ay, and you were foolish for paying
the least attention to it. You ought to have gone on with your business
and come home when you got ready."

Beardsley turned down the collar of his coat, threw his left leg over
the horn of his saddle, and shook his whip at Allison as if he were
about to say something impressive.

CHAPTER II.

ALLISON IS SURPRISED.

"Oh, I mean it," said Tom, and one would have thought by the way he
shook his head and frowned and made his riding-whip whistle through the
air, that it would be useless for anybody to try to order him around.
"Just try me and see; that's all."

"And if you had been in my place you wouldn't have come home till you
got good and ready?" said Beardsley.

"You bet I wouldn't. I wouldn't be guilty of setting such an example to
the timid ones at home. This is the time when every man----"

"How many buildings have you got in this part of the country?" inquired
the captain, shutting his right eye and laying his finger by the side of
his nose. "Have you forgot the men who took Hanson away in the night,
and piled up those weeds and stuff up agin my house?"

"Well, that's so; but still I don't think they would have been bold
enough to do anything to you. You are a wealthy planter, while Hanson
was nothing but a common overseer, without a friend or relative in the
world so far as any one knows. Did you receive the proofs this letter
speaks of?"

"You bet I did," answered Beardsley, shaking his whip in the air. "My
daughter got old Miss Brown to write to me just as them Pertectors of
the Helpless--dog-gone the last one of 'em--said she would, and sure as
you live she found another letter on the gallery, and a whole passel of
stuff piled up agin the house, ready to be touched off with a match; and
the very same night Mrs. Gray's overseer was carried away. When she told
me all them things and begged me to come home I thought I had best come.
But I don't mean to let the matter drop here, tell your folks. The
fellers who wrote that letter must be hunted down and whopped like they
was niggers. Did Marcy Gray do it?"

"I can't swear that he didn't," replied Tom guardedly. "But if he did,
he disguised his hand so that I do not recognize it. I can't find the
first letter in it that looks like Marcy's work."

Beardsley seemed disappointed as he returned the letter to his pocket
and buttoned his coat, and Tom Allison certainly was. Two or three times
it was on the end of his