Mr. Watkins answered that nothing would suit him better than to hear, from the lips of one who knew all about it, how the Union people, if there were any in that country besides his own family, managed to live among their rebel neighbors; and Marcy began and told his story, but not quite so fully as the reader knows it. He did not have time to do that, and besides he was too modest; but he easily brought his auditor to believe that the arm he carried in a sling had not been injured while its owner was fighting on the Confederate side, and also showed him that he had more reason to stand in fear of Captain Beardsley than of any other man in the settlement. "What worries me just now is the fear that Beardsley will in some way find out that you Yankees have taken me from my mother's house to help your vessels through Croatan Sound, said Marcy, who little dreamed that Captain Beardsley had been taken from his own bed for the same purpose, and was at that very moment a prisoner in one of the boats that followed astern. The night was so dark that Marcy could not have recognized the man if he had looked straight at him; and if Beardsley had seen and recognized Marcy, when the two squads came together and got into the boats on the bank in front of his house, he had made no sign. And we may add here that the privateer captain had not been treated by his captors with the same kindness and consideration that Marcy received at the hands of Mr. Watkins. The men who surrounded his house, who followed him to his hiding-place in the cellar and dragged him out by main strength, knew that he was a rebel who hadn't the manhood to treat his prisoners with any degree of kindness, and when Beardsley frantically resisted them and yelled to his darkies to put the dogs on to the Yankees, the boatswain's mate who held him said that, if he opened his mouth again in that fashion, he would make what little light there was in the cellar shine straight through the captive's head. This threat kept Beardsley quiet, and he would not have dared to say anything to Marcy if he had had the opportunity; but he had a good deal to say about him after he got home. "If you whip the rebels at Roanoke Island and let me go among my friends again, that man will make me no end of trouble," said Marcy, in conclusion. "He will declare that I went aboard of you of my own free will, and did all I could to help you through the Sound. It will be pretty near the truth, but all the same I don't want the story to get wind in the settlement." "He is about the meanest two-for-a-cent outfit that I ever heard of," said Mr. Watkins, in a tone of disgust. "I am glad you told me all this, and will be sure to bear it in mind. But yours is not the only Union family in this country, I hope?"