"Then whose work is that? There's something burning off that way."
"It is the work of Marcy, the Refugee. That's I. After persecuting me for months in every way he could think of, Beardsley has driven me from home at last, and I set fire to his schooner to pay him for it."
"I am a refugee myself," replied Mr. Webster. "And there's my hand, which says that I will stand your friend as long as you need one. If the Home Guards had been organized a few weeks sooner Aleck would not have left us old men and boys to fight our battles alone. But he had an idea that the presence of the Yankees on the coast would serve as a protection to us; and there's where he was wrong. If we don't do something at once, they will follow us into the swamp and kill or capture the last one of us. That fight in Hampton Roads put life and energy into them."
"I don't see why it should. They got the worst of it."
"Are you sure?" exclaimed Mr. Webster. "I heard that we got the worst of it; that some of our best ships were sunk or burned."
"Will it be quite safe for us to stop here long enough to have a snack?" said Marcy. "Then, Julius, you may hand out that brown basket; the one with the napkin spread over the top. I'm hungry, and I suppose you are, Mr. Webster, for you have walked from your home since Hawkins saw you this afternoon. By the way, where is Hawkins now?"
"He will hang around the settlement as long as he can, and take to the woods only when he sees that preparations are being made to compel him to go back to the army. Didn't you see him with the Home Guards to-night?"
Marcy replied that he did not see anybody, for he ran before the Home Guards came into the house. If Hawkins was with them, as he had promised to be, Marcy was satisfied that no indignity had been offered to his mother.
By this time Julius had made the boat fast to a tree on the bank and come ashore with the lunch; and while Marcy and his new friend were eating the cold bread and meat he passed over to them, the former gave a true history of that battle in Hampton Roads as he learned it from the papers Captain Barrows left with him. Then he gave a short account of his experience and dealings with Captain Beardsley, so that the man might know just how much reason he had to stand in fear of him, and finally he inquired how many men there were in Mr. Webster's party, and where and how they lived. He learned that there was an even score of them now, seven of their number (one of whom was Ben Hawkins) being paroled prisoners, who declared that they would fight rather than go back to the army. It had been the habit of the original members of the band to go into the woods whenever they desired to talk about things that they didn't want their rebel neighbors to know; but ever since they heard of the Home Guards, whose avowed object it was to send all the Union men they could find to Williamston Jail, they had become refugees in earnest, some of them having taken up their permanent abode in the camp. Those who had families to look out for now and then visited their homes during the daytime; but judging by the way things looked now, that small privilege would soon be denied them.
"And when it comes so that we can't see our folks for fear of being shot, or marched off to jail, we'll take to visiting them in the nighttime," said Mr. Webster, in concluding his story. "And if we have to do that, we'll light fires to show us the way back to camp."