nging about here any longer. I don't believe his arm is
so very badly hurt, and neither does anybody else. I am glad to see you
back safe and sound. When did you get in?"

"In where?" said Beardsley gruffly; and then the boy saw that he was in
bad humor about something.

"Into Newbern, of course. And when and how did you come up here?"

"I came up last night in the _Hattie._"

"You did? You don't mean to say that your schooner is in the creek, do
you?" exclaimed Allison, who was surprised to hear it. "You did not do a
very bright thing when you brought her there, for the first thing you
know the Yankees will send some of their gunboats up to the island, and
then you will be blocked in. I should think you would have stayed at
Newbern, where you could run out and in as often as you felt like it."

"Don't you reckon I know my own affairs better'n you do?" snapped
Beardsley. "I didn't quit a money-making business of my own free will
and come home because I wanted to, but because I couldn't help myself."

"I don't understand you," answered Tom, who was all in the dark. "Our
authorities didn't send you home, of course, and the Yankees couldn't.
If your schooner is in good shape----"

"The _Hattie_ is all right," said Beardsley, with a ring of pride in his
tones. "She has been in some tight places, I can tell you, and if she
hadn't showed herself to be just the sweetest, fastest thing of her
inches that ever floated, I wouldn't be here talking to you now. And the
Yankees did send me home too; or their friends did, which amounts to the
same thing. What's become of Mrs. Gray's overseer, Hanson?"

"I can't make out what you mean, when you say that the Yankees or their
friends sent you home," replied Allison. "We haven't heard of their
making many captures along the coast lately."

"I dunno as it makes any sort of odds to me what you didn't hear. I know
what I am talking about. What's happened to Hanson, I ask you?"

"How do you suppose I can tell? And if you only came home last night,
how does it come that you know anything has happened to him?" inquired
Tom, who thought he saw a chance to learn something. "I haven't seen
that man Hanson for a long time."

"Nor me; but I know well enough that there's something went wrong with
him," said Beardsley very decidedly. "I know that he was took out of his
house at dead of night by a gang of men, that he was carried away, and
that nobody ain't likely to see hide nor hair of him