nto one of their
prisons."

There were at least a dozen persons in the post-office, besides Tom
Allison, who knew that Beardsley had other and better reasons for
quitting the profitable business in which he had been engaged, and three
of them were Shelby, Dillon, and the postmaster. These men knew by the
captain's manner, as well as by the way he looked at them now and then,
that he had something of importance on his mind, and they left the store
one after another, expecting Beardsley to follow and join them as soon
as he could do so without arousing suspicion. A fourth man was Aleck
Webster, who leaned carelessly against one of the counters and listened
to what the captain had to say, although he did not seem to pay much
attention to it. If Aleck had been so disposed he could have told
Beardsley who wrote the letter that broke up his blockade running and
brought him home so suddenly, and so could several other Union men who
were in the office on this particular morning. They went there every day
to hear their doings discussed; and it gave them no little satisfaction
to learn that they had aroused a feeling of uneasiness and insecurity
among the citizens which grew more intense as the days went by and
nothing was heard from Hanson. Although Tom Allison knew nothing about
the letter that had been left on Beardsley's porch until the latter told
him, there were many in the settlement who knew about it and were
wondering who could have put it there. The captain's negroes were the
first to find it out, and Mrs. Brown, the neighborhood gossip who read
the letter for Beardsley's daughter, was the second; and among them all
they had managed to spread the story considerably.

Tom Allison was like Captain Beardsley in one respect--he could not keep
a secret any longer than it took him to find some congenial spirit who
was willing to share it with him. He was eager to tell all he knew, and
sometimes he told a good deal more; consequently, the first thing he did
after Beardsley received his mail and left the office to find the three
men who had gone out a while before, was to give his particular friend
and crony Mark Goodwin, a swaggering, boastful young rebel like himself,
a wink and a nod that brought him across to Tom's side of the store.

"What is it, old fellow?" whispered Mark. "Your face is full of news."

"And so is my head," replied Tom. "I am loaded clear to the muzzle, and
anxious to shoot myself off at _your_ head. I