lement in such a panic that its prominent citizens
thought seriously of calling upon the garrison at Plymouth for
protection.

It was Mrs. Gray's misfortune to have many secret enemies about her, and
the meanest and most dangerous among them were Lon Beardsley, who lived
on an adjoining plantation, and was the owner and captain of the
schooner to which Marcy belonged, and her overseer, whose name was
Hanson. Beardsley's enmity was purely personal; but with Hanson it was a
matter of dollars and cents. The captain took Marcy to sea against his
will, because he wanted to persecute his mother; while the overseer was
working for the large reward Colonel Shelby had promised to give if
Hanson would bring him positive information that Mrs. Gray was in
reality the Union woman she was supposed to be, and that she had money
concealed in her house. When Sailor Jack had been at home long enough to
find out how and by whom his mother was being persecuted, he told Aleck
Webster about it, and the latter stopped it so quickly that everybody
was astonished, and the guilty ones alarmed.

While Marcy was gone to take his brother out to the fleet, a very
strange and startling incident happened on Mrs. Gray's plantation.
Sailor Jack had predicted that the morning was coming when the negroes
would not hear the horn blown to call them to their work, for the very
good reason that there would be no overseer on the plantation to blow
it, and his prediction had been verified. One dark night, just after
Marcy and Jack set out on their perilous voyage, a band of masked men
came to the plantation, took Hanson, the overseer, out of his house and
carried him away. Where he was now none could tell for certain; but
Marcy had heard from Aleck Webster that he had been "turned loose with
orders never to show his face in the settlement again." Perhaps he had
gone for good; but the fear that he might some day come back to trouble
her caused Mrs. Gray no little uneasiness.

While every one else in the settlement was so excited and uneasy, and
wondering what other mysterious things were about to happen, Marcy Gray
was as calm as a summer's morning. To use his own words, he was "getting
ready to settle down to business." The overseer being gone, there was no
one but himself left to manage the plantation; and he was glad to have
the responsibility, for it gave him something to occupy his mind. When
Aleck Webster told him that Hanson would not trouble him or his