"I had put it into his head to do something to you and Dick Graham, and I wanted to stop it if I could," answered Rodney. "I tell you I was frightened when I saw those fires. I began to see what we were coming to, and I wanted to warn Goble that he was watched, and that he would surely bring trouble upon himself if he paid any attention to that letter."
"What letter?"
"Why, the one old nigger Toby told you about. I wrote it. Mean as you may think me, and as I am, I wrote it. I said to myself that I would drive you and Dick from the school, and that was the way I took to do it." Having got fairly started on the confession he had longed to make, and paying no sort of attention to his cousin's efforts to stop him, Rodney made a clean breast of the matter, and told just how far his loyalty to the Stars and Bars and his hatred for everybody who had a lingering spark of affection for the Stars and Stripes had led him. On the evening his new flag came he slipped away from his companions, ran into a store, wrote the letter that Bud afterward read to his wife, and got it into the office without any one being the wiser for what he had done. That letter sent Bud on the war-path, and encouraged him to impose upon Mr. Bailey and Elder Bowen, both of whom met his attempts in a manner so vigorous that Mr. Riley and his Committee of Safety became alarmed. They held a secret meeting, and determined upon a plan of operations which they hoped would drive Union men and abolitionists from the country, and bring the State-rights men, like Mr. Bailey, over to the Confederacy. The committee was responsible for those two fires—Rodney had heard enough from his rebel friends to make him sure of that; and they had but just begun operations, when Captain Wilson and his boys put in an appearance. That was what made Mr. Riley so angry that he would not speak to the students that night, or even look at them, and it was possible that he and the others who rode up to the academy had talked to the colonel in very plain language.
"I supposed, of course, that I would find Goble somewhere in town, and kept Dick with me because I wanted him to help with a word now and then," said Rodney, in conclusion. "He played a very slick trick on us when he sent word that that sick man was in need of medicine, and we fell into the trap as easy as you please. He was awful mad when he found that he had caught the wrong boy, that it was Marcy he wanted and not Rodney, but he hadn't forgotten the underground railroad joke, and was resolved that we shouldn't forget it, either. I didn't think Bud would be fool enough to threaten anybody with a whipping. If I had, I never would have written that letter, I assure you. If lie had whipped me for it, it would have served me right."
Marcy listened in silence to this astounding revelation, and although he was intensely grieved and shocked, he said everything he could to make Rodney understand that he was freely and fully forgiven, and that it would never be remembered against him; but Rodney refused to be comforted.
"Dick knows it, and you know it," said he. "And if the other fellows do not suspect it, they must be both blind and deaf. I don't care to stay longer about the academy where everything I see will remind me of events I should be glad to forget, and I shall start for home by the first train that leaves Barrington to-morrow. If the colonel will not let me go—"
"I don't think he will object to any of us going," replied Marcy. "During the riot, when Dixon marched us back into the armory, he said he intended to disband the whole thing at once. Matters were coming to such a pass that he couldn't and wouldn't stand it any longer."
"I hope he will stick to it," said Rodney. "We might as well have been home three months ago for all the good we've done in school. If he won't permit me to go I'll skip, if you will send my trunk after me."
Marcy said he would, provided he was there to attend to it, and then gradually led the conversation into other channels; for that letter was a sore subject to Rodney, and Marcy never wanted to hear it again. No matter what happened, it would never get to his mother's ears or Sailor Jack's either.
When the company reached the academy, after four hours' absence, they learned that the teachers had made repeated efforts to get the boys to go to bed, but without doing much toward accomplishing the desired end. They went to their dormitories as often as they were told, but leading a horse to water and making him drink are two different things. As soon as the teachers' backs were turned, they would slip out into the hall, run downstairs, and join some of the excited groups strolling about the grounds. They were all up and awake when the rescuers returned, and accompanied them into the armory; but they did not cheer them as they would like to have done. The coolheaded ones among them thought that would be carrying their triumph a little too far. When ranks were broken Marcy reported to Captain Wilson, and asked if he should go into the guard-house.