in, after keeping out a sum sufficient to meet our immediate wants.
It took me three nights to do it."

"It's a shame that there wasn't someone here whom you could trust to do
the work for you," said Marcy. "I am here to bear the hard knocks now."

The Southerners were careful of their women. If they had had the
faintest conception of the trials and privations their mothers, wives,
and sisters would be called upon to bear, they never would have fired
upon Sumter. The patience and heroic endurance exhibited by these
carefully nurtured women, during the dark days of the war, were little
short of sublime.

Marcy and his mother sat a long time at the table, and when they arose
from it Mrs. Gray knew pretty nearly what had been going on at
Barrington during the last few months (not a word was said, however,
concerning the letter Rodney wrote to Bud Goble), and Marcy had a very
correct idea of the way matters were being managed on the plantation. He
had nothing to suggest. The only thing they could do was to keep along
in the even tenor of their way, and await developments. There was one
thing for which he was sorry, and that was that he could not discharge
Hanson, the overseer, that very day. He believed his mother was afraid
of him; but the man was under contract for a year, and could have
claimed damages if he had been turned adrift without good and sufficient
reason. It was not the damages that Marcy cared for, but he was
restrained from urging Hanson's dismissal through fear of setting the
neighbors' tongues in motion.

"Hanson is secesh, easy enough," he said to himself. "If he were not,
some of those officious planters would have demanded his discharge long
ago. If we turn him away without a cause, they will say that we are
persecuting him on account of his principles, and that would be bad for
us. The man will have to stay for the present, and I'll make it my
business to know every move he makes."

Marcy devoted the first few days to renewing old acquaintances among the
black people on the plantation, who were overjoyed to see him safe at
home, and in calling upon some of the neighboring planters; but the last
proved to be rather a disagreeable duty, and one which he did not
prosecute for any length of time. It seemed to him that something
intangible had come between him and those who used to be on the best of
terms with him something that could not be seen or felt, but which was
none the less a barrier to their