style="font-size:15px;"> "There, now!" exclaimed the captain, rearranging his collar and picking up his reins again. "I never once thought of blaming it on that there Marcy."
"I don't blame it on him, and I don't want you to think so for a moment," said Tom, who had not yet arrived at the point of being confidential with Beardsley. "I never hinted that Marcy wrote the letter; but just look at the way the thing stands. A man who knows as much about this coast as you do never wanted a pilot, but you did want to marry Mrs. Gray's plantation; and when she gave you to understand that she wouldn't have it so – "
"See here, young feller, you're going too fur," cried the captain, pulling his collar down with one hand and shaking his whip threateningly at Allison with the other. "You don't know what you're talking about, and I won't hear another word of it."
"What's the use of getting mad because somebody tells you the truth?" demanded Tom. "Every one says so, and what every one holds to can't be so very far wrong. You know you don't need a pilot, and I know it too. You have nothing against Marcy Gray personally – "
"I ain't, hey?" shouted the angry captain. "He's just the biggest kind of a traitor that ever – "
"That isn't what I am trying to get at, and you know it," interrupted Tom. "You want to hurt him and his mother by taking him to sea against his will and hers. Now if you were in Marcy's place, and knew all these things, as he most likely does, and you saw a good chance to get even with the man who was persecuting you, would you let that chance slip? I reckon not."
"But if it's Marcy who has been a-pestering of me, how can I prove it on him?" inquired Beardsley, who was as angry as Allison had ever known him to be.
"Let me see the letter," replied Tom.
"No, I reckon not. What do you want to see it fur?"
"I can tell you whether or not Marcy Gray wrote it, for I know his hand as well as I know my own."
Beardsley hesitated. Ever since the morning he took the letter in question from the office in Newbern, he had been burning with anxiety and impatience to find out whom he had to thank for sending it to him, and he was now on his way to call upon his friends Shelby and Dillon to see if they could not put him on the track of the writer. He wanted to ask them what they thought of the whole miserable business any way, and did not care to show the letter until he heard what they had to say about it.
"I know the handwriting of every man and boy in this settlement," continued Allison, "and if I can't tell you who wrote it no one can; not even the postmaster."
This settled the matter, to Allison's satisfaction. The captain opened his coat and drew out the letter, which was written in a hand that was plainly disguised, for the same characters were not formed twice alike. It was not very long, but it was to the point, and ran as follows:
This is to inform you that you have spent jes time enough in persecuting Union folks in this settlement on account of them not beleeving as you rebbels do, and likewise time enough in cheeting the government by bringing contraband goods through the blockade. And this is to inform you that if you do not immediately upon resep of this stop your disloyal practices and come home at once, you will not find as many buildings standing, when you do come, as you have got standing now at this present time of writing. And this is likewise to inform you that the first proof that we mean jes what we say, you will get in a letter from your folks, who will tell you that a letter something like this was found on the front gallery of your house on a certain night, and that a lot of dry weeds and stuff was likewise found piled against the back of said house. Proof number 2 will be in the same letter, which will tell you that Mrs. Gray's overseer has been toted away by armed men, and that he won't never be seen in this settlement again. For every day you delay in coming home immediately after this letter has had time to reach you in Newbern, you will loose a building of some kind or sort, beginning with the house you live in. This is from those who believe in defending the wemen and children you rebbels are making war on, and so we sign ourselves, THE PERTECTORS OF THE HELPLESS.
"Marcy Gray never had a hand in getting up this letter, more's the pity," thought Tom, as he again ran his eye over the plainly written lines in the hope of finding something that would give him an excuse for saying that Marcy did write it. "Look at the spelling and the bungling language! Marcy couldn't do that if he tried."
"Well, what do you reckon you make of it?" demanded the captain.
"It's perfectly scandalous the most outrageous thing I ever heard of!" exclaimed Allison. "Just think of the impudence this fellow shows in ordering you – ordering, I say – "
"Oh, there's more'n one feller mixed up in it," said Beardsley, with a groan.
"Perhaps there is, and then again, perhaps there isn't," replied Tom. "Couldn't I write a letter and sign a hundred names to it, if I wanted to? I say it is a burning shame that good and loyal Confederates should submit to be ordered about in this way, and you were foolish for paying the least attention to it. You ought to have gone on with your business and come home when you got ready."
Beardsley turned down the collar of his coat, threw his left leg over the horn of his saddle, and shook his whip at Allison as if he were about to say something impressive.
CHAPTER II.
ALLISON IS SURPRISED
"Oh, I mean it," said Tom, and one would have thought by the way he shook his head and frowned and made his riding-whip whistle through the air, that it would be useless for anybody to try to order him around. "Just try me and see; that's all."
"And if you had been in my place you wouldn't have come home till you got good and ready?" said Beardsley.
"You bet I wouldn't. I wouldn't be guilty of setting such an example to the timid ones at home. This is the time when every man – "
"How many buildings have you got in this part of the country?" inquired the captain, shutting his right eye and laying his finger by the side of his nose. "Have you forgot the men who took Hanson away in the night, and piled up those weeds and stuff up agin my house?"
"Well, that's so; but still I don't think they would have been bold enough to do anything to you. You are a wealthy planter, while Hanson was nothing but a common overseer, without a friend or relative in the world so far as any one knows. Did you receive the proofs this letter speaks of?"
"You bet I did," answered Beardsley, shaking his whip in the air. "My daughter got old Miss Brown to write to me just as them Pertectors of the Helpless – dog-gone the last one of 'em – said she would, and sure as you live she found another letter on the gallery, and a whole passel of stuff piled up agin the house, ready to be touched off with a match; and the very same night Mrs. Gray's overseer was carried away. When she told me all them things and begged me to come home I thought I had best come. But I don't mean to let the matter drop here, tell your folks. The fellers who wrote that letter must be hunted down and whopped like they was niggers. Did Marcy Gray do it?"
"I can't swear that he didn't," replied Tom guardedly. "But if he did, he disguised his hand so that I do not recognize it. I can't find the first letter in it that looks like Marcy's work."
Beardsley seemed disappointed as he returned the letter to his pocket and buttoned his coat, and Tom Allison certainly was. Two or three times it was on the end of his tongue to declare that Marcy was the guilty one, but he lacked the courage. He was afraid of the mysterious men who had begun to carry things with so high a hand in the settlement, for he did not know how soon they might turn their attention to him or to his father's property.
"Marcy is quite
