the cold rain and sleet a fair chance at him, and almost reeled in his saddle, so convulsed was he with the merriment that could no longer be restrained.
"I done it, by gum!" he exclaimed, shaking his head and flourishing his riding-whip in the air. "I done it, didn't I?"
"You did not purchase his good-will, if that is what you mean," answered his companion. "He wouldn't touch your gold. He knew why you offered it as well as I did, and I was satisfied from the start that you would not catch him that way. He will put those Union men on you if you so much as crook your finger."
"But I aint a-going to crook no fingers," said Beardsley, with a hoarse laugh. "Let him sick 'em on if he wants to, but he'd best watch out that I don't get there first. Say, colonel, that there money is in the house all right, just as we uns thought it was."
"How do you know?" exclaimed his companion. The colonel had not noticed the frightened glances that Marcy and his mother exchanged when Kelsey's name was mentioned, and he was surprised to hear Beardsley speak so positively.
"Say!" answered the captain. "You aint forgot how you sent Kelsey up to Mrs. Gray's, while I was at sea, to make some inquiries about the money she was thought to have stowed away, have you? Well, Marcy and his mother aint forgot it nuther; and when I spoke Kelsey's name, and said mebbe he would be a good one to take Hanson's place, Marcy jumped like I had stuck a pin in him."
"Well, what of it?"
"What of it? Marcy knowed in a minute that I wanted to have that man took on the plantation for to snoop around of nights and find out all about that money. But I aint a caring. I know the money is there, and that's all I wanted to find out. The ways I have talked and schemed and planned to make that there boy say that him and his maw had as much as they wanted to tide them through the war that's coming, is just amazing, now that I think of it; but not a word could I get out of him. He was too smart to be ketched; but all on a sudden he gives out the secret as easy as falling off a log. The money is there, I tell you."
"And you intend to get it, I suppose?" added the colonel. "Well, now, look here, Beardsley; don't say a word to me about it."
"All right, Colonel," said Beardsley, who could scarcely have been happier if he had had the whole of Mrs. Gray's thirty thousand dollars where he could put his hand upon it at any time he pleased. "I know what you mean by them words. Of course you are too big a man and too rich to go into business with me, but I know some who aint. I'll show them Grays that they aint so great as they think for."
"Have you so soon forgotten what that letter said?" inquired the colonel. "If anything happens to Marcy's mother or her property some of us will be sure to suffer for it, unless you are sharp enough to lay the blame upon some one else."
"Say!" replied Beardsley, in a whisper. "That's what I'm thinking of doing. Your time's your own, I reckon, aint it? and you don't mind a little mite of rain, do you? Then come with me and see how I am going to work it."
So saying the captain urged his horse into a lope, and Colonel Shelby followed his example. After a while they turned into one of the narrow lanes that ran through Beardsley's cultivated fields to the woods that lay behind them, galloped past Mrs. Brown's cheerless cabin, and at last drew rein before the door of one that was still more cheerless and dilapidated. It stood in one corner of a little patch of ground that had been planted to corn and potatoes, and which had received such slight care and attention of late years that the blackberry briars were beginning to take possession of it. A small pack of lean and hungry coon dogs greeted the visitors as they stopped in front of the cabin, and their yelping soon brought their master to the door. He was the same lazy Kelsey we once saw sitting on the front porch of Mrs. Gray's house, only his hair was longer, his whiskers more tangled and matted, and his clothes worse for wear.
"Alight and hitch," was the way in which he welcomed Captain Beardsley and his companion. "Git out, ye whelps!"
"Can't stop so long," replied the captain. "Been over to Mrs. Gray's to see how my pilot was getting on, and tried to scare up a job for you at overseering, in the place of that chap who was took off in the night time."
"I dunno's I am a-caring for a job of that sort," answered Kelsey. "I've got a sight of work of my own that had oughter be did."
"That's so," said Beardsley, glancing at the broken fences, the bare wood-yard and the briars that were encroaching upon the borders of the little field. "But there's no ready money in your work, while there is a sight of it up to the Grays."
"I won't work for no sich," declared Kelsey. "They think too much of their niggers."
"They set a heap more store by them nor they do by such poor folks as you be. But you needn't bother. They won't take you and give you a chance to keep your head above water, and put a bite of grub into the mouths of your family and a few duds on their backs. They allowed that they wouldn't have no such trifling hound as you on their place."
"Did Mrs. Gray use them words about me?" exclaimed Kelsey, growing excited on the instant.
"I heard somebody say them very words, but I aint naming no names; nor I aint been nowheres except up to Mrs. Gray's to-day. One of 'em allowed that if you wasn't too doggone useless to live, you'd go and 'list on the Island."
"I'm jest as good as they be," said the man, who by this time was looking as though he felt very ugly.
"That's so. And some of 'em likewise said that a man who was too lazy to keep a tight roof over his own head, when he could have nails and boards by asking for 'em, wouldn't do no good as an overseer," added Beardsley, counting the holes in the top of the cabin through which the rafters could be seen, and glancing at the stick chimney, which leaned away from the wall as if it were about to topple over. "But that aint what I come here for, to carry tales about my neighbors. I want to say I'm glad to see you doing so well, and that if you are needing a small side of meat and a little meal, you know where to get 'em."
"Sarvant, sah," replied Kelsey. "That there is more neighbor-like than demeaning a man for a trifling hound because he is pore, and I'll bear it in mind, I bet you. As for my roof, it's a heap better'n the one them Grays will have to cover them in a week from now; you hear me? That big house of theirn will burn like a bresh-heap."
"Well, take care of yourself," answered the captain. "But if I'd suspicioned you was going to fly mad about it, I wouldn't 'a' spoke a word to you."
"Kelsey will never carry out his threat," said Colonel Shelby, as the two rode away from the cabin. "He is too big a coward."
"I know that mighty well, but you can say that you heard him speak them very words, can't you?"
Captain Beardsley was very lively and talkative after that, and plumed himself on having done a neat stroke of work that would turn suspicion from himself, when the results of a certain other plan he had in his head should become known in the settlement. But perhaps we shall see that he forgot one very important thing. As to the colonel, although he approved the work that was to be done, he had the profoundest contempt for the man who could deliberately plan and carry it out. He had little to say, and was glad when his horse brought him to a bridle-path that would take him away from Beardsley and toward his own home.
Meanwhile Marcy Gray was in a most uncomfortable frame of mind. When he saw the visitors ride out of the gate, he closed the door and went back to his mother. "The captain never spoke of meeting you and Jack at Crooked Inlet," were the first words she uttered.
"Of course not," replied Marcy. "You did not expect him to, did you? But I rather looked for him to give some reason for coming home, and to hear him say that he would have no further occasion for my services; but he was so disappointed because I would not take that hush-money – "
"O Marcy!" exclaimed his mother. "I was afraid that that was what the money was intended for."
"That was just it, and how the colonel stared when you said you understood the object Beardsley had in view in offering it. Those men think we can destroy their buildings or protect them, just as we please."
"But, Marcy, we cannot do it."
"Let them keep on thinking so if they want to. And another reason Beardsley didn't say all he meant to was because I was foolish enough to give him something else to think about.