ve that, and so did his
mother.

"I'll tell you what I think to be the most reasonable view of the case,"
said the boy, after taking a few turns across the floor and spending
some minutes in a brown study. "Beardsley knows there is no man in the
family; that we'd be only too glad to have somebody to go to for advice;
and he hoped we would take that ignorant Hanson for a counselor, if he
could make us believe that he was really Union. But Hanson didn't fool
me, for he didn't go at it in the right way. He's secesh all over. The
next thing on the program will be something else."

"I trust it will not be a midnight visit from a mob," said his mother,
who trembled at the bare thought of such a thing.

"So do I; but if they come, we'll see what they will make by it. They
might burn the house without finding anything to reward them for their
trouble."

"Oh, Marcy. You surely don't think they would do anything so
barbarous."

"They might. Think of what that Committee of Safety did at Barrington."

"But what would we do?"

"Live in the quarter, as Elder Bowen and the other Union men in
Barrington did after their houses were destroyed. And if they burned the
servants' homes as well as our own, We'd throw up a shelter of some sort
in the woods. I don't reckon that Julius and I have forgotten how to
handle axes and build log cabins. The practice we have had in building
turkey traps would stand---- Say," whispered Marcy suddenly, at the same
time putting his arm around his mother's neck and speaking the words
close to her ear, "if a mob should come here to-night and go over the
house, we'd be ruined. There are those Union flags, you know."

"I never once thought of them," was the frightened answer. "Suppose I
had had a mob for visitors while you were at sea? Our home would be in
ashes now. Those flags are dangerous things, and must be disposed of
without loss of time. I am sorry you brought them home with you. Don't
you think you had better destroy them while you have them in mind?"

"Of course I will do it if you say so, and think it will make you feel
any safer; but I was intending--you see----"

His countenance fell, and his mother was quick to notice it. "What did
you intend to do with them?" she asked.

"One of them used to float over the academy," replied Marcy. "Dick
Graham, a Missouri boy, than whom a better fellow never lived, stole it
out of the colonel's room one night because he did not want to see it
insul