you! Good-bye, Georgey. I heard the
major hint something about whiskey. They say that old pirate,
Kingfisher Culpepper, had a stock of the real thing from Robertson
County laid in his shebang on the Marsh just before he died. Pity we
aren't on terms with them, for the cubs cannot drink it, and might be
induced to sell. Shouldn't wonder, by the way, if your friend
M'Caffrey was hanging round somewhere there; he always had a keen
scent. You might confiscate it as an "incitement to desertion," you
know. The girl's pretty, and ought to be growing up now."

But haply at this point the sergeant stopped further raillery by
reporting the detachment ready; and drawing his sword, Calvert, with a
confused head, a remorseful heart, but an unfaltering step, marched off
his men on his delicate mission.

It was four o'clock when he entered Jonesville. Following a
matter-of-fact idea of his own, he had brought his men the greater
distance by a circuitous route through the woods, thus avoiding the
ostentatious exposure of his party on the open bay in a well-manned
boat to an extended view from the three leagues of shore and marsh
opposite. Crossing the stream, which here separated him from the
Dedlow Marsh by the common ferry, he had thus been enabled to halt
unperceived below the settlement and occupy the two roads by which the
fugitives could escape inland. He had deemed it not impossible that,
after the previous visit of the sergeant, the deserters hidden in the
vicinity might return to Jonesville in the belief that the visit would
not be repeated so soon. Leaving a part of his small force to patrol
the road and another to deploy over the upland meadows, he entered the
village. By the exercise of some boyish diplomacy and a certain
prepossessing grace, which he knew when and how to employ, he became
satisfied that the objects of his quest were not THERE--however, their
whereabouts might have been known to the people. Dividing his party
again, he concluded to take a corporal and a few men and explore the
lower marshes himself.

The preoccupation of duty, exercise, and perhaps, above all, the keen
stimulus of the iodine-laden salt air seemed to clear his mind and
invigorate his body. He had never been in the Marsh before, and
enjoyed its novelty with the zest of youth. It was the hour when the
tide of its feathered life was at its flood. Clouds of duck and teal
passing from the fresh water of the river to the salt poo