When all the refugees reported at sundown, as the camp regulations required them to do, Marcy’s plan for escaping capture at the hands of the Home Guards was explained to them, and it resulted, as Tom Allison said it would, in a complete change in the camp routine. The plan promised to work admirably. The three men composing the new detail which went foraging that night made their way to their homes in safety, visited a while with their families, and returned with a supply of provisions without having seen any signs of the enemy; but the old detail would surely have been captured, for their houses were watched all night long, not by Home Guards, but by Confederate veterans who had been sent from Williamston at Beardsley’s suggestion and Shelby’s. On the night following Mrs. Gray’s house was not only watched but searched from cellar to garret; but that was done simply to throw Marcy off his guard, and we are sorry to say that it had the desired effect. The Confederate soldiers knew they would not find Marcy that night, for Captain Beardsley told them so; and Beardsley himself had been warned by his faithful spy, Buffum, that Marcy would not go foraging again until Monday night. By this time all the refugees became aware that there was someone among them who could not be trusted, and the knowledge exasperated them almost beyond the bounds of endurance. The danger was that they might do harm to an innocent man, for they declared that the smallest scrap of evidence against one of their number would be enough to hang him to the nearest tree.
“I can find that spy and will, too, if this thing goes on any longer,” said Ben Hawkins, when he and Marcy and Mr. Webster were talking the matter over one day.
“Then why don’t you do it?” demanded Marcy. “It has gone on long enough already.”
“I’ll do it to-morrow night if you two will stand by me,” said Ben, and Marcy had never heard him talk so savagely, not even when he threatened to “twist” Tom Allison’s neck for calling him a coward.
“We’ll stand by you,” said Mr. Webster; and although he did not show so much anger, he was just as determined that the man who was trying to betray them into the power of the Confederates should be severely punished. “What are you going to do?”
“I am going to pull that Tom Allison out of his bed by the neck, and say to him that he can take his choice between givin’ me the name of that traitor, an’ bein’ hung up to the plates of his paw’s gallery,” replied Ben.
“That’ll be the way to do it,” said Buffum, who happened to come up in time to overhear a portion of this conversation. In fact Buffum was always listening. He showed so great a desire to be everywhere at once, and to know all that was going on, that it was a wonder he was not suspected. But perhaps he took the best course to avoid suspicion. For a man who was known to be lacking in courage, he displayed a good deal of nerve in carrying out the dangerous part of Mark Goodwin’s programme that had been assigned to him.
“Will you help?” inquired Hawkins.
“Well, no; I don’t know’s I want to help, kase you all might run agin some rebels when you’re goin’ up to Allison’s house,” replied Buffum. “I’d a heap ruther stay in camp. I never was wuth much at fightin’, but I can forage as much grub as the next man.”
There was another thing Buffum could do as well as the next man, but he did not speak of it. He could slip away from camp after everybody else was asleep or had gone out foraging, make his way through the woods to Beardsley’s house, remain with him long enough to give the captain an idea of what had been going on among the refugees during the day, and return to his blanket in time to have a refreshing nap and get up with the others; he had done it repeatedly, and no one was the wiser for it. He slipped away that night after listening to Ben Hawkins’ threat to hang Tom Allison to the plates of his father’s gallery, and perhaps we shall see what came of it.