Sam obeyed instructions, but we have seen that the suspicious old Toby was not willing to listen to advice. He was terribly alarmed when Sam told him what Bud had been about that morning, and taking advantage of his master's absence, and of his own position as helper about the stables, he dug up his money which he had buried before daylight, and posted off to the academy to have a talk with one of the Gray boys. He kept to the fields and gave the roads a wide berth; but he was obliged to cross one highway during his journey, and that was the time Bud Goble saw him. The old negro's actions excited Bud's interest as well as his suspicions, and having nothing else to do, he rose from his log and followed him. And right here it is necessary to make a short explanation in order that you may understand what happened afterward. Rodney and Marcy Gray had been studying at the academy for almost four years, and although they were popular among all classes in and around Barrington, there were some, whites as well as blacks, who invariably got them mixed up, and never could tell one from the other unless they chanced to meet them in company. It was Rodney, the rebel, who helped Bud Goble when his family were all prostrated with the ague, and offered him a reward for finding that underground railroad, but it was Marcy, the Union boy, who picked the banjo with superior skill, danced and sung his way into the affections of the plantation darkies, and saved old Toby's melon-patch from being devastated by the students. These two had eaten a good many of old Toby's melons, and more than one Thanksgiving turkey which graced his table had been bought with their money. Believing from what Sam told him that his hard-earned wealth was not safe as long as he knew where it was, Toby decided that one of these two boys, the one he happened to find first, should be its custodian. Dick Graham, who was on duty at the front gate, told him where Marcy was, and the old man lost no time in making his way through the woods to his friend's beat. But Marcy declined to accept the responsibility, as we have seen, and so Toby took the money back and hid it in the ground whence he had taken it. He would have been better off--almost two hundred dollars better off--if he had done as Mr. Bowen and Marcy advised him to do; for Bud Goble dogged his footsteps every rod of the way, and Toby never once suspected it. Bud did not hear what passed between Toby and the sentry--he dared not go close enough for that; but he saw the stocking that went back and forth between the iron pickets of the fence, and he was in plain sight of the negro when he returned it to its hiding-place.