Going to the post-office, on this particular morning, was one of the hardest tasks the boy had ever set for himself. He wished he could hit upon some good excuse for sending Morris in his place, and indeed the old fellow offered to go when he brought up Marcy's horse, adding: "I'm jubus that they will ask you a heap of questions that you won't want to answer. They won't say nothing to Morris, kase a pore niggah never knows nothing." "I've got to face them some time, and it might as well be to-day as next week," replied Marcy, slipping into the coachman's hand one of the gold pieces that Julius had given him the night before. "Let Julius entirely alone, and the next time you hear of any plans being laid against us, don't keep us in ignorance. Come to us at once, so that we may know what we have to expect." "Thank you kindly, sar," said Morris, taking off his hat. "I'll bear that in mind; but you see, Marse Marcy, I didn't want for to pester you and your maw. I was on the watch." "But you were frightened to death, and that little imp Julius was the one who helped us," thought Marcy, as he swung himself into the saddle, with the coachman's assistance, and rode away. "Well, I was frightened myself, but I couldn't run and hide." When Marcy came to Beardsley's gate, he thought it would be a neighborly act for him to ride in and ask if there was anything he could do for the captain's daughter; but she was not to be seen. Marcy afterward learned that she had taken up her abode with Mrs. Brown, with whom she intended to remain until her father could come home and make other arrangements for her comfort. There were a few negroes sauntering around in the neighborhood of the smoking ruins, and among them was the girl Nancy, who looked at him now and then with an expression on her face that would have endangered her life if her master could have seen and understood it. The boy was glad to turn about and ride away from the scene, for it was one that had a depressing effect upon him. "Beardsley brought it upon his own head," was what he told himself over and over again, but without finding any consolation in the thought. "It is bound to make him worse than he was before--it would make me worse if I were in his place--and nobody knows what he will spring on us next." As Marcy had expected, his arrival at the hitching-rack in front of the post-office was the signal for which Tom Allison, Mark Goodwin, and a few others like them had been waiting. They opened the door and ran across the street in a body, highly excited of course, and all talking at once. "What happened out your way last night?" was the first question he could understand. "Fire," was the reply. "Didn't you see it?" "You're right, I did," said Tom. "Then why didn't you come out?" inquired Marcy. "I didn't see you or any other white man about there."