who some of the traitors are, but the truth is,
they are so cunning you can't prove the first thing against them.
There's that Marcy Gray for one."

"Say!" whispered Beardsley, reining his horse a little closer to Tom's
and tapping the boy's shoulder with his riding-whip, "you have hit the
very identical idee I have had in my mind for a long time. If Marcy
ain't a traitor, what's him and his mother keeping that money of theirn
stowed away so quiet for?"

"Say!" whispered Allison in his turn, at the same time laying the handle
of his own whip lightly upon the captain's knee, "that is something I
have thought about more times than I can remember. If they haven't got
money, and plenty of it, hidden somewhere, I am mistaken. You know that
before Marcy came home from school his mother made a good many trips to
Richmond, Newbern, and Wilmington; and everybody says those trips were
not made solely for the purpose of buying supplies for the plantation."

"I know it," assented Beardsley.

"When Mrs. Gray came home she made a big show of parading all her
niggers in bran' new suits of clothes," continued Allison. "But she did
not have to go to three cities to buy the cloth those clothes were made
of, did she? She's got money, and I am sure of it."

"I know it," said Beardsley again. "I tried my best to make Marcy say
so, but he was too sharp for me. You see his share of the prize-money
the _Hollins_ sold for amounted to seventeen hunderd dollars."

"Great Moses!" ejaculated Tom. "What a plum for that traitor to put into
his pocket! I wish I had it. But he told me he was to get eight hundred
and fifty dollars."

"P'raps he did, for that was what the foremast hands got; but I promised
to give Marcy more for acting as pilot and I done it, consarn my fule
pictur'! I wanted to get on the blind side of him, so't he would sorter
confide in me for a friend, don't you see? But I didn't make it. That
boy might have cleared five thousand dollars if he had took out a
venture the first time we run the blockade, but he wouldn't do it for
fear he might lose the money. He said he might want to use them
seventeen hunderd before the war was over."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Tom.

"That's what I thought," replied Beardsley.

"Seventeen hundred dollars are not a drop in the bucket to the sum he
and his mother have on hand at this moment, and I'll bet on it," added
Tom. "They've got thousands, and I wish I could have the handling of
some of it