Just as the young pilot ceased speaking there was a gentle knock at the door; and so sudden and unexpected was it, that it brought both him and his mother to their feet in a twinkling. How long had the person who gave that knock been within reach of the door, was the first thought that arose in the mind of each. Had some one crept along the hall and listened at the key-hole in the hope of hearing some of their conversation?
"If that is the case," Marcy whispered to his mother, "she has had her trouble for her pains. We haven't said a dozen words that could have been heard the length of this room. 'Come in!'"
The door opened to admit one of the numerous female house servants, who announced that there was a gentleman on the gallery who had called to see Mrs. Gray on very important private and particular business.
"She looks innocent enough," thought Marcy, who could not bring himself to believe, as his mother evidently did, that some of the domestics were watching their movements and reporting the result of their observations to the overseer. "I don't think she heard a word, and she certainly could not have seen anything." And then, finding that his mother was looking at him as if she meant him to understand that she knew what the visitor's business was, and desired him to take it off her hands, he said, aloud: "Who is the gentleman, and do you know what he's got to say that is so very important and particular?"
"I don't know, sah, what he want to speak about," answered the girl, "but de man is Mr. Kelsey."
Marcy could hardly keep back an exclamation of disgust, and in an instant he was on his guard. The man's name and the message he had sent in warned him to be on the lookout for treachery. Kelsey was one of Beardsley's "renters" – that is to say, he hired from the captain a few acres of ground, on which he managed to raise enough corn and potatoes to keep his family from absolute want, and a little log cabin in which he found shelter when he was not absent on his hunting and thieving expeditions. Marcy had not seen him since his return from Barrington, but he had heard of him as a red-hot Confederate who went about declaring that hanging was too good for Yankees and their sympathizers. When Marcy heard of this, he told himself that the man was another Bud Goble, who, when the pinch came, would take to the woods and stay there as long as danger threatened.
"I'll be with him directly," he said, addressing himself to the girl, who went out, closing the door behind her.
"What in the name of wonder can that worthless man want with me?" whispered Mrs. Gray, when she thought she had given the domestic time to get out of hearing. "He has never been in this house before except to beg."
"And he wouldn't be here now if he hadn't been sent," replied the boy.
"Oh, Marcy!" said his mother.
"That is just what I mean. It isn't old clothes or grub that he is after this time."
"But Beardsley couldn't have put him up to anything. He is in Newbern."
"No odds. He left plenty of friends behind to do his dirty work, and this fellow, Kelsey, is one of them. It will take a sharper man than he is to pull the wool over my eyes."
"Don't be over-confident, my son. He is not too insignificant – no one is too insignificant these times to do us some terrible injury. Be careful how you treat him and what you say to him. It might be dangerous to make him angry, for he has powerful friends behind him. Don't be gone long, for I shall be uneasy until you return."
"I'll be right back," promised Marcy; and, giving his mother a reassuring kiss, he left the room and went out on the porch to see what Beardsley's friend and spy wanted.
The latter looked just as he did the last time Marcy saw him – too lazy to take a long breath. He was tall and lank, his hair fell down upon his shoulders, his whiskers were as tangled and matted as a little brush heap – in short, he was as fine a specimen of a poor white as one could find anywhere in the seceded States. He looked stupid as well as shiftless, but the young pilot knew he wasn't. He was as sly as a fox and as cunning as well, and Marcy confessed to himself that he stood more in fear of him than he did of Captain Beardsley. When the man heard Marcy's step upon the porch, he tried to assume the servile air which was characteristic of poor Southern whites before the war; but he did not succeed very well. His manner seemed to say that he knew he was dealing with one he could crush whenever he felt like it, and of whom he need not stand in fear; and Marcy was quick to notice it.
"Sarvent, sah," said Kelsey, rising to his feet and taking off his tattered hat, which, however, he almost instantly replaced. "I heared that you had got back again from sea, an' that you had whopped the Yankees first time tryin', same as our fellers done down to Charleston."
"Yes, sir," replied Marcy, seating himself, and depositing his feet on the railing, as if to indicate that he was quite at the service of his friend Kelsey as long as the latter wanted to talk to him. "We whipped them, and we could do the same thing again." ["And that's nothing but the truth," he added, to himself. "When an armed vessel meets one that's not armed, the helpless one is bound to go under every time."]
It is hard to tell just what Kelsey expected the boy to say in response to his greeting, but in spite of his usual self-control his face showed that he had not looked for any such answer as this. Marcy spoke and acted as if he were delighted with the success that had attended theOsprey's first cruise at sea, and proud of being able to say that he was one of her crew.
"You sent in word that you desired to see my mother on very particular business," continued Marcy. "She doesn't feel like seeing anybody to-day – upset by the war news, you know – and I am here to speak for her. It's nothing bad, I hope?"
Kelsey straightened up on his seat and assumed a business air, as if these words had suggested an idea to him.
"Yes, it's kinder bad," said he. "We uns know that you are true blue, fur if you wasn't you wouldn't be on that privateer; an' if your maw wasn't true blue, she wouldn't a let you go."
["That sounds exactly like Beardsley," said Marcy, to himself.] "Well, what of it? Didn't I do my duty faithfully?"
"I ain't sayin' nothing agin that," replied the man hastily.
"But – you're fur Jeff Davis, ain't you?"
Instead of answering in words, Marcy pulled down the corner of his right eye and looked at Kelsey as if to ask him if he saw anything green in it.
"What do ye mean by them movements?" demanded the visitor.
"I mean that I am not going to talk politics with you," was the reply. "This settlement is full of traitors, and I'm going to hold my tongue unless I know who I am talking to. If I do that, I shan't get into trouble by speaking too freely in the hearing of a Yankee spy."
"But look a-here, Mister Marcy," protested Kelsey.
"If you came to pry into our private affairs, you might as well jump on your mule and go home, for you'll not get a word from me. I ought to put the dogs on you, for if all I hear is true you're the worst kind of a traitor." ["And so you are," thought Marcy, closely watching the effect of his words, although he did not seem to be doing so; "you're a traitor to the old flag."]
The visitor was astonished beyond measure, and it was fully a minute before he could collect his wits sufficiently to frame a reply.
CHAPTER II
HIDING THE FLAGS
"I think I have taken the right course," soliloquized the young pilot, who mentally congratulated himself on the ease with which he had "got to windward" of this sneaking spy. "If I fight him with his own weapons I shall probably get more out of him than I could in any other way."
"You heared that I was a traitor?" exclaimed Kelsey, as soon as he could speak. "Mister Marcy, the man who told you that told you a plumb lie, kase I ain't. I whooped her up fur ole Car'liny when she went out, I done the same when our gov'ner grabbed the forts along the coast, an' I yelled fit to split when our folks licked 'em at Charleston. Any man in the settlement or in Nashville will tell ye that them words of mine is nothing but the gospel truth."
Marcy knew well enough that his visitor's words were true, but he shook his head in a doubting way, as he replied:
"That may all