mother
any more, he had also given him the assurance that he would never again
be obliged to go to sea as Captain Beardsley's pilot. There was a world
of comfort in the words, and Marcy hoped the man knew what he was
promising when he uttered them; but he thought he would feel more at his
ease when he saw Beardsley's schooner at her moorings in the creek, and
Beardsley himself at work in the field with his negroes.

On the morning of the day on which our story begins, the leaden clouds
hung low, and the piercing wind which came off the Sound, bringing with
it occasional dashes of rain, and scattering the few remaining leaves
the early frosts had left upon the trees, seemed to cause no little
discomfort to the young horseman who was riding along the road that led
from his father's plantation to the village of Nashville. He had turned
the collar of his heavy coat about his ears, dropped the reins upon his
horse's neck, and buried his hands deep in his pockets. It was Tom
Allison, the boastful young rebel whom Marcy Gray, then the newly
appointed pilot of Captain Beardsley's privateer schooner, had once
rebuked and silenced in the presence of a room full of secession
sympathizers.

Allison was on his way to the post-office after the mail, and to listen
to any little items of news which the idlers he was sure to find there
might have picked up since he last saw them; and, as he rode, he thought
about some things that puzzled him. He went over the events that had
taken place along the coast during the last few months, beginning with
the bombardment and capture of forts Hatteras and Clark, and ending with
the Confederate occupation of Roanoke Island, and he was obliged to
confess to himself that things did not look as bright for the South now,
as they did after that glorious victory at Bull Run. Finally, he thought
of the incidents that had lately happened in his own neighborhood, and
in which some of his acquaintances and friends were personally
interested. In fact he was deeply interested in them himself, and would
have given any article of value he owned for the privilege of holding
five minutes' conversation with some one who could tell him what had
become of Jack Gray and Hanson.

"I can tell you in few words what I think about it," said Tom to
himself. "There's more behind the disappearance of those two fellows
than the men folks around here are willing to acknowledge. That's what
_I_ think. I notice that Shelby, Di