f
the windows into the garden. Poor Julius will be broken-hearted when he
finds that I went without him. Once more good-by, and don't expect to
see me under a week."

[Illustration: JULIUS GIVES THE ALARM.]

Pressing as the need for haste was, Marcy snatched another farewell kiss
and ran out of the room, taking care not to pass between a window and a
lamp that stood on the centre-table. He caught his cap from the rack as
he hurried through the hall, and in less time than it takes to tell it,
was standing before an open cellar window, waiting and listening. His
ears told him when the Home Guards charged upon the house and entered it
through the back and side doors, and believing that the sentries, if
there had been any posted outside, would be wholly engrossed with what
was going on in the dwelling, he seized upon that particular moment to
make his attempt at escape. Slowly and carefully he crawled up into the
window, and when he raised his head above the ground all he could see
were bushes and trees and a starlit sky, and all he could hear was the
murmur of voices in the sitting-room. If the doors were guarded, as it
was reasonable to suppose they were, this particular cellar window was
not, and Marcy made haste to crawl out of it and across an intervening
flower-bed to the friendly shelter of a thicket of bushes beyond. He did
not linger there an instant, but taking it for granted that Ben Hawkins
was with the Home Guards, and remembering that the man had promised to
see that they behaved themselves while they were in his mother's house,
he started at once for the creek, crawling on his hands and knees until
he was sure he had passed beyond the sentries that he thought ought to
have been left in the yard, and then he sprang up and ran like a deer.
He hardly knew when he reached the fence, over which he went as easily
as though he had been furnished with wings, but he knew when he halted
on the bank of the creek and caught Julius in the act of shoving off
with the boat. Thinking only of Captain Beardsley and the overseer and
his whip, the frightened black boy could not be prevailed upon to stop
until he had pushed the boat to the middle of the stream, where he felt
comparatively safe; and then he looked over his shoulder to see who his
pursuer was.

"Why, honey!" he exclaimed, as he got out the oars and backed the boat
toward the place where Marcy was standing. "Was dat you? What you doin'
hyar? How come dey don't co