"I will have the money dug up right now," said he. "And, mother, while I am doing that, will you bring down my Union flag—not the weather-beaten one, but the other that I hoisted on the Fairy Belle when I took Jack out to the fleet."
"I little expected to find a Union flag down here," said Mr. Watkins, who was very much surprised. "I should think you would find it dangerous to keep one."
"So we would if the people around here knew it was in the house," replied Marcy. "But that is something we don't publish. Your men will not bother me if I go into the garden, will they?"
"I will see that they don't," was the answer; and, while Marcy went out of the back door as if he had been thrown from a catapult, Mr. Watkins went out at the front, and Mrs. Gray hastened to her son's room with a pair of scissors in her hand. Marcy went to the coachman's cabin and felt for the latch-string; but it had been pulled in, and that proved that old Morris was inside. He pounded upon the door, and called the black man's name impatiently.
"O Lawd! Who dat?" came in muffled tones from under the blankets.
Before Marcy could answer Julius glided around the corner of the cabin, looking like a small black ghost very scantily clad in white. He had been brave enough when the robbers made their raid upon the house and there was a strong force of Union men to back him up, but now that he thought the robbers had come again to finish their work, when Aleck Webster and his friends were not at hand to lend assistance, he was very badly frightened.
"I don't suppose Morris will get up and let me in, but you will do as well as anybody," said Marcy. "Get a spade, quick, and come with me. No, they are not robbers. They are Yankees, and I am to go to the fleet with them; and that is all I can tell you. Hurry up."
While Julius was digging in one of Mrs. Gray's flower-beds under Marcy's supervision, and the quilt on his bed was being ripped to pieces, Mr. Watkins was standing in the front yard, telling the master's mate what he had seen and heard in the house. The young officer was astonished, and declared he had never dreamed that there was such Union sentiment anywhere in the South.
"I did not believe there was either, though I have often heard of it," replied Mr. Watkins, "but I believe it now. It is easy enough for us who are surrounded by loyal people to swear by the old flag, but I tell you it must take pluck and plenty of it to do it down here. I wish some one else had been ordered to do this work, for I have taken her last prop away from that poor woman in there. She is a heroine; and as for the boy, he is as true as steel, and as brave as they make them. One can't look in his face and think anything else of him. He has gone to dig up the captain's money and will be along directly. I never thought to ask him how he got his hand hurt."
While the officer was adding to his subordinate's surprise by telling how completely Lon Beardsley had reduced Captain Benton to poverty by taking the Hollins from him, Mrs. Gray came down the steps with Marcy's flag in her hand and followed by three laughing darkies, who brought with them large trays loaded with something good to eat and drink—bread and butter, cold meat, and pitchers filled to the brim with the richest of milk. While the hungry gunboat men were regaling themselves and wondering at such treatment from Southerners, all of whom they supposed to be the most implacable and violent of rebels, Mrs. Gray shook out the folds of the flag, and spread it upon the wall where they could all see it. The unexpected sight thrilled them, and every cap was lifted.