master's mate.

"Don't shoot, Marse Mahcy, honey!" cried Jonas, who thought that both the revolvers were pointed straight at his own head. "Dese yer folks all Yankees, sar; all Yankees de las' blessed one ob 'em, sar."

"Jonas, is that you?" said Marcy, who could scarcely believe his ears. "What brought you here at this hour of the night, and how came you in the company of such a gang as that?"

"If you are Marcy Gray, I beg to assure you that we are here for no evil purpose," said Mr. Watkins, who now came down from the porch and looked up at the boy. "We want to see you particularly. Come down, if you please, and let me explain."

"You're quite sure you are Union, are you?" said Marcy, who, at first, could not make up his mind that this was not a ruse on the part of lawless men to gain admission to the house; but, on second thought, he concluded that it was not, for, if they had been determined to come in, they could have done it by breaking down the doors, or smashing the windows, and that, too, without taking the trouble to call him and his mother.

"We are quite positive on that point," answered Mr. Watkins. "We belong to the Burnside expedition. You knew we were in the Sound, I suppose?"

"I am satisfied, and will be down while you are thinking about it," said
Marcy, slamming the window, and hastening back to his room.

He lingered there long enough to put on a few articles of clothing, and then ran down the stairs with a lighted lamp in his hand. In the lower hall he found his mother, who was bravely striving to nerve herself to face something more dreadful than she had yet experienced. She had heard Marcy talking to the men who were gathered in front of the house, and, although she had not been able to catch any of the words that passed between them, she was somewhat reassured when she looked into her son's beaming face.

"Who are they?" she asked calmly. "Surely they do not act like the robbers, who——"

"They are Yankees from the fleet, and want to see me about something," was the excited reply. "Will you take this lamp into the parlor while I admit them?"

Certainly his mother would do that; but what could the Yankees want of Marcy at that time of night, and how did they hear of him, in the first place, and find out where he lived?

"Doctor Patten's boy, Jonas, told them, most likely; but when and where they picked him up beats me. I can't imagine what they want, either; but I will open the door for them as readily as I would for Jack," replied Marcy; and, as his mother turned into the parlor with the lamp, he went down the hall to the front door.

"Are you Marcy Gray, the pilot?" inquired Mr. Watkins, as the two saluted each other, instead of shaking hands.

"Caesar's ghost!" was the ejaculation that trembled on the boy's lips; and then he wondered if he was to be arrested for acting as pilot for Captain Beardsley's privateer and blockade runner.

"Because, if you are, you are the man I want to see," continued the officer.

"Will you come in?" answered Marcy, who thought it best to hold his peace until he had received some insight into the nature of the business that had brought his visitor there.

The latter complied, and, when he entered the parlor, was rather taken aback to find a dignified lady there. He saluted her courteously, and, without intending to do so, added to her fears at the same time that he explained his errand, by saying:

"I beg a thousand pardons, madam, for intruding upon your privacy at this unseemly hour; but the truth is, our fleet has gone as far toward the enemy as it can go without the aid of pilots to direct its movements. The name of Marcy Gray has been mentioned to my commander, Captain Benton, and I am here to secure his services."

"Oh, sir!" cried Mrs. Gray, clasping her hands appealingly. "Would you cruelly rob me of the only son I have left, and take him into battle? He has already been sadly injured during this terrible war."

The fact that Marcy carried one of his arms in a sling had not escaped the notice of the officer, and now he looked at the boy rather sharply. There was but one conclusion to be drawn, he told himself: If Marcy got that wounded arm in battle, he must have been fighting on the Confederate side.

"I was not aware that the young man was in the service," said he coldly.
"I thought he was Union."

"And so I am," exclaimed Marcy. "I have a brother in your service, and he is aboard one of your gunboats at this moment. I know, for I took him out to the fleet before the fortifications at Roanoke Island were completed. Did you speak of a Captain Benton just now? I once met a sea-captain of that name, but of course the commander of a Union war-ship can't be the man I saw insulted and abused by a mob in Newbern."

"How and when did that happen?" demanded the officer, his face exhibiting the profoundest interest.

"It was when the crew of the prize-schooner Mary Hollins were marched off to jail," replied Marcy. "It was no fault of mine that I saw them captured, for I am Union to the backbone. I have been persecuted on account of my principles——"

"My lad," exclaimed Mr. Watkins, taking Marcy's uninjured hand in both his own, "were you on the Osprey when she made a prize of the schooner Hollins?"

"I was," answered Marcy, becoming as excited as the officer appeared to be. "I passed as her pilot and drew pay as such; but I did duty as foremast hand most of the time, and sailed on her because I could not help myself. May I ask if you know anything about it? I do not remember of seeing you among the crew."

"I know all about it although I wasn't there," answered Mr. Watkins, whose astonishment would scarcely permit him to speak plainly. "My commander, Captain Benton, was master of the Mary Hollins at the time she was captured by that pirate. He is now acting volunteer lieutenant in the navy of the United States, and commands one of the finest vessels in Flag-officer Goldsborough's squadron."

Marcy Gray had never been more amazed in his life.

CHAPTER X.

BEARDSLEY IN TROUBLE.

The profound silence that reigned in the room for a minute or two after
Mr. Watkins made his extraordinary announcement, was broken at last by
Marcy Gray, who exclaimed eagerly:

"If that is the man who wants to see me, I hope you will take me to him at once. I have wanted to meet him ever since that miserable day when I stood by and saw him make his gallant attempt at escape, for I have seventeen hundred dollars that belong to him—my share of the prize money his schooner sold for, you know, captain."

"Mister, if you please," said the officer, with a smile. "I used to be captain in the merchant marine, but am now executive officer of Captain Benton's vessel, and am simply Mr. Watkins."

"Mr. Watkins," interposed Mrs. Gray, "my son has saved all the money that came to him through the sale of the Hollins, and longed for and dreamed of the day when he could restore it to its lawful owner. When Captain Beardsley turned his privateer into a blockade runner Marcy refused to take out a venture, though by so doing he might have made his seventeen hundred dollars of prize money bring him five thousand more. Captain Benton's money is safe, and he will receive it in the same shape in which it was paid to my son. But, sir," added Mrs. Gray, seeing that the officer did not occupy the chair that had been placed for him, "I trust you will not find it necessary to take Marcy into battle."

"I really cannot see anyway in which it can be avoided, madam," said Mr. Watkins truthfully. "There is bound to be a fight if the enemy stands his ground, and my vessel will be one of the foremost in it. But I hope you understand that we do not mean to keep him with us unless he wants to stay. He will be at liberty to return to you as soon as his services can be dispensed with."

"Yes, sir, I understand that," said the mother tearfully. "But a stray bullet or a shell will be as likely to strike a non-combatant as any one else. I have given one son to the service of his country, and I can give another; but when you take Marcy you take all I have."

The officer drew his hand across his eyes, as if brushing away a mist that was gathering there, and looked up at a painting over the mantel; while Marcy, knowing that the parting must come, and that it would be better to have it over as speedily as possible, began to bestir himself.

"I will have the money dug up right now," said he. "And, mother, while I am doing that, will you bring down my Union flag—not the weather-beaten one, but the other that I hoisted on the Fairy Belle when I took Jack out to the fleet."

"I little expected to find a Union flag down here," said Mr. Watkins, who was very much surprised. "I should think you would find it dangerous to keep one."

"So we would if the people around here knew it was in the house," replied Marcy. "But that is something we don't publish. Your men will not bother me if I go into the garden, will they?"

"I will see that they don't," was the answer; and, while Marcy went out of the back door as if he had been thrown from a catapult, Mr. Watkins went out at the front, and Mrs. Gray hastened to her son's room with a pair of scissors in her hand. Marcy went to the coachman's cabin and felt for the latch-string; but it had been pulled in, and that proved that old Morris was inside. He pounded upon the door, and called the black man's name impatiently.

"O Lawd! Who dat?" came in muffled tones from under the blankets.

Before Marcy could answer Julius glided around the corner of the cabin, looking like a small black ghost very scantily clad in white. He had been brave enough when the robbers made their raid upon the house and there was a strong force of Union men to back him up, but now that he thought the robbers had come again to finish their work, when Aleck Webster and his friends were not at hand to lend assistance, he was very badly frightened.

"I don't suppose Morris will get up and let me in, but you will do as well as anybody," said Marcy. "Get a spade, quick, and come with me. No, they are not robbers. They are Yankees, and I am to go to the fleet with them; and that is all I can tell you. Hurry up."

While Julius was digging in one of Mrs. Gray's flower-beds under Marcy's supervision, and the quilt on his bed was being ripped to pieces, Mr. Watkins was standing in the front yard, telling the master's mate what he had seen and heard in the house. The young officer was astonished, and declared he had never dreamed that there was such Union sentiment anywhere in the South.

"I did not believe there was either, though I have often heard of it," replied Mr. Watkins, "but I believe it now. It is easy enough for us who are surrounded by loyal people to swear by the old flag, but I tell you it must take pluck and plenty of it to do it down here. I wish some one else had been ordered to do this work, for I have taken her last prop away from that poor woman in there. She is a heroine; and as for the boy, he is as true as steel, and as brave as they make them. One can't look in his face and think anything else of him. He has gone to dig up the captain's money and will be along directly. I never thought to ask him how he got his hand hurt."

While the officer was adding to his subordinate's surprise by telling how completely Lon Beardsley had reduced Captain Benton to poverty by taking the Hollins from him, Mrs. Gray came down the steps with Marcy's flag in her hand and followed by three laughing darkies, who brought with them large trays loaded with something good to eat and drink—bread and butter, cold meat, and pitchers filled to the brim with the richest of milk. While the hungry gunboat men were regaling themselves and wondering at such treatment from Southerners, all of whom they supposed to be the most implacable and violent of rebels, Mrs. Gray shook out the folds of the flag, and spread it upon the wall where they could all see it. The unexpected sight thrilled them, and every cap was lifted.

"If things wasn't just as they are, missus," said one, "we'd give it a cheer; asking your pardon and the deck's for speaking when I wasn't spoke to."

"But our guns will cheer it in the morning, and they will make more noise than we could," observed another. "Likewise asking pardon for speaking."

At this moment Marcy appeared, bundled up ready for his trip to the coast, and carrying in his hand a valise, which contained, among other things, the box that held Captain Benton's money. It was all in gold, too; for at that time gold was as plenty as scrip in the Confederacy, and Captain Beardsley, ignorant as he was on some points, was much too shrewd a man of business to take paper money when he could have what he called the "hard stuff" for the asking. Had the Hollins been captured one short year later, Marcy would have been obliged to take his share of the prize money in scrip, and Captain Benton might have thought himself lucky if he had received twenty cents on the dollar.

When the blue-jackets had disposed of everything there was on the trays, either by eating it themselves or putting it into the bosom of their shirts, to be divided with the guards who had been left in charge of the boats, and Marcy had stowed his Union flag in his valise, there was nothing to detain them longer. The master's mate marched the squad away while Mr. Watkins lingered a moment, cap in hand, to say good-by to the woman whose quiet courage had excited his admiration.

"Take good care of my boy, sir," said Mrs. Gray, as if she thought the officer could give Marcy a safe station in action, or protect him from the shot and shell that would soon be shrieking about his ears. "Remember he is all I have to give you."

"I'll have an eye upon him, madam, and upon your other boy as well, when I find out where he is," replied Mr. Watkins. "We are not pressing men into our service, and I know I can safely say that Marcy will be permitted to return to his home as soon as we can get along without him."

"I shall have that promise to console me during his absence," said Mrs. Gray. "Good-by, Marcy. When you come back to me I want you to be able to say that you did your duty. Oh, is there no way in which this dreadful state of affairs can be brought to an end?" she cried, once more giving way to her tears when she felt Marcy's arm closing around her waist.

"Certainly there is," answered the officer. "The Richmond authorities can end this war in an hour by telling their soldiers to lay down their arms and stop fighting the government. That would be an easy thing for them to do, and it is all we ask of them. Good-by, Mrs. Gray. I trust we may meet again under pleasanter circumstances."

The executive turned away as he spoke, leaving the young pilot alone with his mother. He did not prolong the leave-taking, but brought it to an end as quickly as he could, shook hands with the three darkies, whose laughter was now changed to weeping, looked around for Morris and Julius, neither of whom was in sight, and in two minutes more was marching by Mr. Watkins's side along the road that led past the ruins of Captain Beardsley's house. If Marcy remembered that his old captain was one of the best pilots for those waters that could be found anywhere he did not think to speak of it, nor did he take more than passing note of the fact that there was another squad of sailors standing in the road in front of Beardsley's gate. They seemed to be waiting for Mr. Watkins, for an officer walked up and exchanged a few low, hurried words with him. Marcy afterward thought that the barking of Beardsley's dogs, and the shrill frightened voices of the house servants and field-hands which came faintly from the direction of the quarter, ought to have told him that something unusual had been going on there, but he did not pay very much attention to the sounds. He was thinking of his mother. "Very good, sir," said Mr. Watkins, in response to the officer's whispered communication. "Make all haste to the boats and shove off; but preserve silence, and keep the line well closed up."

The officer, accompanied by Doctor Patten's boy Jonas, went back to his own squad, which at once moved into the woods. That of Mr. Watkins immediately followed, led by the master's mate, the executive and Marcy bringing up the rear as before; but it was not until the men were all embarked and the four boats were well on their way down the creek, that they had opportunity to exchange a word with each other. Mr. Watkins's cutter led the way, Jonas occupying his old place in the bow, and passing his instructions to the coxswain in a whisper. The sailors bent to their work with a will, and the boats moved swiftly on their course; but the muffled oars were dipped so carefully, and feathered so neatly, that there was no sound heard save the slight swishing of the water alongside. Feeling entirely satisfied with the way in which he had carried out the instructions of his superior, Mr. Watkins settled back on his elbow in the stern-sheets and addressed Marcy in low and guarded tones.

"I remarked to one of my officers a short time ago that it must take courage, and plenty of it, to be loyal in this country; and I told the truth, did I not?" he whispered.

"One has to be more than brave to be true to his colors in this section," replied Marcy. "He has to be deceitful. I can satisfy you of that, if you think a few scraps of my personal history would be of interest to you."

Mr. Watkins answered that nothing would suit him better than to hear, from the lips of one who knew all about it, how the Union people, if there were any in that country besides his own family, managed to live among their rebel neighbors; and Marcy began and told his story, but not quite so fully as the reader knows it. He did not have time to do that, and besides he was too modest; but he easily brought his auditor to believe that the arm he carried in a sling had not been injured while its owner was fighting on the Confederate side, and also showed him that he had more reason to stand in fear of Captain Beardsley than of any other man in the settlement.

"What worries me just now is the fear that Beardsley will in some way find out that you Yankees have taken me from my mother's house to help your vessels through Croatan Sound, said Marcy, who little dreamed that Captain Beardsley had been taken from his own bed for the same purpose, and was at that very moment a prisoner in one of the boats that followed astern. The night was so dark that Marcy could not have recognized the man if he had looked straight at him; and if Beardsley had seen and recognized Marcy, when the two squads came together and got into the boats on the bank in front of his house, he had made no sign. And we may add here that the privateer captain had not been treated by his captors with the same kindness and consideration that Marcy received at the hands of Mr. Watkins. The men who surrounded his house, who followed him to his hiding-place in the cellar and dragged him out by main strength, knew that he was a rebel who hadn't the manhood to treat his prisoners with any degree of kindness, and when Beardsley frantically resisted them and yelled to his darkies to put the dogs on to the Yankees, the boatswain's mate who held him said that, if he opened his mouth again in that fashion, he would make what little light there was in the cellar shine straight through the captive's head. This threat kept Beardsley quiet, and he would not have dared to say anything to Marcy if he had had the opportunity; but he had a good deal to say about him after he got home.

"If you whip the rebels at Roanoke Island and let me go among my friends again, that man will make me no end of trouble," said Marcy, in conclusion. "He will declare that I went aboard of you of my own free will, and did all I could to help you through the Sound. It will be pretty near the truth, but all the same I don't want the story to get wind in the settlement."

"He is about the meanest two-for-a-cent outfit that I ever heard of," said Mr. Watkins, in a tone of disgust. "I am glad you told me all this, and will be sure to bear it in mind. But yours is not the only Union family in this country, I hope?"

Oh, no, Marcy said in reply. There were many who professed to be Union, and as many more who had little or nothing to say about it one way or the other. The latter were the real Union people. Some of them held secret meetings in the swamp, and had rid Marcy's mother of the presence of one of her meanest and most dangerous enemies by coming to her plantation one night and carrying away the overseer. They also captured the four men who raided his mother's house with the intention of robbing it, and had given Marcy to understand that they were keeping a watchful eye upon him and would punish any one who persecuted him or his mother. While he was telling this part of his story another faint call from a far-away sentry gave to Mr. Watkins the gratifying intelligence that Plymouth had once more been passed in safety. Why these convenient rear water-ways were not more closely guarded by the Plymouth garrison it is hard to tell. Perhaps it was because they thought the Yankees would not venture to penetrate so far inland in small boats. They learned better when Cushing sunk the Albemarle.

There was little current in the river to help the cutters on their journey, but the ebb tide presently came to their assistance, and under its influence they went on their way with increased speed; still it was almost daylight when Mr. Watkins's cutter and the two immediately astern of it drew up to the gangway on the starboard quarter of Captain Benton's vessel. The executive officer and Marcy stepped first upon the grating, and Beardsley and the acting ensign who commanded the second cutter followed them up the side to the deck, where Captain Benton was waiting to receive them.

"I am aboard, sir," said Mr. Watkins, placing his hand to his cap, "and have the honor to report that your orders have been carried out to the letter. These are the pilots I was instructed to bring."

"Very good, sir," replied the captain.

At the word "pilots" Marcy Gray turned his head to see where and who the other one was, and his amazement knew no bounds when he saw Captain Beardsley's eyes looking into his own. His old commander was startled too; for up to this moment he supposed that the object of the expedition was to capture him alone. And if he was ill at ease to know that he was wholly in the power of men whose flag he had insulted, he was terribly frightened when he found himself confronted by Marcy Gray. The latter knew too much about him and his business, for hadn't he as good as confessed in the boy's presence that he had been a smuggler? If Marcy remembered that fatal admission and felt in the humor to take advantage of it, there was likely to be trouble in store for him. The man saw that very clearly, even before the gunboat captain turned his steady gaze upon him. Then Beardsley wished that the deck might open under his feet and let him down into the hold. He cringed a moment, like the coward he was, and then tried to call a smile to his face. He remembered his old prisoner, the master of the Mary Hollins, and acting upon the first thought that came into his mind, he took a step forward as if he would have shaken hands with him; but Captain Benton turned on his heel and walked away. This movement must have served as a signal to somebody, for there was a slight but ominous jingling of chains close by, and the master at arms clasped a pair of irons about Beardsley's wrists before he could raise a finger to prevent it. The touch of the cold metal aroused him almost to frenzy.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN BEARDSLEY "PERTESTS.">[

"Take 'em off! In the name and by the authority of the Confederate States of Ameriky I pertest agin this outrage!" yelled Beardsley, hardly knowing what he said in his excitement. "Marcy Gray, aint I always stood your friend and your mother's too, and are you going to keep as dumb as an oyster while this indignity is being put upon your old cap'n? Take the dog-gone things off, I say! I aint in the service, and you aint got no right to slap me in irons when I aint done the first thing agin you or your laws, either. No, I won't keep still!" roared the captain, struggling furiously in the grasp of the sailors, who were guiding him with no very gentle hands toward the gangway that led down to the brig. "I'll pertest and fight as long as I have breath or strength left in me; and when we have gained our independence, Cap'n Benton, I'll make it my business to see that you suffer for this."

From the bottom of his heart Marcy Gray pitied the frightened, half-crazy man who was being hurried below, but he did not draw attention to himself by interceding in his behalf because he knew it would do no good. Beardsley was being treated just as he had treated Captain Benton's men; but there was no mob on the Union gunboat to whoop and yell at him as the Newbern mob had whooped and yelled at his prisoners when they were being taken to jail. Beardsley continued to struggle and shout until his head disappeared below the combings of the main-hatch, and then the racket suddenly ceased. He had not been gagged, as Marcy feared, but he had been told that he would be if he didn't keep still, and the threat silenced him.

Quiet having been restored Mr. Watkins said to his commander, waving his hand in Marcy's direction:

"This young man, sir, was also on board the Osprey, when she made a prize of your schooner. I think he has something to say that will interest you. His name is Marcy Gray."

"Why, Gray was mentioned to me as a Union man," said the captain.

"And so I am," replied Marcy. "But when one is surrounded by enemies he can't always do as he likes, and I sailed on that privateer because I couldn't help it. If you will be kind enough to look into this valise you will see something that will prove my words."

"He has seventeen hundred dollars in that grip, which he says belongs to you, sir," Mr. Watkins whispered in the ear of his superior. "It is the money he received when the Hollins was condemned and sold by the Confederate government."

Captain Benton was greatly astonished. He looked hard at Marcy for a minute or two, and then beckoned him to come into the cabin. Seating himself on one side of the little table that stood in the middle of the floor he pointed to a chair on the other side, and the boy dropped into it. The captain continued to look closely at him for another minute, and then said:

"I don't know whether I saw you on board the Osprey or not."

"I don't wonder at it, sir," answered the young pilot. "You had so many bitter reflections to occupy your mind, about that time, that you probably do not remember a single one of the crew with the exception of Captain Beardsley. But I remember you, sir; and when I saw you looking over the Osprey's stern at your own vessel which was following in our wake, I felt sorry for you. I said then that I would never spend a cent of your money, and I never have."

While he talked in this way, Marcy took the key from his pocket and opened his valise. The first thing he brought to light was his Union flag, the one his Barrington girl gave him, and which, we said, in the first volume of this series, was destined to float in triumph over the waters that he had once sailed through in Captain Beardsley's privateer. The glorious day we then prophesied had dawned at last! The captain looked on in surprise when Marcy took the flag from his valise, and shook it out so that he could see it.

"I should think your rebel neighbors, if you have any, would destroy that banner," said he.

"We have plenty of that sort of neighbors, sir, but they never saw this flag," answered Marcy. "I keep it hidden in one of my bedquilts, and sleep under it every night." And, being a boy of business, he came at once to the subject that just then was nearest his heart. "Am I to remain on this ship when she goes into action, sir?" he inquired.

"For anything I know to the contrary, you are," the captain answered with a smile. "Of course, that will be just as the flag-officer says. Why do you ask?"

"Because, if I am, I wish you would do me the favor to run this flag of mine up to your masthead," replied Marcy. "The young lady who made it for me, and who worked upon it while her rebel relatives were asleep, would be very much gratified if she could hear that it had been carried to victory by a Federal ship of war."

"Well, my young friend, whether you stay aboard of us or not, that flag of yours shall go up to our masthead. You think we are going to beat them, do you?"

"I know it, sir," replied Marcy, so earnestly that the captain smiled again. "If they beat you to-day, you will beat them to-morrow, or next week. You are bound to win in the long run, and in their heart of hearts the rebels know it."

"It does me good to hear you talk," said the captain, getting upon his feet and pacing his cabin with his hands in his pockets. "I have been pretty well discouraged since the fleet arrived off this coast, but you put new life into me. Is that my money?" he added, as Marcy placed a good-sized box upon his table. "Am I as rich as that? You handle it as though it was heavy."

"If I haven't forgotten all my schooling, it ought to weigh close on to ten pounds, troy," answered Marcy, throwing back the cover, so that the captain could see the glittering contents. "If you will run it over, sir, I think you will find it all there."

"Good gracious, my lad! Do you take me for a bank cashier? I could not count a pile of money like that in an hour, and I have scarcely two minutes' time at my disposal now. Steward, give us a cup of coffee, and tell the officer of the deck to call away the gig. I shall want you to go to the flag-ship with me. How much did that pirate get for the Hollins and her cargo, any way?"

"Fifty-six thousand dollars," answered Marcy.

"That is rather more than they would have brought in Boston," said the captain reflectively. "And the Confederate government got half, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir; and half the remainder was divided between Captain Beardsley and his two mates. The other fourteen thousand were equally divided among the sixteen members of the crew, petty officers and foremast hands sharing alike, each one receiving eight hundred and seventy-five dollars."

"Then how does it come that there are seventeen hundred dollars here?" said the captain, jerking his head toward the box on the table.

"There are seventeen hundred and fifty dollars in this box to be exact—two shares," replied Marcy. "Captain Beardsley promised to do what he called 'the fair thing' by me if I would ship as pilot on his schooner, and he did it by giving me eight hundred and seventy-five dollars of your money."

"That was pretty cool, I must say. But how do you know that he did not reward your fidelity by giving you some of his own money?"

"No, he didn't, sir!" exclaimed Marcy. "Captain Beardsley doesn't reward anybody unless he thinks he sees a chance to make something by it, and neither does he pay out a cent of his own when he can take what he needs from the pockets of some one else. It is all yours, sir, and I am glad to have the opportunity to give it to you."

"And I am glad to receive it, and to have the opportunity to shake hands with such a young man as you are," said the captain; and suiting the action to the word, he came around the table and gave Marcy's hand a hearty sailor's grip.

CHAPTER XI.

MARCY IN ACTION.

Marcy Gray was somewhat surprised, though not at all abashed, to find himself treated as an honored guest on board the gunboat. He took breakfast with Captain Benton, who did not think it beneath his dignity to acknowledge that he was glad to know he was seventeen hundred dollars richer than he thought he was, and who listened with the deepest interest to the boy's account of the various adventures that had befallen him since the war broke out. When the story was finished the captain believed with his executive officer that it required courage to be loyal to the old flag in that country.

Breakfast over, the two stepped into the captain's gig and were taken on board the Southfield and into the presence of the officer who commanded the naval part of the expedition. Flag-officer Goldsborough was a native of Maryland, but he believed that the South was wrong in trying to break up the Union, that she ought to be compelled to lay down her arms since she would not do it of her own free will, and he was doing all a brave and skilful man could to force her to strike the strange flag she had hoisted in opposition to the Stars and Stripes. He was very busy, but he found time to ask Marcy a few questions, and gave him pencil and paper with which to draw a map of the channel that led through Croatan Sound. When it was done he compared it with another that lay upon his table, and Marcy learned, from some remarks he exchanged with Captain Benton, that he was not the only pilot whose services had been secured by force of arms.

We have spoken of an expedition similar to that of Mr. Watkins, which left the fleet the night before, went as far as the mainland and stopped there. It was in search of a pilot, and it brought him, too. He was now on board the flag-ship, from which he was afterward sent to the vessel that had been ordered to lead in the attack. There was still another that Marcy did not know anything about—a negro boy named Tom, who had once called John M. Daniel of Roanoke master. He ran away on the same night the expedition came into the Sound, and had been taken on board Burnside's flag-ship. He afterward showed the general the landing at Ashby's Harbor, and told him how the troops could be placed there without being obliged to wade through the deep marshes at the foot of the Island. At the beginning of the war the Confederates did not believe that their own slaves would turn against them and give aid and comfort to the Federals; but the blacks were sharp enough to know who their friends were, and the information they were always ready to give was in most cases found to be reliable.

"There is one thing I had almost forgotten to speak of, sir," said
Captain Benton, when the "commodore," as he had been called, intimated
that he had no more questions to ask. "What shall I do with that man
Beardsley, if you please?"

"I will give you an order to send him off to a store-ship, for of course you don't want him aboard of you in action," was the answer. "What will be done with him after we are through here, I can't say. If he had been taken with his privateer he might be held as a prisoner of war; but as it is, I presume he will be released after a while, to get into more mischief after he returns within the Confederate lines."

"But it will put him to some trouble to get back," thought Marcy. "And that will be a blessing."

As soon as the order referred to had been written, Captain Benton and his pilot took their departure. When the former stepped upon the deck of his own vessel the second cutter was called away, and Captain Beardsley was brought out of the brig to be taken on board the supply ship, where he would be out of harm's way during the fight that was soon to begin. He did not yell and struggle now as he did when the irons were first placed upon his wrists, for the fear of the gag had taken all that nonsense out of him. His face was very pale, and he walked with his head down, and did not appear to notice any of those he passed on his way to the side. When he saw how utterly dejected and cast down his old commander was, Marcy felt heartily sorry that he had said so much against him; but after all he hadn't told more than half the truth. He had promised himself that he would shut Beardsley up for a long time if he ever got the chance, but now that it was presented, he hadn't the heart to improve it. He did just as he knew his mother would wish him to do under the circumstances—he held his peace; and when the cutter shoved off with him, he hoped that something would happen to keep Beardsley away from Nashville as long as the war continued. But unfortunately he came back. Marcy had not neglected to bring his binoculars with him, and finding himself at liberty after the captain went below, he walked forward to take a look at things, being accompanied by a couple of master's mates, one of whom had been second in command of Mr. Watkins's expedition, and answered to the name of Perkins. The Union fleet lay anchored in three parallel lines a short distance below the lighthouse, which stood on a dangerous shoal on the right-hand side of the channel, the gunboats being in advance, with the exception of half a dozen or more that had been drawn up on the flanks to protect the transports, in case the enemy began the fight without waiting to be attacked. A short half mile ahead of the fleet were two small vessels, the Ceres and the Putnam, whose business it was to act as picket-boats and look out for obstructions when the larger vessels were ready to move. Straight up the channel, and not more than twelve or thirteen miles away, were the double rows of piles and sunken ships that must be passed in some manner before the Union vessels could engage the Confederate squadron, which lay on the other side and close under the protecting guns of Fort Huger. His glass showed him that the rebels had steam up and were ready for action, and Marcy wondered why the Union commander wasn't doing something. He said as much to the two young officers who stood by his side, while he was making his observations.

"Wait a while," replied Perkins, with a sly wink at his companion. "After you have been in one fight you'll not be in any hurry to get into another. I can wait a week or two as well as not."

"I assure you that I am not spoiling for a fight," answered Marcy. "I'd rather not go into one; but since I've got it to do, I wish we might get at it and have it over with." And as he said this he picked up his left hand, which had been hanging by his side, and placed it in the sling he wore around his neck.

"Look here, Perk," said the other young officer, when he observed this movement. "I'll bet you have been giving advice to one who knows more than you do. Where did you get that hand, pilot, if it is a fair question?"

"My hand is all right, but my arm was broken by one of your shells while I was running the blockade," replied Marcy, whereupon the youngsters opened their eyes, and looked at him and at each other as though they felt the least bit ashamed of themselves.

"But of course you did not know anything about it, and I don't think hard of it if you took me for a greenhorn."

"I took you for a lad of spirit and courage when Mr. Watkins told me how you had been living back there in the country," exclaimed Perkins. "But of course I did not know that you had snuffed powder."

"I should think that shell would have taken your arm off instead of breaking it," observed the other.

"The shell never came near me, but a heavy splinter that was torn from our rail made me think I was a goner," replied Marcy. "The man you saw put into the brig, and afterward taken out and sent aboard the store-ship, was my old captain; and I was acting as pilot of his vessel at the time I was hit. And I am as strong for the Union as anybody in this squadron. I have a brother on one of these boats, and would like much to see him."

"You don't say?" exclaimed Perkins. "What boat is he on, and what position does he hold?"

"He is a foremast hand on the Harriet Lane. I hope he will make himself known to his commander, for he is the best kind of a pilot for this coast."

"I am afraid he will not be of any use to us to-day, and that you will not shake hands with him this trip," replied Perkins. "That boat is not with us. She is outside, chasing blockade runners. Hallo! There goes our answering pennant. Now, watch the signal from the flag-ship—one, nine, five, second-repeater—Aw, what's the use of my reading off the numbers when I have no signal-book to translate them for me?"

"It is 'engage the enemy' probably," said his companion. "After we have answered it a few times more, perhaps we will recognize it when we see it."

"If that is what the signal means, why don't you go to your stations?" inquired Marcy, as they began walking leisurely toward the waist to leave the forecastle clear for the blue-jackets, who came forward in obedience to a shrill call from the boatswain's whistle, which was followed by the command: "All hands stand by to get ship under way." "You don't seem to be in any haste to do anything, you two."

"What is the use of being in a hurry to get shot at?" said Perkins. "Wait until you hear the call to quarters, and then you will see us get around lively enough. But we shall not have so very much fighting to do to-day. I heard Mr. Watkins tell the officer of the deck this morning that this battle will be merely preliminary. When the soldiers get a foothold on the Island you'll see fun, unless the rebels run away."

"Where is my station in action?" asked Marcy.

"Close at the old man's side, wherever he happens to be," replied the master's mate. "And I will tell you, for your consolation, that he always happens to be in the most dangerous place he can find. There he is on the bridge, and perhaps you had better go up to him."

The bridge was a platform with a railing around it, extending nearly across the deck just abaft the wheel-house, and when Marcy mounted the ladder that led up to it, he found himself in a position to see everything that was going on. The captain was standing there with his hands in his pockets, but he seemed more like a disinterested spectator than like a man who was about to take a ship into action, for he had not a word to say to anybody. He wore a canvas bag by his side, suspended by a broad strap that passed over his shoulder; and if Marcy could have looked into it, he would have found that it contained a small book whose cloth covers were heavily loaded with lead. This was the signal-book—one of the most important articles in a man-of-war's outfit. The captain always kept it where he could place his hands upon it at a moment's notice, and if he found that his vessel was in danger of being captured, he would have thrown it overboard rather than permit it to fall into the hands of the enemy.

For the first quarter of an hour or so Marcy Gray had nothing to do but keep out of the way of the captain, who walked back and forth on the bridge so that he could see every part of the deck beneath him by simply turning his head, and watch the gunboats fall into line one after another. The ease and rapidity with which this was done surprised him. The several commanders knew their places and got into them in short order, and without in any way interfering with the vessels around them. If the inanimate masses of wood and iron they commanded had been possessed of brains and knew what they were expected to do, they could not have done it more promptly or with less confusion. It was a fine and inspiriting sight, and Marcy Gray would have walked twenty miles to see it any day.

"The flagship is signalling, sir," said a quartermaster who was on the bridge with him and the captain.

Marcy turned about and saw a long line of different-colored streamers traveling up the Southfield's main-mast. When it reached the top and the breeze had carried the flags out at full length so that the captain could distinguish them, he took down the number they represented on a slip of paper, and turned to the corresponding number in his book to see what the signal meant. This he wrote upon a separate piece of paper which he held in his hand.

By the time the vessel was fairly under way several signals had been made from the commodore's flag-ship, and finally a rattle was sounded somewhere below; whereupon the blue-jackets came running from all directions, but without the least noise or disorder, and took their stand by the side of the big guns to which they belonged. When the command "cast loose and provide" had been obeyed and every man was in his place, the roll was called by the commanders of the different divisions, the sailors responding by giving the names of their stations thus:

"George Williams."

"First captain and second boarder, sir."

"Walter Dowd."

"Second loader and first boarder, sir."

"James Smith."

"Shotman and pikeman, sir."

When the roll had been called the various division commanders reported to the executive officer, who always has charge of the gun-deck in action, and he approached the bridge on which the captain was standing, saluted with his sword, and said:

"All present or accounted for, sir."

"Very good, sir," answered the captain, giving the officer the paper he held in his hand. "There is what the commodore had to say to us in one of his signals. Read it to the men."

Mr. Watkins went back to his station and took off his cap; and instantly the eye of every sailor on deck was fixed upon him.

"This signal has just been made from the flag-ship," said Mr. Watkins, holding the paper aloft. "Listen to the reading of it: 'This day our country expects every man to do his duty!' What have you men to say to that? Will you show the commodore that you know what your duty is by beating those fellows up there?"

The answer was a lusty cheer, in which the officers joined as wildly as their men. Then cheers began coming from all directions, showing that the reading of the signal had had the same effect upon other crews. When the Stars and Stripes, the vessel that was to lead in the attack, went by to take her station at the head of the line, her men were yelling at the top of their voices; and when their cheers died away everything became quiet, and the fleet settled down to business.

The first shot was fired at eleven o'clock. It was from a hundred-pounder on the leading vessel, and was directed against Fort Bartow. It was the signal for the opening of the contest, and was quickly followed by such an uproar that Marcy Gray could hardly hear himself think. He had always thought that a twenty-four pound howitzer made a pretty loud noise, but it was nothing to the deafening and continuous roar of the heavy guns that in a moment filled the air all about him. He thought he ought to be badly frightened, and he expected to be; but somehow he was not, and neither was he killed by the shell from Fort Bartow that struck the water close alongside and exploded, it seemed to him, almost under his feet. He was in full possession of his senses, and the hand with which he levelled his glass at the Confederate fleet was as steady as he had ever known it to be. He was particularly interested in the movements of that fleet, for he was acquainted with some of the sailors who manned it. As soon as the action was fairly begun it left its sheltered position under the guns of the fort and steamed down the channel. Its leading boats came on at such a rate of speed that Marcy thought they must know of some opening in the lines of obstructions, and that they intended to come through and demolish the Union fleet without aid from the guns on shore; but if that was their object they failed to accomplish it. Their heaviest ship, the Curlew, was whipped so quickly that her rebel commander must have been astonished; and so badly crippled was she by the solid shot that crashed through her sides, that it was all she could do to haul out of the fight and seek refuge under the guns of the nearest fort. In the end both the ship and the fort were blown up together.

About this time something happened that the young pilot might have expected, but which he had never once thought of. The smoke of battle settled so thickly about his vessel that his eyes were of little use to him; and, to make matters worse, Captain Benton shouted in his ear:

"Keep a bright lookout, and if you see us getting into less than fourteen feet of water, don't fail to let me know it."

"I declare, I don't know whether there are fourteen or fourteen hundred feet of water under our keel at this moment!" was the thought that flashed through Marcy's mind and awoke him to a sense of his responsibility. "I don't know where we are." Then aloud he said: "I can't see a thing from the bridge, Captain. I shall have to go aloft."

The boy did not know whether or not pilots were in the habit of going aloft in the heat of action, but he thought it was the proper thing to do under the circumstances. He went, and he did not go any too soon, either; for when he had climbed up where he could see over the thickest of the smoke, he found to his consternation that the vessel was heading diagonally across the channel far to the eastward of the position in which she ought to be, that she would be hard and fast aground if she held that course five minutes longer, and that her shells were exploding in the edge of a piece of timber where he could not see any signs of a fort or breastwork. It was the work of but a few seconds for Marcy to make Captain Benton understand the situation, and when the latter had brought his ship to her proper course by following the instructions the young pilot shouted down to him, he came up and took his stand in the top by Marcy's side. There they both remained as long as the fight continued, and their dinner consisted of a sandwich and a cup of coffee, which the cabin steward brought up to them at noon.

The first object of the bombardment was accomplished about five o'clock that afternoon, when a heavy smoke was rolling over Fort Bartow, caused by the burning of the barracks, which had been set on fire by a shell from the fleet, the defiant roar of its guns being almost silenced, and its flaunting banner sent to the dust by the shooting away of the staff that sustained it, and the enemy, all along the line, had been driven so far back that the transports could come up with the troops. It was at this juncture that the services of Mr. Daniel's black boy, Tom, came into play. He piloted General Burnside's launches and lighters into Ashby's Harbor, and, by midnight, ten thousand soldiers were landed in readiness for the real battle, which was to begin on the following morning. By this time the Confederates must have been satisfied that they were going to be whipped. Commodore Lynch knew that he had had all the fighting he wanted; for he retreated round Wier's Point, and was never seen afterward until Captain Rowan, with a portion of the Union fleet, hunted him up, and finished him at Elizabeth City. The battle was over shortly after dark (although the firing was kept up at intervals during the night), and the leading boats dropped back to allow others to take their places.

"We are not whipped, are we?" exclaimed Marcy, when he witnessed this retrograde movement.

"Oh, no," replied the captain, as he backed down from the top. "We have done just what we set out to do when we began the fight this morning, and, having won all the honors that rightfully belong to us, we must fall astern, and let somebody else have a show to-morrow."

Marcy followed the captain to the deck, and was greatly surprised by what he saw when he got there. There were wide openings in the hammock-nettings that he had not seen there in the morning, and the ports, through which two of the broadside guns worked, had been torn into one. Some of the standing rigging was not taut and ship-shape, as it ought to have been, but was flying loose in the breeze, and there were one or two dark spots on the deck which looked as though they had been drenched with water, and afterward sanded. Marcy's heart almost stopped beating when he saw these things, for they told him that the vessel had suffered during the fight, and that some of her crew had been killed or wounded, and he never knew it. But the sight of a flag which a gray-headed quartermaster was just hauling down from the masthead, drove gloomy thoughts out of his mind, and sent a thrill of triumph all through him. It was his own flag, and it had been floating over his head all day long. He took supper with Captain Benton, and afterward went below to see the poor fellows who had not come out of the fight as well as he did. Two of them were laid in the engine-room, covered with the flag in defense of which they had given up their lives, and four others were wounded. The sight was nothing to those that his rebel cousin, Rodney, the Partisan, had often witnessed on the field of battle; but it was enough to show Marcy Gray that there was a terrible reality in war.

The next day was the army's. The battle began at seven in the morning; and although the gunboats, Captain Benton's among the rest, did the work they were expected to do and succeeded in passing the obstructions shortly after noon, the heaviest of the fighting was done by the soldiers. The Confederate flag went down before the sun did, and twenty-five hundred prisoners, forty heavy guns, and three thousand stand of small arms fell into the hands of the victors. The Confederate fleet endeavored to escape by running up the Pasquotank river to Elizabeth City, Commodore Lynch thinking no doubt that he would there find re-enforcements, which could easily have been sent from Portsmouth; but if they were there they did not do him any good, for Captain Rowan followed him into the river the next day, and destroyed his entire squadron with the exception of one boat which was captured and transferred to the Union fleet. After demolishing a portion of the Dismal Swamp canal, Captain Rowan went to Edenton, Winton, and Plymouth, all of which were captured without resistance that amounted to anything, and garrisoned by troops from Burnside's army.

The historian says that the results of this expedition "in a military point of view, were considerable; but those of a political character did not answer the expectations of the Federal government." It was believed that the occupation of these points would not only be the means of stopping the contraband trade, which was kept up in spite of the blockading fleet, but that it would also "keep in countenance the partisans of the Union, who were thought to be numerous in North Carolina." When the capture of Newbern, Beaufort, and forts Macon and Pulaski, which followed close on the heels of the reduction of Roanoke Island, put all the coast north of Wilmington into the hands of the Federals, blockade running indeed became a dangerous and uncertain business; but Marcy Gray could not see that the native Unionists were in any way benefited. To begin with, General Burnside released all his prisoners after compelling them to take oath that they would never again serve against the United States. Does any one suppose that the prisoners had any intention of keeping that promise, or that the Confederate government would have permitted them to keep it if they had been so disposed? It is true that some of these rebel soldiers had had quite enough of the army, and vowed that they would take to the swamps before they would enter it again; but it is also true that the most of them, when they returned to their homes, became determined and relentless foes of all Union men. So the conquest of Roanoke Island gave Marcy Gray more enemies to stand in fear of than he had before; but it had a still worse effect upon his affairs.

It was night when the soldiers that were to take possession of Plymouth and garrison the place were sent ashore from the transports. Marcy stood on the bridge, watching them as they disembarked, and wondering how long it would be before Captain Benton would tell him that his services were no longer needed and that he might return to his home; and, while he watched and thought, he discovered a small party of men on shore with bundles in their hands or on their shoulders, and who acted as though they were waiting for a chance to come off to the fleet. He knew, as soon as he looked at them, that they were Union men who were about to take the opportunity thus presented to enlist under the old flag.

"That is who they are," thought Marcy, after he had kept his binoculars pointed at them for a minute or two. "They can't be anything else, for they are in citizens' clothes. Now, in trying to better their own condition, are they not making matters worse for their families, if they have any? I wonder if I am acquainted with any of them? I will soon know, for they are heading for this ship."

The boats belonging to Captain Benton's vessel had been engaged, with all the other boats of the fleet, in taking the soldiers to the shore, and when they placed their last load of bluecoats upon the bank and were ready to return to their ship, they brought the party of which we have spoken off with them. As the leading boat drew nearer to the side, so that Marcy could obtain a fairer view of the man who sat in the stern-sheets talking to the coxswain, he uttered a cry of surprise and alarm, and almost let his glass fall from his hand. The man was Aleck Webster.

CHAPTER XII.

HOME AGAIN.

Marcy Gray waited until the boat drew a little nearer, and then looked again. There could be no mistake about it. The man in the stern-sheets with the coxswain was Aleck Webster, the one who had promised to have an eye on Marcy and his mother while Jack was at sea, and those who composed his party were men whom Marcy met at the post-office almost as often as he went there. If they were coming off to enlist, as Marcy thought they were, wouldn't that break up the band who held meetings in the swamp? And if that band should be broken up, who would there be to stand between his mother and the wrath of Captain Beardsley? These questions and others like them passed through the boy's mind, as he came down from the bridge and stepped to the gangway to meet Aleck and his friends when they came on board. Aleck was the first to get out of the boat and mount the ladder, and when he reached the top, where the officer of the deck was standing, he touched his hat and said:

"We want to ship, sir."

"Very good," was the answer. "Stand to one side, and some one will talk to you presently."

This gave Marcy the opportunity he wanted to speak to Aleck. He moved to his side at once, and was surprised to hear Aleck say, as if he had expected to find him there:

"I was little in hopes I should have a chance to say good-by to you, sir. Where's old man Beardsley, and have you seen anything of Mr. Jack?"

"Did you know I was here?" asked Marcy.

"I knew you were in the fleet, of course, for the darkies told us about the Yankees coming ashore and taking you and Beardsley away to act as pilots," replied Aleck. "But I didn't know you were serving on this ship, if that is what you mean. Yes; we're going now where we can fight for our principles. We are tired of living in the woods."

"But who will protect the Union families if you go away?" said Marcy.

"They'll not need any one to protect them now," answered Aleck. "I talked to some of the soldiers on shore, and they told me they were here to stay; and as long as they do stay, Beardsley and Shelby and among 'em will keep as still as mice. They won't dare to do or say anything to you while there is Union cavalry scouting around through the settlement every day or two. We left thirteen men in the swamp; and whether or not they will come out and show themselves as Union men, depends on the way things look after the fleet goes away."

Marcy was on the point of telling Aleck that Beardsley had been placed in irons by Captain Benton, who was master of the Mary Hollins at the time she was captured by the Osprey, but before he could open his lips a messenger boy came up and told him that the captain wished to see him in the cabin. Marcy went, and found the captain seated at his table holding a pen in one hand and something that looked like a blank sheet of paper in the other.

"Sit down," said he, pointing to a chair. "I suppose we are as near to your home as we shall go; and as we are about to start for Newbern, where you will not be of much service to us as a pilot, I propose to give you your release unless you have made up your mind to stay with us. I should be glad to have you do it, and will advance your interests in every way I can."

"But what would my mother do without me?" asked Marcy.

"I assure you I have not forgotten her, and so I do not urge you to remain," replied the captain. "Now, how can you get home in the easiest way?"

"By boat, if I had one."

"You can have three or four if you want that many. You know that we have captured every sort of craft we could find along the shore, and you can take your pick of any of those on deck. I don't know that this will be of any use to you," said the captain, shaking the sheet of paper he held in his hand, "but I think it would be a good plan for you to take it along, for there is no telling what may happen. You don't think there is anything on it, do you? Well, there is, and it is the strongest letter of recommendation I know how to write. We are going to leave garrisons scattered all through this region, and if at any time you find yourself in trouble with them, tell the first officer you can find to hold this paper before a hot fire and read the words the heat will bring out. The letter is written with sympathetic ink, and you don't want to use it until you have to, because, after the characters have once been brought out, there is no way that I know of to make them invisible again. I am deeply indebted to you, and wish there was some way in which I could serve you."

It made Marcy sad to have the captain talk to him in this way. Although he was impatient to get home, he did not like to take leave of the new friends he had made on board that ship, for the probabilities were that he would never see them again. After thinking a moment he replied that he did not know of anyway in which the captain could favor him, unless it was by taking a brotherly interest in Aleck Webster and his friends, who had come off to his ship for the purpose of enlisting.

"They are on deck now," said Marcy, in conclusion, "and I was sorry to see them come aboard. Of course they have a right to do as they please, but I had somehow got it into my head that they would stay on shore to protect those of us who are unable to protect ourselves. But Aleck thinks we do not need any one to protect us now that all these captured points are to be held by the Union forces."

"And that is what I think," replied the captain. "The commanding officer at Plymouth will not stand by and let your rebel neighbors impose on you. If they don't behave themselves, report them; that's all you've got to do."

"But you don't know how sly they are, and how hard it is to prove anything against them. The commodore as good as said that Captain Beardsley would be released."

"Of course; and Burnside probably released him at the time he paroled the prisoners we captured on the Island. When you get home you will probably find him there, but I don't think you have anything to fear from him. There's your letter, and here are a few copies of a joint proclamation by Burnside and Goldsborough, which I am instructed to scatter wherever I go," said the captain, placing a good-sized package in Marcy's hand and rising from his seat as he spoke. "Take them along, and put them where you think they will do the most good. I suppose the folks ashore think we are outlaws of the worst description."

Marcy replied that that was about the idea the people in his settlement had of Yankees, and added that he did not believe that a single article of value could be found in a plantation house within a circle of ten miles of Plymouth, everything that was worth stealing having been carried away and concealed in the swamps.

"Well, when you meet people of that sort, call their attention to the last paragraph of that proclamation," said the captain. "Now, we shall have to say good-by, for I expect to drop down the river in a few minutes."

"And you'll not forget to look out for Jack and Aleck?" said Marcy. "You know Aleck is the man who saved me from choking. And I can have my flag back, I suppose?"

"I'll have Webster sworn in this very night, and when I see the captain of the Lane I will tell him what I know about Jack Gray, and will say that his brother did me good service while the fleet was in Croatan and Albemarle sounds. The quartermaster will return your flag at once."

Marcy went into the state room that he had used as his own since he had been on board the ship, and when he came out he brought his valise, in which he had stowed the package the captain had intrusted to his care. The flag with which his Harrington girl presented him, and which had waved triumphant during three hard battles and several sharp skirmishes, was promptly handed out by the quartermaster on watch, and then Marcy followed the captain to the waist, to pick out the skiff that was to take him to his home. As his wounded arm was not yet in a serviceable condition, he selected a boat with a square stern, that could be sculled with one oar. After it had been put into the water, and the countersign, "Roanoke," had been whispered in his ear, Marcy shook hands all around, not forgetting Aleck Webster and the other Union men among the rest, and pushed off into the darkness. The current was strong, and Marcy hugged the bank to keep out of it as much as he could, and by so doing brought himself to the notice of half a dozen sentries who compelled him to come ashore with the countersign. Of course this was a bother, and the progress he made with his one-handed sculling was slow and laborious; but it was safer than following a lonely road and running the risk of falling in with some of those rebel soldiers whom General Burnside had sent to their homes. Marcy told himself that that was about the worst thing that could have happened to him. He was afraid that these paroled prisoners would be pliant tools in the hands of Captain Beardsley, and they were so numerous that the thirteen Union men, who were all there were left of the band that had rescued him and his mother from the power of the robbers, could not hold their own against them.

"Things will be worse now than they ever were before," thought Marcy, as he sculled his boat out of the river into Seven Mile Creek, and sat down to take a much-needed rest and eat a portion of the lunch that Captain Benton's steward had put up for him. "Beardsley will be more vindictive than ever, because I did not say a word for him when Captain Benton put him in irons, and if the truth will not answer his purpose, he'll not scruple to lie about me. He'll try his best to force me into the army so that he can have a clear field for his operations, but I'll tell you what's a fact, I'll not go," said Marcy hotly. "Jack declared that he would take to the swamp before he would fight for the Confederacy, and why shouldn't I do the same? I will. I'll become a refugee rather than shoot at the flag my brother is sailing under. Refugee: one who flees for refuge or safety. That's me, as Dick Graham used to say. I'll seek safety among the Union men who spend the most of their time in the woods. It's my opinion that from now on they will have to spend all their time there, for I don't believe that the prisoners Burnside released will leave any houses for them to go into. Mother's will have to go with the rest."

Marcy had often made the trip from his mother's house to Plymouth and back in a rowboat, and if he thought it hard when he had two hands to use, it was doubly tedious and discouraging now that he had only one, and nothing but the most gloomy thoughts for company. He had almost made up his mind that he would camp on the bank for the rest of the night and walk home in the morning, when he was startled by hearing a low, familiar whistle, something like the chirp of a cricket, a short distance away. He listened until the sound was repeated, and then called out, in a husky voice:

"Julius!"

"Hi ya!" came the answer through the darkness; and Marcy thought he had never heard anything half so melodious as the black boy's laugh. "I done tol' dat fool niggah he didn't know nuffin, but he won't listen to Julius. Eberybody take Julius for a plum dunce; but I done fine you, Marse Mahcy, an' dere's dat Morris——"

"Where are you?" interrupted the boy. "Come here and tell me what you mean, and what brought you here so far from home."

"Nuffin didn't brung me hyar; I jes done come," replied Julius; and a slight splashing in the water indicated that he was in a boat, and that he was pushing off from the bank in the direction from which Marcy's voice sounded. "Dat fool Morris, he take de mu-el an' de filly an' done gone to Nashville lookin' for you; but I know you aint gwine come home dat a way fru all dem rebel soldiers, an' so I come hyar."

"And very glad I am to see you," answered Marcy, laying hold of the side of the dugout that just then bumped against his skiff. "You came here to meet me while Morris went to Nashville with my horse. How did you know I was coming home to-night?"

"Well, de missus say you boun' to come mighty soon, now dat de Yankees done cotch Plymouth, an' so I come hyar," replied Julius. "Howdy, Marse Mahcy!"

The latter replied that he felt pretty well but hungry, although he had just finished a hearty lunch. Julius had been thoughtful enough to provide for that, and straightway produced a basket whose contents would have withstood the assaults of two or three boys with appetites sharper than his own; and while he ate, Marcy asked a good many leading questions, in the hope of inducing his close-mouthed black friend to tell him just how things had been going at home during his absence. He learned that Captain Beardsley had returned in company with some of the prisoners who had been paroled at the Island, but so far as Julius knew he had not set any new plans afloat against Marcy and his mother. Perhaps he did not think it would be safe to do so until things became a little more settled, for among those who had been captured at Roanoke were many who were very bitter against the Confederate government, and who declared that they would fight before they would go into the army again. Some of the soldiers had stopped at the house to ask for something to eat; but others had marched by shaking their fists and yelling derisively. Marcy's heart sank when he heard that, for it proved that he had not been mistaken as to the course Captain Beardsley would pursue when the Federals permitted him to return to his home. Undoubtedly he had told all he knew about Mrs. Gray and her two sons, and it would have been just like him if he had urged the defeated and enraged Confederates to take satisfaction out of all the Union people they could find, since they had failed to beat those who had confronted them in battle. Indeed, that was what Beardsley did; and Marcy afterward found out why his scheme did not work.

Having taken the sharp edge off his appetite, Marcy told Julius to make the skiff's painter fast to the stern of his dugout and go ahead; and the sooner he reached home the better he would like it. He found it much easier to lie at full length on the bottom of his boat, and allow Julius to tow him, than it was to work his way against a strong current with one hand—so very much easier, in fact, that he dropped asleep and slumbered until the bow of the skiff touched the landing abreast of the buoy to which his little schooner was moored. The sight of her recalled to mind the last conversation he had held with Captain Benton.

"I am afraid we shall have to look up a new berth for the Fairy Belle" said he. "It may not be safe for her to stay here any longer, because the Yankees are taking possession of everything in the shape of a boat that they can get their hands on."

"What for dey do dat?" exclaimed Julius. "De boats aint agin de Union."

"They have been made to do service against the Union," answered Marcy, "and they can be used to carry dispatches from one side of the river to the other."

"Well, den, luf dem go down an' bus' up Cap'n Beardsley's schooner," exclaimed Julius. "She wuk agin de Union when she run de blockade."

"I know that; and I had half a notion to put Captain Benton on the track of her," said Marcy, who knew very well that he had no intention of doing anything of the kind. "That is the way he would serve me if he had a good chance. Pick up my valise and come along."

When Marcy went through the gate he missed his faithful Bose, who had always been the first to welcome him; but some of the house servants were stirring, and these greeted him as though they had never expected to see him again. They knew where he had been and what he had been doing, and had thought of and prayed for him as often as they heard the roar of the big guns, which the breeze now and then brought faintly to their ears. They made such a fuss over him that Marcy was saved the trouble of awaking his mother, whom he found waiting for him in the sitting-room.

"You told me that when I came home you wanted me to be able to say that I did my duty," said the young pilot, as his mother laid her head on his shoulder and cried softly. "I can honestly say it, and I have a letter in my pocket from Captain Benton that will bear me out in it."

"I am sorry you brought it with you," said Mrs. Gray. "The country is overrun with Confederate soldiers, and from the way some of them behave I am led to believe that they know all about us."

"I'll bet they do," said Marcy bitterly. "You know, of course, that Beardsley was carried away the same night and for the same purpose I was? Well, the Yankees did not call upon him to act as pilot, but put him in irons at once; and I am sorry to say that he was paroled at the time the other prisoners were. But you need not worry about my letter, as I shall presently show you. Sit down, and tell me what you have done to kill time since I have been gone."

To his relief Marcy found that Julius had told the truth for once in his life, and that his mother had had nothing beyond his absence to trouble her, if we except the demonstrations that some of the paroled prisoners made while they were going by the house. They had not annoyed her by coming into the yard, as they might have done if their officers had not been along to restrain them, but they had whooped and yelled and threatened in a way that was enough to frighten anybody. She said that the excitement and alarm that took possession of the people when the news came that Roanoke Island was in the hands of the invading forces, was something she would remember as long as she lived. The news must have reached Nashville and Plymouth on the night of the surrender, for at daylight the next morning the road in front of the house was filled with fugitives who were making all haste to carry their property out of harm's way. If a body of Yankee cavalry had suddenly appeared at their heels it would scarcely have caused a flutter among them, for they were panic-stricken already.

"The world is full of fools," exclaimed Marcy, undoing the string that held together the bundle of proclamations that Captain Benton had given him, "and the biggest ones I ever heard of live right around here. Didn't they ask you why you didn't pack up and run, too?"

"They did; and my reply was, that I had a son who had been impressed into the Union service; that if I went away he would not know where to look for me, and that I intended remaining in my home until he returned," said Mrs. Gray.

"Good for you, mother!" exclaimed Marcy. "You'll do. Of course, the last one of them was suspicious of you, but you couldn't help that. Now, here are some copies of a proclamation that Captain Benton gave me, with the request that I would spread them around where they would do the most good. He wished me to call particular attention to the last paragraph, and now I will see how it reads."

Seating himself by his mother's side, with a copy of the proclamation in his hand, Marcy proceeded to read it aloud. After referring to the desolating war, that had been brought on by comparatively few bad men, the last paragraph went on to say:

"These men are your worst enemies. They, in truth, have drawn you into your present condition, and are the real disturbers of your peace and the happiness of your firesides. We invite you, in the name of the Constitution, and in that of virtuous loyalty and civilization, to separate yourselves at once from their malign influence, to return to your allegiance, and not compel us to resort farther to the force under our control. The government asks only that its authority may be recognized; and we repeat that in no manner or way does it desire to interfere with your laws, constitutionally established; your institutions, of any kind whatever; your property, of any sort; or your usages, in any respect.

"That was what Mr. Watkins told you on the night he took me away," said
Marcy, when he had finished reading the proclamation. "He said that the
South could end the war by laying down their arms, and General Burnside
and Commodore Goldsborough say the same."

"But, my son, that is not what the secession leaders want," said Mrs. Gray. "They demand a separate government, and say they will not return to their allegiance."

"They'll have to do it, and, when they go back, they'll not take slavery with them. Mark my words. The time is coming when the darkies will be as free as we are; and I wish that time might come to-morrow, if it would only bring peace upon the land once more. I sometimes think, and hope, that I am having a horrid dream, and that I will wake up in the morning to find everything as it was before. Now, don't cry, mother. I'll not talk so any more. There's my flag as sound as it was when I took it away; but it has been in battle-smoke so thick that you couldn't see it from the deck. I must hoist Dick Graham's next, but not until it can float in a breeze that is untainted by any secession rag. That was the promise I made him when he gave me the flag, instead of turning it over to Rodney, who wanted to destroy it. Can't we have breakfast a little earlier, so that I can go to town?"

"You can have breakfast whenever you want it; but, Marcy, I am almost afraid to have you go to town," replied his mother.

"If I thought I would be in any more danger there than I am at home I wouldn't stir one step," said the boy. "I don't think it would be policy for me to keep away from those paroled prisoners, but that it would be safest for me to go among them as Captain Beardsley does. Besides, I want to hear what sort of stories that old villain has been telling about me since he came back. Now, where would be a good place to put Captain Benton's letter? We are liable to receive a visit from the Union cavalry any day, and the letter ought to be kept handy."

In accordance with Marcy's request breakfast was served as soon as it could be made ready, and during the progress of the meal Marcy entertained his mother with a glowing description of the various engagements through which he had passed on Captain Benton's vessel. Contrary to his expectations, he said, he did not feel frightened when he went into the first fight at the Island, and no doubt the reason was because he had so many things to occupy his mind; but after that he grew pale and trembled every time he heard the call to quarters, for he had a faint idea of what was before him. And the oftener he was under fire the more he dreaded the thought of going into action. His experience was like that of every soldier in this land; and when we say soldier we do not mean coffee-cooler.

Mrs. Gray became alarmed when Marcy told her how Captain Beardsley had been put in irons by the man who had once been his prisoner, for she was well enough acquainted with the captain to know that he would be revenged upon somebody for it. When he had eaten all the breakfast he wanted, Marcy mounted his mother's horse, that had been brought to the door in place of his filly which old Morris had taken to Nashville, and galloped out of the yard. The first man he saw was Beardsley, standing by the ruins of his house. The man looked up when he heard the sound of hoofs on the road, and when he discovered Marcy he beckoned him to come in.

"I've just thought of something," said the boy to himself, as he turned into the gate. "This villain is going to play off friendly, and I can't watch him any too closely. When the Yanks get to scouting through here, he will be the best Union man in the world; and who knows but he will send them to our house after Jack's rebel flag? That flag must come down the minute I get home."

Then he rode up and shook hands with Captain Beardsley, who acted as if he was glad to see him.

CHAPTER XIII.

A REBEL SOLDIER SPEAKS.

"I just wanted to ask you how and when you got back," said the captain, holding fast to Marcy's hand. "I see Morris over town yesterday, and right there he is going to stay till you come to ride the filly home. How did you like the Yanks, what you seen of 'em?"