The parting was a good deal harder than the boys thought it was going to be; but it was over at last; the carriages rolled out of the gate, the sentry presenting arms as they passed, and the boys who remained turned sorrowfully away to take up the drudgery of school routine. After that there were no more loud, angry discussions, no shaking of fists in one another's faces, and the orderlies who raised the flag at morning and hauled it down at night, handled it tenderly out of respect to the feelings of their Union schoolmates. They could not bear to think that there might come a time when they would be called upon to face some of their comrades with deadly weapons in their hands. Every one, from the colonel commanding down to the youngest boy in the academy, seemed resolved to do what he could to make their few remaining school days as pleasant as possible. That afternoon the guard-runners were out in greater numbers than usual. Nearly all the students were anxious to go to Barrington, for there were several things they wanted to have cleared up. What had become of the Union men who had been burned out of house and home, and what did that Committee of Safety intend to do next? Marcy Gray did not go. He was too dispirited to do anything but lounge about and read, and long for a letter from his mother telling him to come home. He missed his cousin Rodney, and wondered if fate would ever bring them together again and under different flags. He sat under the trees and tried to read while awaiting the return of Graham and Dixon, who, for a wonder, had asked for passes. The first item of information they gave him, when they came back with his mail, was one that did not much surprise him, although he did not expect to hear it so soon. "That old darkey parson has lost his money," said Dick. "There now," exclaimed Marcy, "I told him he would if he did not put it where it would be safe. Who's got it?" "I didn't hear, and don't know that any one is suspected. He hid it under a log back of the garden, and when he went there to see if it was all right, the place looked as though it had been rooted over by a drove of hogs. But of course the hogs had nothing to do with it." "Some one like Bud Goble must have been on the watch when Toby put it under the log," said Marcy, who thought he knew just how the old negro felt when he discovered his loss. "He'll not see that money again. I told him to give it to Mr. Riley." "And that reminds me that we saw and talked with Mr. Riley, who was as smiling and agreeable as you please," said Dixon. "If I had been guilty of burning out two innocent men because they differed from me in opinion, I don't think I could have had the cheek to show myself on the street. But Mr. Riley did not seem to mind it." "Do you really think he had a hand in that affair?" inquired Marcy. "I don't like to think that he is that sort."