"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."