Tom Randolph would have been very angry indeed if anyone had told him that the noise that thirty-two pound shell made when it exploded in the woods, and led him and his men to believe that there was a Union battery concealed there, had frightened all the war spirit out of him, but it is a fact that after his experience with the gunboat he did not show the least desire to take the field again at the head of his company. Everybody knew that there were no Federal troops in Baton Rouge, but there were war vessels in the Mississippi holding the city under their guns, and their presence had a depressing effect upon a good many red-hot rebels besides Tom Randolph. More than that, General Butler had assumed command at New Orleans; and the energetic and effective way in which he dealt with treason there opened the eyes of the Mooreville people to the fact that there might be a day of settlement coming for them also, and that it would be well if they could have a tolerably clean record to show when the invading army moved up to take possession of Baton Rouge.

This was the way Mr. Randolph and some of his neighbors looked at the situation; and acting upon the hints they dropped in his presence, Tom concealed his uniform and sword in the garret, where he thought no one would be likely to look for them. He was getting tired of war anyway, he said, and wished the past could be blotted out and things be as they were before South Carolina, by her senseless act of secession, brought so much trouble upon him and his friends. He was not as disgusted and angry as a good Confederate ought to have been when he heard a man from Baton Rouge affirm that after all the Yankees were not such a bad sort when one became acquainted with them, and that some of the towns-people were not ashamed to confess to a friendly feeling for the crews of the gunboats that were anchored in front of the city. The blue-jackets always acted like gentlemen when they came ashore, and, true to their instincts of traffic, had established a lively little trade with the citizens. They purchased everything the latter had to sell in the way of garden-truck, milk, butter, and eggs, and paid for all they got in good money; or, what was better, in coffee, tea (store tea too, and not sassafras), wheat flour, and salt. It is true that the salt was not as fine nor as clean as some they had seen, for it had been taken from the brine of the beef and pork barrels with which the store-rooms of the gunboats were abundantly supplied; but it was acceptable to people who had boiled down the dirt floors of their smoke-houses in order to get the salt that had trickled off the hams and sides of bacon which had been cured there in better times. The gunboat officers also sent their soiled linen ashore to be washed, so that not a day passed during which there was not more or less communication with the fleet.

This was a pleasant state of affairs all around, especially to the victorious blue-jackets, who had grown tired of fighting and wanted all the shore liberty they could get, and it might have continued until the Confederate General Breckenridge made his unsuccessful attempt to regain control of the Mississippi above New Orleans had it not been for two things: the Confederate Conscription Act, and the determination on the part of the Home Guards to evade it. The passage of that act was like a destructive thunder-bolt from a clear sky, and there were those in Mooreville who refused to believe that their chosen rulers would be guilty of such perfidy; but the news had hardly been received before the enrolling officer put in his appearance, thus proving the truth of what we have already said—that the Richmond Government developed into a despotism so suddenly that it was plain the machinery for it had been prepared long before.

The enrolling officer, Captain Roach, was a dapper little fellow who did not look as though he had seen much service, and, indeed, he hadn't seen a day of it; for when he received his commission and orders from the Governor he was a practising lawyer in a small inland town. Beyond the very slight knowledge which he had been able to gain from his printed instructions, he knew nothing of his duties or of soldiering; but his common-sense taught him that as Tom Randolph's commission was older than his own, military etiquette required that he should call upon Tom without any unnecessary delay—not to report to him, for Tom was not in the Confederate service or in any way connected with the conscription business, but merely to show him proper respect. He reached Mooreville in the morning, spent the rest of the day in opening an office and spreading abroad the news of his arrival, so that those whose duty it was to be conscripted would have no trouble in finding him, and the next morning mounted his horse and set out to find Captain Randolph. The first man he met on the road was Tom's first lieutenant. Captain Roach did not know him, but he saw that Lambert was anxious to ride on without speaking, and perhaps that was the reason he drew rein and accosted him.

"Good-morning," said the captain pleasantly. "You know I have opened an office in Kimberly's store, I suppose?"

"Say! What made you ask me that question for?" demanded Lambert, who was instantly on his guard.

"Because I take you to be over eighteen and under thirty-five, and would like to have you drop around and see me," was the reply.

"Well, I aint a-going to do it; and that settles it. See?"

"Really I don't see how you can get out of it."

"Don't, hey? Well, I do. I aint Confedrit. I'm State Rights."

"Are you not aware that there are no State Rights people any more?" asked the captain. "The conscription act that has just been passed withdraws all non-exempt citizens between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five from State control, and places them absolutely at the disposal of the President during the war."

"But I aint agreeing to no such 'rangement, don't you know?" exclaimed Lambert, who did not like to see the enrolling officer so quiet and confident, for it looked as though he knew what he was talking about. "That was just what Lincoln wanted to do when he called on our Gov'nor for soldiers to whop South Car'liny; but our Gov'nor he said he wasn't that kind of a feller, and his men shouldn't go out of the State. Why don't he stick to his word and say the same to Jeff Davis?"

"My friend, you don't understand the situation at all——" began the captain.

"Better'n you do, by a long sight," interrupted Lambert. "I aint agreeing to no such bargain, I tell you. Them as wants to go to Virginy to light for the 'Federacy can go for all me; but I don't want to go, and, by gum! I won't. And furder, I'm a Home Guard."

"In your case that doesn't matter. The government would be quite willing to stretch a point in favor of home organizations that have proved themselves to be worth something, but you Mooreville fellows haven't done the first thing for the cause. You have turned some of our friends against us, but where are the Yankees you have shot, and how many prisoners have you taken?"

"Look here, by gum!" exclaimed the lieutenant.

"I have heard all about you, and the Governor says in the letter he sent with my commission that the best thing I can do is to send you to a camp of instruction," continued the captain. "You are no good here, for you don't do anything."

"Dog-gone my pictur'! What's the reason we aint been doing something for the cause right along?" shouted Lambert, his red face showing that he was getting angry. "We've been the means of keeping the Union men in these parts from rising up and taking the country for the Yankees, and more'n that—we licked a gunboat in the river. Who told you we aint done nothing? It must be some enemy of ourn who aint got the spirit to jine in with us, and if I can find out who he is I'll make him sorry for it, I bet you. But you can't conscript me, I tell you. I'm an officer appointed by the Gov'nor."

"Ah! That does make a difference, perhaps."

"Well, I reckon it does," said Lambert, with a satisfied smile.

"Do you happen to have your commission with you? Or will you tell me when I can see it?"

This was what Lambert himself would have called a "side-winder," and his first thought was to hunt up Tom Randolph, and stand over him with his riding-whip until he had seen him write to the Governor asking for that long delayed commission. Tom had often promised to do it, but he never had, and now Lambert was likely to see trouble on account of his negligence.

"I am first leftenant of our company; my commission is all right, and that settles that point," said he at length. "If the Yankee General Butler brings his army from New Orleans to capture Mooreville he will run against a snag, for he will find me and my men here to stop him. We jined to guard our homes. That's why they call us Home Guards, and that settles the other point you was speaking of. We aint got no pris'ners to show, kase there aint no Yankees come nigh us; but we are just as much use here as we would be up there in Virginy."

"We need every man we can get," replied Captain Roach. "Those who do not come of their own free will must expect to be taken by force, unless they can show that they are of use at home. You Mooreville Home Guards have had the finest chance in the world to make a name for yourselves. Why didn't you drive those gunboats away from Baton Rouge long ago?"

"Shucks!" exclaimed Lambert. "Why, man alive, they've got cannons on 'em."

"What of it? Couldn't you hide behind the levee, where you would be safe, and pick off every sailor who showed his head above decks? Couldn't you keep those small boats from coming ashore and going back loaded down with provisions? You have been giving aid and comfort to the enemy by permitting such things, and that's contrary to law. But I must ride along, for I am on my way to visit Captain Randolph. I am not sure that you are exempt simply because you are an officer in the State militia, but will tell you the next time we meet."

"You needn't mind looking it up, for I aint going, I tell you. But I'll tell you one thing, and that aint two: if you take me you will have to take Tom Randolph likewise. I'll raise a fuss if you don't."

The two separated, and the enrolling officer kept on his way to the home of Captain Randolph, who had somehow heard that he might look for a distinguished visitor on this particular morning, and was thrown into a state of great excitement by the unwelcome news. The presence of the enrolling officer in town was all the evidence Tom needed to prove that there was no immediate danger of an invasion by the Federals, so he brought his uniform from its hiding place in the garret; and when he had arrayed himself in it, and leaned his sword in one corner of the gallery to show that he was prepared to answer when duty called, he was ready for the visit—that is, as ready as he ever would be, for he would not have seen Captain Roach at all if he could have thought of any way to avoid it. Rumor said that the captain looked as though he might have come out of some lady's bandbox, but all the same Tom supposed him to be a Confederate veteran who had seen service on many a hardly contested field, and who would overawe him with his profound knowledge of military matters. Tom wished now that he had made a little better fight with that gunboat, or that he had slipped into Baton Rouge some dark night with a few picked men and pulled down the flag that the Yankee sailors had hoisted over the arsenal.

"Oh, what honors I might have gained for myself if I had only thought of these things before," he said to his mother. He always went to her with his troubles now, or when he stood in need of encouragement and advice, his father having told him somewhat sharply that he had washed his hands of the Home Guards and never wanted to hear of them again as long as he lived. "But that is the way it is with me. My wit comes too slow to be of any use."

"I am very glad that you did not think of them before, you reckless boy," replied Mrs. Randolph. "Your record is better than I wish it was, for I am afraid it will take you into the army. What would you do if this enrolling officer should decide to take the company just as it stands, and swear you into the Confederate service?"

"CÆsar's ghost!" cried Captain Tom, in great alarm. "If my record as a loyal soldier leads him to do that, I shall be sorry I ever put on this uniform. What could I do?"

"Could you not follow the same course that Rodney Gray pursued, when General Lacey came up from New Orleans to swear the Mooreville Rangers into the Confederate Army?" inquired Mrs. Randolph.

"Mother, if you were a man you would be a general yourself," exclaimed Tom, his fears vanishing on the instant. "If a first duty sergeant can back down a major-general, I reckon a captain in the State militia can do the same for a Confederate captain."

He spoke boldly enough, but when one of the house servants came in to tell him that there was a strange soldier riding into the yard he felt his courage oozing out at the ends of his fingers, and he would hardly have dared to go to the door to meet his visitor if his mother had not assured him that she would go also, and that she would remain close at his side to support him during the dreaded interview.

The enrolling officer did not look like a very stern soldier, she told herself, when she saw him get off his horse and shake hands with Tom, who had hastened down the steps to meet him; but then he was backed up by the whole tremendous power of the Confederate Government, and it was to her interest and Tom's to make a friend of him if she could. Captain Roach was equally anxious to secure Tom's assistance in the disagreeable and perhaps dangerous work he had to do, and the consequence was it was no trouble at all for them to get acquainted, or to come to an understanding with one another. After they had spent a few minutes in talking over the situation, and the enrolling officer had shown his written instructions, as well as a copy of the law by which he was supposed to be governed, the latter said:

"What surprises me very much is that there is not the first word said about exemptions. Whether it was an oversight or not the fact remains that, according to this law, every man between the specified ages must be conscripted."

"And that is perfectly right," said Captain Tom, making a hurried mental list of certain persons in the neighborhood whom he would be glad to see go first of all. "Everybody except our Home Guards."

"No, sir," said Captain Roach in tones so decided that Tom's under jaw began to drop down. "The law excepts nobody; but wait a minute. After the regiments and companies that have gone to the front from this State are filled up, the rest of the conscripts will remain at home as a reserve to be drawn upon at intervals of not less than three months, so that our organizations in the field can be kept always full. Now, why can't you help me so as to keep your company of Home Guards together as long as possible? If we work it right perhaps you will not be called upon at all."

"That's the idea!" exclaimed Tom, greatly relieved, while his mother smiled her approval of the suggestion, and told Captain Roach on the spot that she expected him to stay to dinner, and as long as he remained in that part of the country to make himself as free in her house as he would in his own. When she ceased speaking Tom continued: "I am like Nathan Hale, who, when the British were about to hang him as a spy, said he was sorry he had but one life to give to his country; but for all that I should like to stay here until I have seen some of our neighbors who have had so much to say against the South sent to the front. But how shall I work it to keep my company together?"

"By doing as you have suggested," replied the captain. "By first sending away those who ought to be made to fight for the South, since they have had so much to say against her and her cause. Perhaps by the time they have been killed off our independence will be acknowledged; and then we shall not need any more soldiers."

"That's the idea!" said Tom again. "But how can the Home Guards help you?"

"By serving in place of the troops that I am authorized to call on for assistance," answered Captain Roach. "There will be a camp of instruction established somewhere in the vicinity very shortly, and it will be my duty to forward my conscripts to that camp as fast as I can get them together. Of course they will not go willingly——"

"I understand," interrupted Captain Tom. "You want me to send some of my men with them as guards."

"Exactly. It will be a feather in your cap as well as in mine if we can attend to the business without calling upon the government for aid. I don't want to do that if I can avoid it, for every man we can raise is needed at the front to resist McClellan's advance upon Richmond. We must be alive, for there's going to be hot work up there."

"I am with you; and I don't know of anything that would suit the Home Guards better," replied Tom, glad of the opportunity to gain a little cheap notoriety without putting himself in danger; and when Captain Roach rode away from the house after dinner Tom accompanied him to his office in Kimberly's store, and assisted in obtaining some poll-books from which he could make out a list of the unhappy men who were subject to military duty under the terms of the Conscription Act.

Of course there were a goodly number of young fellows in the settlement between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one whose names did not appear on the poll-books, for they were not voters; but Tom had them in his mind, and with his mother's aid and Lambert's he succeeded during the following week in making out a complete list of them. At the head of the list stood the name of Edward Griffin, Drummond's assistant operator, who had warned Rodney Gray that he was to be arrested the moment he left the boat at St. Louis; but Drummond's name did not appear at all.

"Griffin is a particular friend of one of my worst enemies," explained Tom. "Not only is he strong for the Union, but he has had a good deal to say about me and my company behind our backs, and I want you to serve a notice on him the first thing you do. I wish they would make haste and establish that camp of instruction, and when Griffin is sent there I want to command the squad that goes with him. I wish, too, that Rodney Gray was here to go with him."

In the meantime events proved that the people of the South were not as willing to submit to the despotic acts of their government as they ought to have been, especially in Georgia and Arkansas, "where it seemed that a conflict might arise between State and Confederate authorities." Officers of the militia in the former State were arrested by the enrolling officers, but the Governor demanded their release and threatened to arrest the Confederates if they did not let his State officers alone. The Richmond Government yielded the point, but said to the Governor of Georgia, through the Secretary of War: "If you arrest any of our enrolling officers in their attempts to get men to fill up the Georgia regiments now in the face of the enemy, you will cause great mischief. I think we may as well drive out our common enemy before we make war upon each other." In Arkansas Governor Rector threatened to secede from the Confederacy, and called for 4500 men to defend the State, adding that "the troops raised under this call are intended exclusively for home protection, and will not, under any circumstances, be transferred to the Confederate service without their consent." In short, the Confederacy was in a very bad way, and their authorities knew it; for on the 21st of April the congress "adjourned in such haste as to show that the members were anxious to provide for their own personal safety." That was the time when a rebel newspaper invented the word "skedaddle," and that was the time too when McClellan could have taken Richmond; but he "wasted three full months, every day of which was of vital moment to the Confederacy, in doing nothing," and when at last he was ready to advance, he found himself confronted by an army that was larger than his own.

The murmurs of dissatisfaction that arose all over the South when that sweeping Conscription Act was passed were not entirely lost upon the Richmond government, and the next news that came to Mooreville was that another act had been passed providing for exemptions. Rodney Gray's father was one of the first to hear of it, and the next time he went to Mooreville he stopped at the telegraph office and called Ned Griffin to the door. The young fellow had been very much distressed ever since he received notice from Captain Roach to hold himself in readiness to march to the camp of instruction with the first squad of conscripts that left town, and Tom Randolph had been mean enough to let him know how his name happened to be first on the list. Griffin was the only support of a widowed mother, and he knew that things would go hard with her when the small sum he received for his work in the telegraph office ceased to come into her hands every month. More than that, he believed in the Union and the flag that waved over it, and did not want to fight against his principles. When he came to the door in answer to Mr. Gray's hail he looked as though he had lost the last friend he had in the world.

"I came here to cheer you up a bit by telling you that you need not go into the army if you don't want to," was the way in which Rodney's father announced the object of his visit. "The new law provides for the exemption of one agriculturist on each farm, where there is no white male adult not liable to military duty, employing fifteen able-bodied negroes, on condition that the party exempted shall give bond to deliver to the government, in the next twelve months, 100 pounds of bacon or its equivalent in salt pork, and 100 pounds of beef for each able-bodied slave employed on said farm."

Young Griffin gasped for breath, but did not say a word in reply. He did not smile either, as Mr. Gray did, for he failed to see how that new law could affect him.

"Now, I happen to have such a farm up the river road," continued the planter. "There's no one on it but a driver to look out for things, and if you have a mind to go up and take charge of it I shall be glad to have you. And I think I can put you in the way of earning more money than you do now."

"But, Mr. Gray, I am not an overseer," stammered Griffin, who wished from the bottom of his heart that he had chosen that humble but useful vocation instead of telegraphy. "I don't know the first thing about farming."

"Well, you can't learn younger, can you?"

"No, sir. But I—you see—the fact of the matter is, where are the bacon and beef to come from? If they were selling at a dollar a ton I couldn't buy a hundred pounds."

"You have a whole year in which to pay it," replied Mr. Gray. "But I don't believe in going in debt, and perhaps we can scare up cattle and hogs enough on the farm to fill the bill; and I shall depend on you to raise others to replace them. I think you had better go. You can take your mother along to keep house for you, and I don't see why you can't live as well there on the farm as you do here in town. Tell Drummond to come out here a moment."

"Mr. Gray," said Griffin, with tears of gratitude in his eyes, "I wish you would ride around to our house and let mother thank you for your kindness. I don't know how."

"I will save her and you the trouble," said the planter, bending down from his saddle and speaking in tones so low that none of the passers-by could hear his words. "Who was it that kept Rodney from falling into the clutches of that Yankee cotton factor in St. Louis? Tell Drummond to come here."

Drummond came, and Griffin afterward said that he never saw so mad a man as his chief was when the planter explained matters to him in a few brief but emphatic words. The operator had nothing against Griffin personally, but Tom Randolph had, and as Tom had been friendly enough to keep his name off the enrolling list, Drummond felt in duty bound to make common cause with him.

"Mr. Gray, I am afraid it won't work," said he. "Griffin was conscripted before that exemption law was passed."

"I am prepared to take the risk," was the quiet rejoinder. "In case objections are made we shall insist on having the first conscripts selected from the poll-books instead of from a private list; and if any objections are made to that we will report the matter at headquarters. Your name comes pretty close to the top of the list, Mr. Drummond."

The operator was frightened and saw plainly that it would not be a safe piece of business to make an enemy of Mr. Gray; he knew too much. Besides, he was one of the richest planters in the State, and such men always exerted a good deal of influence when they set about it.

"Of course, sir, I hope it will work," Drummond hastened to say, "for I don't want to see anybody forced into the army. I only said I was afraid it wouldn't."

"I understand. Ned, you might as well start now as any time. Go and say good-by to your mother, and hurry up to my house. I will be there in a couple of hours, and after we have had a snack we'll ride up to the farm."

From the telegraph office Mr. Gray went to Kimberly's store, where he created another commotion. Tom Randolph was there, and so were some of the Home Guards, who had of late taken to spending all their waking hours at the enrolling office. Captain Tom would have protested loudly if his amazement and chagrin had permitted him to speak at all, but Captain Roach had no objections to offer when Mr. Gray told him that he would have to find someone to take Griffin's place in the first squad of conscripts that was sent to the camp of instruction, for Griffin himself was exempt under the law, or would be as soon as he had taken his new position.

"I am surprised at you," exclaimed Tom when Mr. Gray had mounted his horse and galloped away. "You mustn't let that man Griffin off; you can't. Haven't I told you that he is Union?"

"I have my own interests to look out for," replied Captain Roach rather sharply, "and consequently I cannot afford to get into trouble with such a man as Mr. Gray. He didn't say much, nor did he bluster at all; but I knew by the glint in his eye that there was a whole battery of big guns behind the little he did say, and that he was ready to turn them loose on me if I said an ugly word to him. We haven't been playing square since this thing began, and he knows it; and if he should insist on having a new deal from the poll-books, with your list of names thrown out, where would your friend Drummond be? Where would you be, seeing that even Home Guards are not exempt?"

"I just don't care; and that's all there is about it," whined Tom, who was mad enough to cry if he had been alone. "They ought to be exempt, and I don't see why those Richmond fellows left them out."

"That's neither here nor there. They left them out; but in working to keep you with me I have practically exempted you, and that is something I had no business to do. I can't imagine where Mr. Gray got his information, but he understands all this, and if he should report me to the Governor I'd have to join some regiment in the field; and that's a place I want to keep away from as bad as you do."

"Well, I must say that things have come to a pretty pass when a man can say who shall go into the army and who shall not, just because he happens to have a little money," declared Tom spitefully.

"That's the way the thing stands, and if you want to stay at home you and your men had better be doing something."

These chance words, which really did not mean anything, set some of the Home Guards to thinking.