fairly started on the confession he had longed to make,
and paying no sort of attention to his cousin's efforts to stop him,
Rodney made a clean breast of the matter, and told just how far his
loyalty to the Stars and Bars and his hatred for everybody who had a
lingering spark of affection for the Stars and Stripes had led him. On
the evening his new flag came he slipped away from his companions, ran
into a store, wrote the letter that Bud afterward read to his wife, and
got it into the office without any one being the wiser for what he had
done. That letter sent Bud on the war-path, and encouraged him to impose
upon Mr. Bailey and Elder Bowen, both of whom met his attempts in a
manner so vigorous that Mr. Riley and his Committee of Safety became
alarmed. They held a secret meeting, and determined upon a plan of
operations which they hoped would drive Union men and abolitionists from
the country, and bring the State-rights men, like Mr. Bailey, over to
the Confederacy. The committee was responsible for those two
fires--Rodney had heard enough from his rebel friends to make him sure
of that; and they had but just begun operations, when Captain Wilson and
his boys put in an appearance. That was what made Mr. Riley so angry
that he would not speak to the students that night, or even look at
them, and it was possible that he and the others who rode up to the
academy had talked to the colonel in very plain language.

"I supposed, of course, that I would find Goble somewhere in town, and
kept Dick with me because I wanted him to help with a word now and
then," said Rodney, in conclusion. "He played a very slick trick on us
when he sent word that that sick man was in need of medicine, and we
fell into the trap as easy as you please. He was awful mad when he found
that he had caught the wrong boy, that it was Marcy he wanted and not
Rodney, but he hadn't forgotten the underground railroad joke, and was
resolved that we shouldn't forget it, either. I didn't think Bud would
be fool enough to threaten anybody with a whipping. If I had, I never
would have written that letter, I assure you. If lie had whipped me for
it, it would have served me right."

Marcy listened in silence to this astounding revelation, and although he
was intensely grieved and shocked, he said everything he could to make
Rodney understand that he was freely and fully forgiven, and that it
would never be remembered against him; but Rodney refused to be
comfor