"Some one like Bud Goble must have been on the watch when Toby put it under the log," said Marcy, who thought he knew just how the old negro felt when he discovered his loss. "He'll not see that money again. I told him to give it to Mr. Riley."
"And that reminds me that we saw and talked with Mr. Riley, who was as smiling and agreeable as you please," said Dixon. "If I had been guilty of burning out two innocent men because they differed from me in opinion, I don't think I could have had the cheek to show myself on the street. But Mr. Riley did not seem to mind it."
"Do you really think he had a hand in that affair?" inquired Marcy. "I don't like to think that he is that sort."
"When a fellow allows himself to be carried away, as he and the rest of that committee have, by prejudice and rage, he will do some things he would not think of doing if he were in his right mind. Look at Rodney," said Dixon; and Marcy wondered if he knew or suspected that Rodney had written that mischievous letter. "It's in the mouth of every rebel in town whom we talk with that the committee burned those houses, and what everybody says must have some truth in it."
"Listen to me a minute, and I will condemn Mr. Riley out of his own mouth," said Dick, in an earnest whisper. "When Captain Wilson asked him how it came that he could reach the fire so quickly, seeing that it was more than a mile from his own house and there were no alarm bells ringing, Mr. Riley replied that it was because he happened to be awake when the fire commenced. Now, if that was the case, why did he run right by Elder Bowen's burning house to come up town? I was on post that very night, and know that the two fires were started almost at the same moment. Mr. Riley wasn't at home, I tell you. He was in Barrington; and that was the way he got to the fire before we did. Put that in your pipes."
"You have made out a pretty strong case against him so far as circumstantial evidence will go," Dixon remarked.
"Plenty strong enough to make him prove an alibi if he were prosecuted," said Marcy. "Where are those Union men now?"
"Living quietly and comfortably in two of the Elder's negro cabins," replied Dick. "Some of the rebels we talked to think they need another and larger dose, for they are as independent and saucy as ever."
"I glory in their spunk," said Marcy. "See anything of Bud or Caleb Judson? I don't care what becomes of Bud, but if you happen to run across Caleb, I wish you would send him to me. I promised to raise some money for him that night, when I thought I should have to go after Rodney and Dick alone, and I want to give it to him. We couldn't have found them without his help."
As we are almost, if not quite, through with these two gentlemen, Bud and Caleb, we may remark that, a few days after this conversation took place, Marcy went to Barrington and found opportunity to square accounts with Caleb by handing him double the amount of money the man thought he ought to have for acting as Captain Wilson's guide. But Caleb couldn't or wouldn't give him any news of Bud Goble. In after-years some of the academy boys heard of him once or twice in a roundabout way—not as a brave soldier of the Confederacy, doing and daring for the sake of the principles he had so loudly promulgated when he thought old Mr. Bailey was afraid of him, but as a sneaking conscript, hiding in the woods and living, no one knew how, but probably keeping body and soul together by the aid of the bacon and meal that his wife bought with old Toby's money.