"Who are they?"
"Aw! Go up to the United States, you Yankee."
"Hold on a bit," said Dick, as the sergeant was about to turn away. "I ask for information; I do indeed. Does he think the negroes have broken out?"
"And abolitionists? Of course he does. That's what we all think. It's what we know."
"Say," continued Dick. "The night is quiet, and the little breeze there is stirring blows toward us from town, doesn't it? Now listen. Do you hear any fire-bells ringing?"
"That's so," replied the sergeant; and Dick thought he was reluctant to say it. "I don't hear a tinkle."
"That's all I've got to say," added Dick, as he settled his musket on his shoulder and began pacing his beat. "On a still night like this you can hear those big church bells four or five miles, and there hasn't one of them said a word since those fires began. I noticed that from the start."
Dixon, the tall Kentuckian, who was marching with his company toward Barrington, also took note of the fact that the bells, which usually made noise enough to arouse the planters for miles around when there was a fire, were silent now, and he called attention to it. He also noticed that the house that was burning in town belonged to a prominent and outspoken Union man; that both the engines were disabled (at least the foremen said they were); that the crowd around the house stood with their hands in their pockets, making no effort to keep the flames from spreading to the house of another Union man close by; and that Mr. Riley and a few other members of the Committee of Safety, who appeared to be full of business, but who, in reality, were doing just nothing at all, looked surprised and perplexed when the students marched up and came to a halt at the corner of the street. There was still another thing that the observant Dixon noticed and commented upon, and that was, that the colonel was not in command as he ought to have been. The colonel did not think it would be policy to take too firm a stand until he had learned whether his State was going to stay in the Union or go out of it; and so he sent in command of the students a teacher who had not yet made up his mind which side he favored. Dixon had always believed that he leaned toward the Union; and when he marched back to the academy the next morning about daylight, he was sure of it.
"I am surprised to see you here, Captain Wilson," said Mr. Riley, who was the first man to meet him when he brought the students to a halt.
"And I am surprised to see a man of your calibre get as nervous and excited over a little fire as you seem to be," replied the captain, in significant tones. "If I may presume to ask the question, how does it come that yon are on the ground so early when there are no alarm-bells ringing? What is the reason those engines are not at work? There's water enough."