ybody? Why is
the place so quiet?"

"Oh, Marcy!" exclaimed Mrs. Gray, motioning to Julius to take the valise
into the house, "such a strange thing has happened since you went away.
Hanson has disappeared as completely as though he had never been on the
place at all."

"Good enough," cried Marcy, giving his mother a bear-like hug with his
one strong arm. "Now we shall be free from his--eh? You don't mean to
say you are sorry he has gone, do you?"

"I don't know whether I am or not," was the astounding reply. "If he had
left of his own free will I should be glad, I assure you; but the manner
of his going frightens me."

"The manner?" repeated Marcy, who was all in the dark.

"Yes. The night after you went away, some of the field hands were
awakened by an unusual noise and went to the door of their cabins to see
a party of fifteen or twenty masked men making off, with Hanson bound
and gagged in the midst of them. They were so badly frightened
that--Marcy," exclaimed Mrs. Gray, holding the boy off at arm's length
and looking searchingly into his face, "do you know anything about it?
Is Jack at the bottom of this strange affair?"

These last words were called forth by the exclamation of surprise and
delight that Marcy uttered when the truth of the whole matter flashed
suddenly upon him. The absent Jack had told him that the morning was
coming when his mother would not hear the field hands called to work
because there would be no one to call them, and his prediction had been
verified. Aleck Webster was true blue, the Union men who held secret
meetings in the swamp could be depended on to hold their rebel neighbors
in check, and Marcy Gray could hardly refrain from dancing with delight
at the thought of it.

"Come in and I will tell you all I know about it," said he, throwing his
arm about his mother's waist and leading her into the hall. "You needn't
worry. Every one of the men who came here that night were your friends
and mine, and they----"

"But who were they?" asked Mrs. Gray.

"It is probable that one of them sailed with Jack when he was on the
_West Wind;_ but who the others were I don't know, and it isn't at all
likely that I shall ever find out," replied Marcy. "Not in the
dining-room, please, because there's a stove-pipe hole in the ceiling
that leads into a room upstairs. Oh, it's a fact," he added with a
laugh, when his mother stopped and looked at him. "A certain person,
whose name I shall presently g