around the house. When you
become satisfied of that fact perhaps you will cease
troubling my mother.

Placing this note on the side of the tree opposite the fire so that it
would not be scorched by the heat, and fastening it there with three or
four wooden pins so that the wind would not blow it away, Marcy ran back
to the boat, and Julius once more pushed out into the stream. He turned
to look behind him every few minutes, but the boat was pulled into
Middle River, and perhaps two or three miles down its swift current
toward the coast, before he saw any signs of the fire he had left
behind; and at the moment his eye caught its first faint reflection on
the clouds, he heard a cautious hail from the bank.

"Boat ahoy!" came through the darkness in tones that were just loud
enough to attract his attention.

"Who is it?" demanded Marcy, picking up the loaded gun that lay beside
him in the stern-sheets. "Way enough, Julius."

"Mebbe dat aint de man you want see," replied the boy, handling the oars
as if he meant to turn the boat toward the opposite bank.

"I am Aleck Webster's father," said the voice, in answer to Marcy's
question. "Ben Hawkins sent me here to show you the way to our camp."

"When did you see Hawkins?" inquired Marcy.

"This afternoon; and he told me that the Home Guards were likely to
drive you away from home to-night. It's all right, Mister Marcy."

The latter was so sure of it that he at once turned the boat toward the
point from which the voice came (the night was so dark that he could not
see anything but bushes and trees on the bank), and in two minutes more
was standing by Mr. Webster's side. The man pointed toward the bright
spot on the clouds and said, in a voice that Marcy recognized this
time:

"Are the Home Guards out to-night?"

"Oh, yes; they're out, and came to my mother's house, or I shouldn't be
here now. But they didn't set anything on fire so far as I know."

"Then whose work is that? There's something burning off that way."

"It is the work of _Marcy, the Refugee_. That's I. After persecuting me
for months in every way he could think of, Beardsley has driven me from
home at last, and I set fire to his schooner to pay him for it."

"I am a refugee myself," replied Mr. Webster. "And there's my hand,
which says that I will stand your friend as long as you need one. If the
Home Guards had been organized a few weeks sooner Aleck would not have
left us old men and boy