a little pause.

"Until I am ordered to report," replied Marcy, with a laugh. "Perhaps
the captain didn't know I wrote it out that way, but that isn't my
fault. It was his business to read the paper before signing it. If he
wants me he will have to send for me. You ought to have heard that
Newbern mob whoop and yell when the crew of the _Hollins_ were marched
off to jail. They called them 'Abolitionists' and 'nigger-lovers'; but
the prisoners kept their eyes straight to the front, and marched on as
though they didn't hear a word of it. It was a shame to treat brave men
that way."

Just as the young pilot ceased speaking there was a gentle knock at the
door; and so sudden and unexpected was it, that it brought both him and
his mother to their feet in a twinkling. How long had the person who
gave that knock been within reach of the door, was the first thought
that arose in the mind of each. Had some one crept along the hall and
listened at the key-hole in the hope of hearing some of their
conversation?

"If that is the case," Marcy whispered to his mother, "she has had her
trouble for her pains. We haven't said a dozen words that could have
been heard the length of this room. 'Come in!'"

The door opened to admit one of the numerous female house servants, who
announced that there was a gentleman on the gallery who had called to
see Mrs. Gray on very important private and particular business.

"She looks innocent enough," thought Marcy, who could not bring himself
to believe, as his mother evidently did, that some of the domestics were
watching their movements and reporting the result of their observations
to the overseer. "I don't think she heard a word, and she certainly
could not have seen anything." And then, finding that his mother was
looking at him as if she meant him to understand that she knew what the
visitor's business was, and desired him to take it off her hands, he
said, aloud: "Who is the gentleman, and do you know what he's got to say
that is so very important and particular?"

"I don't know, sah, what he want to speak about," answered the girl,
"but de man is Mr. Kelsey."

Marcy could hardly keep back an exclamation of disgust, and in an
instant he was on his guard. The man's name and the message he had sent
in warned him to be on the lookout for treachery. Kelsey was one of
Beardsley's "renters"--that is to say, he hired from the captain a few
acres of ground, on which he managed to raise enough