talking. And I tell you I
don't like to be treated that way."

"That is just the way they treat me, and I don't like it either," said
Tom. "More than that, I won't stand it."

"I don't see how you are going to help yourself."

"Perhaps you don't, but I think I do. Beardsley belongs to the ring, of
course, and if he doesn't keep me posted in all their plans, I'll go to
work to upset them."

"Why, Tom, are you crazy?" exclaimed Mark, who had never been more
amazed.

"No; but I am mad clear through. I am not willing to go into the army
unless I can have an office of some kind, but I am eager to fight
traitors here at home; and if those men won't give me a chance to help
them, I shall fight on my own hook."

"But how can you? And how will you go to work to upset their plans when
you don't know what they are? You take a friend's advice and behave
yourself. Why, Tom, I wouldn't willingly incur the enmity of the Union
men about here for all the money there is in the State. They are too
desperate a lot for me to fool with. Nobody knows for certain who they
are, and that makes them all the more dangerous."

About this time the boys dismounted in front of Mrs. Brown's humble
abode--a small log-cabin which Beardsley had built for her in the edge
of a briar patch on his own plantation. That was the only neighborly act
that anybody ever knew the captain to be guilty of; but then it was not
entirely unselfish on his part. Beardsley received important letters now
and then. He was not good at reading all sorts of writing, and when he
came upon a sentence that he could not master, it was little trouble for
him to run over to Mrs. Brown's cabin and ask her to decipher it for
him. And--it is a remarkable thing to tell, but it is the truth--the
contents of those letters were safe with Mrs. Brown. She would tell any
and every thing else that came to her knowledge, no matter how it might
hurt somebody, but who Beardsley's correspondents were and what they
wrote about, no one could learn from her.

Having sheltered their horses in some fashion behind the cabin, the boys
opened the door without knocking, and went in. There were two persons in
the single room the cabin contained--a little, dried-up woman who sat in
a low rocking-chair in front of the fire with a dingy snuff-stick
between her toothless gums, and one of Beardsley's negro girls who had
come over to "slick up things."

"How do you find yourself this fine morning, mother?