e
merciful way in which the inhabitants of captured cities were to be
treated during the war, and Marcy may be pardoned for looking into the
future with fear and trembling. The neighboring planters and their
families did much to add to Mrs. Gray's fears and Marcy's, as well as to
increase the general feeling of uneasiness which began spreading through
the settlement as soon as the newspapers arrived. If they believed, as
the Charleston and Newbern editors seemed to believe,--that the attack
on Hatteras Inlet was sure to end in failure,--they nevertheless thought
it the part of wisdom to prepare for the worst; and they at once began
the work of concealing everything that was likely to excite the cupidity
of the lawless Union soldiers. Remembering what their Mobile papers had
said about the ragged, half-starved appearance of the Massachusetts
troops who marched through the streets of Baltimore, they even hid their
clothing and carted the contents of their smoke-houses and corn-cribs
into the woods. But busy as they were, some of the women found time to
run over and compare notes with Mrs. Gray, and see what she thought
about it; and because she tried to accept Jack's view of the situation,
and believed that there would be no invasion of the Union forces, the
visitors went away to spread the report elsewhere that Mrs. Gray wasn't
afraid of the Yankees because she sympathized with them.

"Would you believe it, she isn't hiding a thing," said one of these
gossips. "She looks white, but she can't make me think that she's
frightened as long as she sits there in her rocking-chair as cool as a
cucumber. I know that Jack belongs to a blockade-runner, that Jack
piloted a Yankee smuggler into one of our ports, and that Mrs. Gray has
a Confederate flag hung up in her sitting-room; but I don't care for
that. She's Union, the whole family is Union, and I know it."

Mrs. Gray and the boys always looked troubled after an interview with
one of these busybodies, who did not scruple to magnify every rumor that
came to their ears, and wished from the bottom of their hearts that they
would stay at home and attend to the business of hiding their valuables;
but when the day drew to a close the gossips ceased to trouble them, for
they were afraid to go out of doors after dark.

"And between you and me I don't blame them for being afraid," said Jack,
when he and Marcy went up to bed. "It is in times like these that the
turbulent and vicious me