“Did Hawkins and his parolled comrades know that you served on a Union gunboat during the fight at Roanoke Island?” asked Rodney, when his cousin reached this point in his narrative.
“Of course they knew it; and they knew, too, that Jack was serving on one of the blockading fleet, but it didn’t seem to make the least difference in their friendship for me. Hawkins was the man who helped me get that treacherous overseer out of mother’s way, and he and the other parolled prisoners who found a home in our refugee camp had relatives in the settlement; and those relatives found means to warn us whenever a cavalry raid was expected out from Williamston.”
“You must have led an exciting life,” observed Rodney.
Marcy replied that he found some excitement in dodging the rebel cavalry and in listening to the sounds of the skirmishes that frequently took place between them and the Union troopers that scouted through the country from Plymouth; but there wasn’t a bit to be seen during the weary days he passed on the island, afraid to show his head above the brush wind-break lest some lurking Confederate should send a bullet into it. Nor was there any pleasure in the lonely night trips he made to and from his mother’s house whenever it came his turn to forage for his companions. Keeping the camp supplied with provisions was a dangerous duty, and he had to do his share of it. It was always performed under cover of the darkness, for if any of their number had been seen carrying supplies away from a house during the daytime, it would have been reported to the first squad of rebel cavalry that rode through the settlement, and that house would have been burned to the ground. To make matters worse the refugees learned, to their great consternation and anger, that there was an enemy among them; that one who ate salt with them every day and slept under the same trees at night, who took part in their councils, heard all the reports, good and bad, that were brought in, and knew the camp routine so well that he could tell beforehand what particular refugee would go foraging on a certain night, and name the houses he would visit during his absence—someone who knew all these things was holding regular communication with enemies in the settlement, who made such good use of the information given them by this treacherous refugee that they brought untold suffering to Marcy Gray and his mother, and severe and well-merited punishment upon themselves. In order that you may understand how it was brought about we must describe some things that Marcy did not include in his narrative, for the very good reason that he knew nothing of them.
We have said that Tom Allison and his friend and crony Mark Goodwin were angry when they saw Marcy Gray and his body-guard riding about the country, holding their heads high as though they had never done anything to be ashamed of. Tom and Mark were together all the time, and their principal business in life was to bring trouble to some good Union family as often as they saw opportunity to do so without danger to themselves. The burning of Beardsley’s fine schooner had opened their eyes to the fact that Marcy and his fellow-refugees could not be trifled with, that there was a limit to their patience, and that it was the height of folly to crowd them too far.
“There’s somebody in this neighborhood who ought to be driven out of it,” declared Mark Goodwin, while he and Tom Allison were riding toward Nashville one morning, trying to make up their minds how and where to pass the long day before them. “Don’t it beat you how Marcy and his body-guard dodge in and out of the woods when there are no Confederate soldiers around, and how close they keep themselves at all other times?”
“Marcy knows what’s going on in the settlement as well as he did when he lived here,” answered Tom. “He’s got friends, and plenty of them.”
“Everything goes to prove it,” said Mark, “and those friends ought to be driven away from here.”
“That’s what I say; but who are they? Name a few of them.”
“We’ll never be able to call any of them by name until we put a spy in the camp of those refugees to keep us posted on all.”