“Too late to know what struck you?” laughed Morey. “Perhaps I’ve got more brains than you think.”
“At ten o’clock in the morning, then,” sighed Major Carey.
“That’s the first business engagement I ever had,” replied Morey, “and I rather like it. I’ll be there.”
[CHAPTER VII]
AN EXCITING INTERVIEW.
Old Marsh Green was perhaps the poorest farmer in Rappahannock County. But when it came to facts in relation to the Marshall family or the land it had owned, his information was profuse and exact. When Morey knocked on his cabin door at six o’clock the next morning and ordered the white-haired darkey to turn out and saddle Betty and Jim, Marsh and Amos were more than amazed. They were confounded. No Marshall had ever risen at such an hour within the colored man’s recollection.
“Somepin gwine come frum dis,” muttered Marsh. “Tain’t natchal.”
Amos was greatly relieved to find that the early morning business did not relate to the knife he had purloined.
Marsh knew no more after Morey had accomplished his purpose. In an hour and a half the boy and the “overseer” had ridden from one end of the plantation to the other and across it; not only the present one hundred and sixty-acre piece immediately about the “mansion,” but east and west, north and south, over all the acres once attached to the place. On a bit of paper Morey made a rough chart of the land as his father had known and cultivated it and on each, parcel and division he set down notes concerning the quality of the soil, when last cultivated by the Marshalls, and its present physical condition.