"Marcy Gray never had a hand in getting up this letter, more's the pity," thought Tom, as he again ran his eye over the plainly written lines in the hope of finding something that would give him an excuse for saying that Marcy did write it. "Look at the spelling and the bungling language! Marcy couldn't do that if he tried."
"Well, what do you reckon you make of it?" demanded the captain.
"It's perfectly scandalous the most outrageous thing I ever heard of!" exclaimed Allison. "Just think of the impudence this fellow shows in ordering you—ordering, I say——"
"Oh, there's more'n one feller mixed up in it," said Beardsley, with a groan.
"Perhaps there is, and then again, perhaps there isn't," replied Tom. "Couldn't I write a letter and sign a hundred names to it, if I wanted to? I say it is a burning shame that good and loyal Confederates should submit to be ordered about in this way, and you were foolish for paying the least attention to it. You ought to have gone on with your business and come home when you got ready."
Beardsley turned down the collar of his coat, threw his left leg over the horn of his saddle, and shook his whip at Allison as if he were about to say something impressive.
CHAPTER II.
ALLISON IS SURPRISED.
"Oh, I mean it," said Tom, and one would have thought by the way he shook his head and frowned and made his riding-whip whistle through the air, that it would be useless for anybody to try to order him around. "Just try me and see; that's all."
"And if you had been in my place you wouldn't have come home till you got good and ready?" said Beardsley.