"I am not joking," replied Mr. Riley earnestly. "Brown laid out a regular campaign before he started in at Harper's Ferry. He had a map, and on it had marked several localities in which the negroes were greatly in excess of the whites. Those towns and villages were to be destroyed, after the blacks had been coaxed or forced into his army, and Barrington was one of them." "Well, what of it?" exclaimed Dick. "He didn't get here, did he?" "Of course he didn't; but he spread such a spirit of discontent among the niggers that we have been shaky ever since. And the events of the last few weeks do not tend to quiet our fears, I assure you." "When is this insurrection, or whatever you call it, coming off?" "We don't know when to expect it, but we mean to be ready for it at any hour of the day or night. We have positive evidence that there are about half a dozen too many Abolitionists, and altogether too many free niggers, in and around Barrington." "When did you find it out?" "We've always known it; but we never felt so very much afraid of them before. I don't mind telling you, although I should not want to post it on the town pump, that we have had spies out for the last three or four days." "That's what I thought you were getting at. But who are they?" "There's Bud Goble, for one." "Aw, Great Scott!" exclaimed Dick, and even Rodney looked disgusted. "I hope you haven't put the least faith in anything that lazy, worthless fellow has said to you." "He may be too lazy to earn an honest living, but he is far from worthless in an emergency like the present," replied the committeeman. "He is with us all over, and has been very active since these troubles began." "I don't see why he should be so very active. He never owned the price of a pickaninny in his life. But I'll tell you what's a fact, Mr. Riley: Bud Goble has got something against every Northern man in Barrington and for miles outside of it, and he will do anything or swear to any number of lies--" "Don't you give the Committee of Safety any credit for common-sense or prudence?" demanded Rodney, who, although he appeared to be listening to the conversation, was busy thinking over a project that had suddenly suggested itself to him. "You don't suppose that anything will be done to these suspected men until they have had a fair trial, do you?" "That's the idea," said Mr. Riley, with a smile. "Rodney, you have your share of common-sense, whether the committee have or not." "A fair trial?" repeated Dick, who was like Marcy Gray in that he never "pulled in his shingle one inch"; in other words, never backed down from his principles, no matter who might hear what he had to say about them. "Who'll try these suspected men? Judge Lynch; who will order them to be strung up before they can say a word in their own defense. I tell you such work is all wrong."