True To His Colors

by Harry Castlemon

"I know it. I did not think it necessary to trouble you with it. I drew a little money each time, brought it home in safety, and I trust without exciting suspicion, though on that point, of course, I cannot be sure, and hid it in the cellar at dead of night, after I had taken the greatest pains to assure myself that every one in the house was soundly asleep."

"How did you cover up the place where you had been digging?"

"I didn't do any digging," his mother answered, with a smile. "I took a stone out of the wall as heavy as I could lift, and cemented it in place again, after keeping out a sum sufficient to meet our immediate wants. It took me three nights to do it."

"It's a shame that there wasn't someone here whom you could trust to do the work for you," said Marcy. "I am here to bear the hard knocks now."

The Southerners were careful of their women. If they had had the faintest conception of the trials and privations their mothers, wives, and sisters would be called upon to bear, they never would have fired upon Sumter. The patience and heroic endurance exhibited by these carefully nurtured women, during the dark days of the war, were little short of sublime.

Marcy and his mother sat a long time at the table, and when they arose from it Mrs. Gray knew pretty nearly what had been going on at Barrington during the last few months (not a word was said, however, concerning the letter Rodney wrote to Bud Goble), and Marcy had a very correct idea of the way matters were being managed on the plantation. He had nothing to suggest. The only thing they could do was to keep along in the even tenor of their way, and await developments. There was one thing for which he was sorry, and that was that he could not discharge Hanson, the overseer, that very day. He believed his mother was afraid of him; but the man was under contract for a year, and could have claimed damages if he had been turned adrift without good and sufficient reason. It was not the damages that Marcy cared for, but he was restrained from urging Hanson's dismissal through fear of setting the neighbors' tongues in motion.

"Hanson is secesh, easy enough," he said to himself. "If he were not, some of those officious planters would have demanded his discharge long ago. If we turn him away without a cause, they will say that we are persecuting him on account of his principles, and that would be bad for us. The man will have to stay for the present, and I'll make it my business to know every move he makes."

Marcy devoted the first few days to renewing old acquaintances among the black people on the plantation, who were overjoyed to see him safe at home, and in calling upon some of the neighboring planters; but the last proved to be rather a disagreeable duty, and one which he did not prosecute for any length of time. It seemed to him that something intangible had come between him and those who used to be on the best of terms with him something that could not be seen or felt, but which was none the less a barrier to their social intercourse. He was not of them, and they knew it; that was all there was of it. Before he had been at home ten days he began to see the force of his cousin Rodney's warning, that if he did not turn his back upon the Union and proclaim himself a secessionist, his neighbors would not have the first thing to do with him, and during those ten days two things happened that made the situation harder to bear than it was at first.

The little town of Nashville, to which Marcy sent his dispatch from Raleigh, was situated about three miles distant from the plantation. Besides the telegraph, express, and post offices it contained a court house, two hotels, and the homes of about five hundred inhabitants. The mail was received twice each day, and as often as it came in, rain or shine, there was some one from Mrs. Gray's house there to meet it. This duty was at once assumed by Marcy, who, besides having a fast horse of his own which he was fond of riding, was so impatient to see the latest papers that he could not wait for anybody to bring them to him. He always read them on his way home, allowing his filly to choose her own gait. On the day he reached home the papers told him that President Lincoln had placed an embargo upon the seaports of all the seceded States; but Marcy did not pay much attention to that. It was nothing more than those States might have expected, but it was a question whether or not the navy was strong enough to enforce the blockade. The same paper informed him that President Davis was ready to issue letters of marque and reprisal to anybody who would equip a privateer, and give bonds that the laws of the Confederate States regulating the capture of prizes should be obeyed. The boy didn't give a second thought to that either. His schooner wasn't heavy enough to engage in the business of privateering, and she would not have gone into it if she had been. She had always floated the flag of the Union, and as long as she remained in his keeping, she never would carry any other. But when on the 29th of April Marcy read that President Lincoln, two days before, had included the ports of Virginia and North Carolina in the limits of his proclamation, it made him open his eyes.

"My State hasn't seceded yet, and here he has gone and shut up her ports," exclaimed Marcy indignantly. "That's a pretty thing to do, isn't it now? Hurry up, Fanny. Let's get home and see what mother thinks about it."