"Oh, no. He rattled on about various things – spoke of the ease with which the Osprey captured that Yankee schooner, and let fall a word or two about the battle in Charleston harbor."
"Is that all he said to you?"
"I believe he said something about being a good Confederate, and I asked him why he didn't prove it by shouldering a musket. I don't go about boasting of the great things I would do if I were only there. There's no need of it, for I have been there." ["But it was because I couldn't help myself," he added mentally.]
"But folks say you're Union, all the same," said Hanson.
"What folks? Are they soldiers?"
"No. Citizens."
"Then I don't care that what they say," replied Marcy, snapping his fingers in the air. "When they put uniforms on and show by their actions that they mean business, I will talk to them, and not before."
Marcy waited patiently for the overseer to say "money," and the latter waited impatiently for Marcy to say it; and when at last the boy made up his mind that he had heard all he cared to hear from Hanson, he brought his leg down from the horn of his saddle, placed his foot in the stirrup, and gathered up the reins as if he were about to ride away.
"Kelsey didn't say nothing to get you and your maw down on me, did he?" inquired Hanson, when he observed these movements.
"I shouldn't like for to lose my place just because I am strong for the Union and dead against secession."
"If you lose your place on that account, it'll be because Colonel Shelby and his friends will have it so," answered Marcy. "You are hired to do an overseer's work; and as long as you attend to that and nothing else you will have no trouble with me. You may depend upon that."
"But before you go I'd like to know, pine-plank, whether you are friendly to me or not," continued Hanson, who was obliged to confess to himself that he had not learned the first thing, during the interview, that could be used against Marcy or his mother.
"I am a friend to you in this way," was the answer. "If I found you out there in the woods cold and hungry, and hiding from soldiers who were trying to make a prisoner of you, I would feed and warm you; and I wouldn't care whether you had a gray jacket or a blue coat on."
"He's a trifle the cutest chap I've run across in many a long day," muttered the overseer, as Marcy turned his filly about and rode away. "I couldn't make him tell whether he was Union or secesh, although I give him all the chance in the world, and he didn't say "money" a single time. Now, what's to be done? If the money is there and Beardsley is bound to have it, he'd best be doing something before that sailor gets back, for they say he's lightning and will fight at the drop of the hat. I reckon I'd better make some excuse to ride over town so't I can see Colonel Shelby."
"I think I have laid that little scheme most effectually," was what Marcy Gray said to himself as he rode away from the stump on which the overseer was sitting. "They haven't got a thing out of me, and I have left the matter in their own hands. If there is anything done toward getting Hanson away from this country (and I wish to goodness there might be), Shelby and his hypocritical gang can have the fun of doing it, and shoulder all the responsibility afterward."
But what was the object of the plot? That was what "banged" Marcy, and he told his mother so after he had given her a minute description of his brief interview with the overseer. Was it possible that there were some strong Union men in the neighborhood, and that Beardsley hoped Marcy would incur their enmity by discharging Hanson on account of his alleged principles? Marcy knew better than to believe that, and so did his mother.
"I'll tell you what I think to be the most reasonable view of the case," said the boy, after taking a few turns across the floor and spending some minutes in a brown study. "Beardsley knows there is no man in the family; that we'd be only too glad to have somebody to go to for advice; and he hoped we would take that ignorant Hanson for a counselor, if he could make us believe that he was really Union. But Hanson didn't fool me, for he didn't go at it in the right way. He's secesh all over. The next thing on the program will be something else."
"I trust it will not be a midnight visit from a mob," said his mother, who trembled at the bare thought of such a thing.
"So do I; but if they come, we'll see what they will make by it. They might burn the house without finding anything to reward them for their trouble."
"Oh, Marcy. You surely don't think they would do anything so barbarous."
"They might. Think of what that Committee of Safety did at Barrington."
"But what would we do?"
"Live in the quarter, as Elder Bowen and the other Union men in Barrington did after their houses were destroyed. And if they burned the servants' homes as well as our own, We'd throw up a shelter of some sort in the woods. I don't reckon that Julius and I have forgotten how to handle axes and build log cabins. The practice we have had in building turkey traps would stand – Say," whispered Marcy suddenly, at the same time putting his arm around his mother's neck and speaking the words close to her ear, "if a mob should come here to-night and go over the house, we'd be ruined. There are those Union flags, you know."
"I never once thought of them," was the frightened answer. "Suppose I had had a mob for visitors while you were at sea? Our home would be in ashes now. Those flags are dangerous things, and must be disposed of without loss of time. I am sorry you brought them home with you. Don't you think you had better destroy them while you have them in mind?"
"Of course I will do it if you say so, and think it will make you feel any safer; but I was intending – you see – "
His countenance fell, and his mother was quick to notice it. "What did you intend to do with them?" she asked.
"One of them used to float over the academy," replied Marcy. "Dick Graham, a Missouri boy, than whom a better fellow never lived, stole it out of the colonel's room one night because he did not want to see it insulted and destroyed, as it would have been if Rodney and his friends could have got their hands upon it. He gave it to me because he knew it would some day be something to feel proud over, and said he hoped to hear that it had been run up again."
"But, Marcy, you dare not hoist it here," exclaimed Mrs. Gray.
"Not now; but there may come a time when I shall dare do it. The other flag – well, the other was made by a Union girl in Barrington, who had to work on it by stealth, because her sister, and every other member of her family except her father, were the worst kind of secesh. Rodney thought sure he was going to put the Stars and Bars on the tower when the Union colors were stolen, but our fellows got mine up first, and would have kept it there if they had had to fight to do it. But I'll put them in the stove if you think best."
"You need not do anything of the kind," said Mrs. Gray, whose patriotism had been awakened by the simple narrative. "I shall not permit a party of beardless boys to show more loyalty than I am willing to show myself."
"Bully for you, mother!" cried Marcy. "We'll see both of them in the air before many months more have passed over our heads. Now, think of some good hiding place for them, and I'll put them there right away. Not in the ground, you know, for if the Union troops should ever come marching through here, we should want to get them out in a hurry."
"How would it do to sew them up in a bed-quilt?" said Mrs. Gray, suggesting the first "good hiding place" that came into her mind.
"That's the very spot," replied Marcy. "Put them in one of mine, and then I shall have the old flag over me every night."
No time was lost in carrying out this decision, and in a few minutes mother and son were locked in the boy's room, and busy stitching the precious pieces of bunting into one of the quilts. It never occurred to them to ask what they would do or how they would feel if some half-clad, shivering rebel should find his way into the room and walk off with that quilt without so much as saying "by your leave." Probably they never dreamed that the soldiers of the Confederacy would be reduced to such straits.
CHAPTER III
BEARDSLEY BETRAYS HIMSELF
Never before had the hours hung