"The last time I sent off a dispatch from here you did not tax me a cent for it," Marcy reminded him. "Is your patriotism on the wane?"
"Not much; but you couldn't expect us to keep up that thank-ye business forever, could you? How would we run the line if we did? We think as much of the brave boys who are standing between us and Lincoln's Abolitionists as we ever did; but it takes the hard cash to pay operators and buy poles and wires."
Marcy had no trouble in getting his check cashed, and when he went back to the schooner after his valise and bundles, he had twenty-one hundred dollars in his pocket. But there were seventeen hundred dollars of it that did not belong to him. He was only keeping it until he could have opportunity to return it to the master of the Mary Hollins. He found that Captain Beardsley had gone ashore with his agent, and as Marcy had already said good-bye to him, it was not necessary that he should waste any valuable time in hunting him up. He took a hasty leave of his shipmates, hired a darkey to carry his luggage to the depot, and was in time to purchase his ticket for a train that was on the point of leaving for Goldsborough. He had hardly settled himself in his seat before he became aware that nearly all the passengers in the car were looking at him, and finally one of them came and seated himself by his side.
"You are not in uniform," said the passenger, "but all the same I take it for granted that it was the Yankees who put your arm in a sling."
"Yes, sir; they did it," answered Marcy.
"Well, now, I want to know if it's a fact that the Yankees outnumbered us two to one in that fight," continued the man.
"You refer to the battle of Bull Run, I suppose. I don't know. I wasn't there, and I don't hesitate to say that I am glad of it. One howitzer is as much as I care to face. I got this hurt while coming into Crooked Inlet on the schooner Hattie. She's a blockade-runner."
"Oh! well, if there's going to be a war, as some people seem to think, you blockade-runners will be of quite as much use to the Confederacy as the soldiers. We shall be dependent upon foreign governments for many things that we used to get from the North, and men like you will have to supply us. Was it much of a fight?"
Marcy briefly related the story, and when it was finished the man went back to his old seat; but during the journey the young pilot was obliged to tell more than a score of people that he was not present at the battle of Bull Run, and consequently could not have got his injury there. He kept his ears open all the way, and was gratified to learn that the Confederates had not followed up their victory, that they were not in Washington, and that there was no reason to suppose that they had any intention of going there immediately; and he thought he knew the reason why, when he heard one of the passengers say that a few more victories like Bull Run would ruin the Confederacy.
At an early hour the next morning Marcy stepped off the train at Boyd town and found Morris waiting for him. That faithful servitor's eyes grew to twice their usual dimensions when he saw his young master with his arm in a sling, and without waiting to learn the extent of his injuries, he broke out into loud lamentations, and railed at the Yankees in such a way that the by-standers were led to believe that old Morris was the best kind of a rebel.