o wouldn't be a
soldier this fine weather? How is your arm coming on by this time?"

Marcy was beginning to feel a little at his ease in the presence of his
unwelcome visitors, but this abrupt question aroused his fears on the
instant. Did the captain know what was the matter with his arm? and if
he did, which one of their gossiping neighbors told him about it? He was
anxious to know, but afraid to ask.

"It is getting better every day, thank you," was his reply. "Will you
not come and speak to my mother? Julius will put your horses under
shelter."

"We are 'most too muddy to go into the presence of a lady," said the
captain, looking down at his boots, "but as I don't want to blot my
notebook by taking it out in the rain, I think we'll have to go in. We
had a short but interesting chat with your captain a while ago."

"Beardsley?" Marcy almost gasped. "Has he got home?"

"Of course he has. You didn't think the Yankees had captured him, I
hope. He gave us a good account of you, and since you can't run the
blockade any more, I wish you would hurry up and get well so that you
can join----"

Right here the captain stopped long enough to permit Marcy to introduce
him and his lieutenant to Mrs. Gray. They sat down in the easy-chairs
that were brought for them, made a few remarks about the weather, and
then the captain resumed.

"Yes; we saw Beardsley this morning, and would have been glad to spend a
longer time with him, but business prevented. He says you are a brave
and skilful pilot, and I happen to know that they are the sort of men
who are needed on our gunboats; but, of course, you can't go just now.
Hallo!" exclaimed the captain, whose gaze had wandered to the rebel flag
that hung upon the wall. "Where did you get that, if it is a fair
question?"

"It is one my brother brought home with him," answered Marcy, speaking
with a calmness that surprised himself. "He was second mate and pilot of
the blockade runner _West Wind_ that was fitted out and loaded in the
port of Boston."

"Oh, yes; we heard all about him too," said the captain, and Marcy
afterward confessed that the words frightened him out of a year's
growth. "He went down to Newbern to ship on an ironclad he didn't find;
so I suppose he went into the army, did he not?"

"Not that I know of," answered Marcy, looking first one officer and then
the other squarely in the eye. "Almost the last thing I heard him say
was, that he was going to ship on a war v