“Mark,” said he in a low whisper, “we’re in the worst scrape of our lives, and if we come safely out of it I’ll promise that I will never again try to interfere with Marcy Gray. He can go into the army or stay out of it, just as he pleases. If he ever finds out what we have been up to what will become of us?”
“If he hasn’t found it out already it is his own fault,” replied Mark, who had never before been so badly frightened. “Everybody in the settlement knows it, and some enemy of ours will be sure to tell him. Tom, I wish we had let him alone.”
But Mark’s repentance came too late. The mischief had been done, and Marcy Gray was industriously collecting evidence against him and his companion in guilt. He had already heard enough to satisfy him on three points: that the plan for capturing the refugees in detail originated with Tom and Mark, that Captain Beardsley had undertaken to do the work, and that at least one of the refugees was a traitor. But unfortunately he shot wide of the mark when he began casting about for someone on whom to lay the blame. He suspected one of Ben Hawkins’ comrades who had been captured and parolled at Roanoke Island. There were seven of them, and one of their number, beyond a doubt, had furnished the information that enabled the Home Guards to capture the two men who had been taken to Williamston. He never once suspected the man Buffum. If he had, he would have dismissed the suspicion with a laugh, for everyone knew that Buffum was too big a coward to take the slightest risk.
When Marcy took leave of his mother he rode straight to Beardsley’s, and was not very much surprised to learn that the captain had left home early that morning to “’tend to some business over Williamston way.” His ignorant daughter tried to be very secretive, and succeeded so well that Marcy would have been stupid indeed if he hadn’t been able to tell what business it was that took her father “over Williamston way.” Then he changed the subject and surprised her into giving him some other information.
“Hawkins made a lively fight for the Home Guards last night, did he not?” said Marcy. “How many of them did he kill?”
“Nary one. Didn’t hit nary one, nuther,” answered the girl. “Paw ’lowed that if Ben had had a gun he’d ’a’ hurt somebody; but he popped away with a little dissolver, and you can’t hit nothin’ with a dissolver. Mind you, I don’t know nothin’ about it only jest what the niggers told me.”
“Some folks might believe that story, but I don’t,” said Marcy to himself, as he wheeled his horse and rode from the yard. “When the darkies get hold of any news they don’t go to you with it.”
From Beardsley’s Marcy went to Nashville, stopping as often as he met anyone willing to talk to him, and going out of his way to visit the homes of the two refugees who had been captured the night before, and everywhere picking up little scraps of evidence against Tom, Mark, and Beardsley; but everyone was so positive that there could not be a traitor in the camp of the refugees, that Marcy himself began to have doubts on that point. Ben Hawkins’ father and mother took him into the house and showed him the chair in which Ben was sitting when four masked men rushed into the room, two through each door, and tried to capture him.
“But my Ben, he aint a-skeered of no Home Guards,” said Mr. Hawkins proudly. “Before you could say ‘Gen’ral Jackson’ with your mouth open, he riz, an’ when he riz he was shootin’. An’ it would ’a’ done you good to see the way them masked men humped themselves. They jest nacherly fell over each other in tryin’ to get to the doors, an’ Ben, he made a grab fur the nighest, thinkin’ to pull off the cloth that was over his face, so’t we all could see who it was; but he couldn’t get clost enough. Then Ben, he run too; but he come back after the grub. He said he had been sent fur it an’ was goin’ to have it. Ben ’lowed that, if they had been soldiers instead of Home Guards, we wouldn’t never seen him no more.”
“And I am afraid that we shall have to deal with soldiers from this time on,” replied Marcy. “You wait and see if Beardsley doesn’t bring some from Williamston when he comes back.”