"I can't go," replied Tom. "We have sent our overseer, and that is as much as we can do at present. I wanted to enlist weeks ago, but father said I must stay at home and help him manage the place." Marcy found it hard to keep from laughing outright when Tom said this. The latter had never done a day's work at overseeing or anything else, and it is doubtful if he could have told whether or not a corn furrow was laid off straight. He was too indolent to do anything but eat, sleep, and ride about the country. "There are plenty around here who could go as well as not," continued Tom, "and I might go myself if I could only get a commission. But I won't go as a private soldier." "Have you tried to get a commission?" asked Marcy. Tom replied that he had not. He did not know how to go about it, and was not acquainted with any one who could tell him. "Then hunt up General Wise, and ask his advice," suggested Marcy. "He can, and no doubt will put you on the right track at once." But Tom Allison was much too sharp to do a thing like that. He was well aware that enlisted men had no love for "cits" who could go into the army and wouldn't, and the promise of a colonel's commission would not have induced him to go among them. He meant to remain at home and let other and poorer men's sons do the fighting, and Marcy knew it all the while. The latter did not put much faith in the stories that Captain Beardsley and Colonel Shelby had spread through the country, and when his mother's negroes began coming home in companies of twos and threes, he put still less faith in them. They were a sorry-looking lot, ragged and dirty; and the first thing they asked for as they crowded about the kitchen door was something to eat. "Oh, missus, don't eber luf dem rebels take we uns away agin," was their constant plea. "Dey 'buse us de wust you eber see. Dey whop us, an' dey kick us, an' dey don't gib us half 'nough to eat. We all starve to def. We been prayin' night an' day dat de Yankees may come an' shoot dat place plum to pieces." "But the trouble is that the Yankees can't do it," said Marcy, as he bustled about in search of bread and meat to satisfy the demands of the hungry blacks. "Captain Beardsley says the Island is too strong to be captured."