"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." That was what Captain Beardsley wished; but the trouble was he did not know where the money was concealed, or just how to go to work to get hold of it. He had a partly formed plan in his head, but he did not think that it would be quite safe to let Tom into the secret of it. At any rate, he would tell all his news first, and think about that afterward. "That boy Marcy is a plum dunce to act the way he is doing now," said the captain, after a little pause. "If he would go into our navy, and this war should happen to last a year or so longer, he would make a big officer of himself."