After accompanying our Confederate hero, Rodney Gray, through fifteen months of army life, during which he saw more adventures, endured more hardships and learned more wisdom than he had ever dreamed of, we left him, at the close of the second volume of this series, safe in the home of his boyhood, which he had left for the avowed purpose of "driving the Yankees out of Missouri." He confidently assured his mother and the servants who assembled to see him off that it would not take more than three or four months to do that, and then he would return, like Lentulus of old, "with victorious eagles." Instead of that, he came back as ragged and disgusted a specimen of a Confederate volunteer as could be found anywhere in the South at the time of which we write, and that is saying a good deal. The summer clothing given him and his comrades at Tupelo after the retreat from Corinth, and which had been furnished by one of the numerous "ladies' associations" of the South, was not calculated to stand soldier treatment. The trousers Rodney wore were made of a rich shawl, and his blouse had once been part of a costly silk dress. His nights at the camp-fire, and the days he had passed trudging along dusty roads, had played sad havoc with his "pictured uniform." That was what Dick Graham called it, and his regiment, which had been pretty well supplied with clothing of the same description, presented a very fantastic appearance the first time they went on dress parade.

You will remember that Rodney brought Dick home with him. Dick wanted to get into Missouri where his parents were, and in order to do that it was necessary that he should find some point on the Mississippi that was not guarded by Federal gunboats. They came from Camp Pinckney on foot, and had been doing duty as infantrymen for months, although their regiment was always spoken of as the —th Missouri cavalry. Their horses had been "confiscated" by the commissary department during that dreary "mud march" from the disastrous battlefield of Pea Ridge to Van Buren and Pocahontas. The commanding general, Van Dorn, did not need cavalry during that march, but it was necessary that his wagon train should go through; so as fast as his jaded teams gave out and dropped in the road, he took cavalry horses to replace them, and in process of time the two Barrington boys found themselves on foot like hundreds of others.

You will remember, too, that when Rodney reached home he led his friend into the parlor and pushed him into an easy-chair with the words: "Stay here till I find somebody," and that his mother came in a moment later. The way in which the two greeted each other after their long separation was something of which Dick Graham could not remain an unmoved spectator, for it made him think of his own mother away off across the river, whom he might never see again. He staggered rather than walked to the window, and looked out at the oleanders in the yard.

"O Rodney, is it possible that you have come back to me at last!" exclaimed Mrs. Gray tearfully; and Dick knew, without turning his head, that she was holding her stalwart son off at arms' length and giving him a good looking over.

"Yes, sir," replied the returned soldier, placing his arm about his mother's waist and leading her toward a sofa, "I have come back, and I have come to stay. The last words you said to me right out there on the gallery were that you never wanted to hear that I had failed to do my duty. You haven't heard any such report as that, have you? I have done the best I could, but I have come back whipped; and I wish every other man who wears a gray jacket were honest enough to say the same thing."

The listening Dick expected to hear his chum soundly rebuked for giving utterance to such sentiments, because he knew that the women were much more zealous for the cause of Southern independence than their male relatives, that they were exerting themselves to the utmost to keep the war spirit at fever heat, and that, if it hadn't been for them, the army from which he had just been discharged would have dwindled to a corporal's guard long ago. By an accidental glance into a mirror that hung on a side wall Dick saw that Mrs. Gray was holding her soldier boy tightly clasped in her arms; but he did not hear her utter one word of reproach. Like many another mother's, her patriotism had been sorely tried, and now that Rodney had returned safe and sound she considered that she had done all for the cause that could be expected of her, and hoped that he would never leave her side again. Let some other mother's son—Mrs. Randolph's, for instance—take Rodney's place at the front.

"Say!" exclaimed Rodney, starting up all of a sudden. "What's the matter here? This room doesn't look just as it did the last time I saw it. Where's the carpet?"

"It was cut into blankets and sent to Corinth, along with a lot of other things that I thought might be of use to you ragged, shivering soldiers," replied his mother.

"I hoped you would never be called upon to make the smallest sacrifice," said Rodney in a tone of disgust.

"Do you think I made no sacrifice when I sent you to the field?" said Mrs. Gray reproachfully. "O Rodney."

"I didn't mean that," said the boy quickly. "But you don't want to rob yourself for the sake of those fellows up there," bobbing his head in the direction in which he supposed Bragg's army to be. "Like as not the poor, foolish woman who cut her shawl up to make these trousers of mine will suffer with cold for the want of it. But I am forgetting something. Come here, old fellow. Mother, you have often heard me speak of Dick Graham, the only brother I've got. Well, here he is. Rags and dust and all, that's Dick. Kiss him for his mother, and tell me where I will find father."

The lonely, homesick young Missourian was almost overwhelmed by the kindly greeting that Rodney's mother gave him, but his friend was quick to notice it and came to his relief. When his mother said that Mr. Gray had gone to Mooreville on business and might not be back for an hour or two, he seized Dick by the arm and hurried him up to his room.

"I have known you a good while, but I never saw you look so glum before," said he, as he closed the door and forced Dick into a seat.

"You may well say that," replied the latter. "I bore up pretty well until I saw you and your mother together, and that knocked me. It's a fur ways to Little Rock, and there are a good many Yanks on the road."

"I'll trust you and your discharge to get along with the Yankee cavalry if I can only see you safe over the river," said Rodney. "There is where the fun is going to come in."

"Don't you think that the commanding naval officer, or the provost marshal at Baton Rouge, might be prevailed upon to give me permission to go over openly and above-board?" inquired Dick.

"Not much. You wouldn't do it yourself if you were in their places. How would they know but that you were a spy or a bearer of secret despatches, and that your discharge was a humbug? I tell you, Dick, since I have had time to think of the way those Yankee scouts treated us when they told us to come in out of the wet, I confess to a very friendly feeling for the Yankees. How many are there who would have run us in, just to be able to say that they had captured a couple of graybacks?"

"That's so," assented Dick.

"Now the best thing you can do is to stay with me long enough to rest your hands and face, say a week or such a matter, and then we'll go up to Vicksburg——"

"Suffering Moses!" exclaimed Dick. "There is a portion of two Yankee fleets up there, according to the last report I read, and they are fighting our fellows all the time."

"Well, say Port Hudson then. There hasn't been much of any fighting there. We'll buy a light, tight boat and provision it——"

Here Dick straightened up, and turned his pockets inside out one after the other to show that they were empty.

"I know what you mean by that," exclaimed Rodney, "but I'll see that you have all the money you want—money, I said, and not such stuff as that," he added, thrusting his hand into his pocket and pulling out the roll of Confederate scrip that the paymaster had given him with his discharge. "Mother was wild for Southern independence when this thing was first started, but thought it wise to prepare for a rainy day; so she and father and I put away a little gold."

"If it wasn't for the fact that my father and mother did the same thing, I'd call you a traitor," said Dick.

"Oh, I know we are in good company," answered Rodney with a laugh. "And we don't think any the less of ourselves for putting away that gold, either. Think what a fix Washington's army was in when it was mustered out at Newburgh. Those men were victorious, but even victors must eat and have something to wear, and what did they have to live on? Do you suppose they would have thought seriously of mutiny if they had had a little store of hard stuff to fall back on? That's why we hid the gold; and it doesn't make any difference what sort of laws the government at Richmond passes, we are going to keep what we have. Now, let me show you how much my old company thought of me."

Although Rodney's room had been regularly cared for during the long months it had been without an occupant, he noticed, the moment he went into it, that nothing had been disturbed. A newspaper, which he had tossed upon the floor the morning he left, was lying in nearly the same spot yet; and his light fowling-piece was standing in the corner where he had placed it after shooting a hawk that was bothering Aunt Martha's chickens. He opened the door of his closet as he spoke, and almost without looking put his hand upon the elegant cavalry sabre that Bob Hubbard's Rangers had given him. The uniform he had worn while acting as drill-master, and his military saddle and bridle were there, too.

"I left them at home because I knew they would get me captured if I tried to take them into Missouri," said he. "Now, pull off that picture-book," he added, nodding toward Dick's silk blouse, "and after you have removed a little of the Louisiana soil from your features, put on this citizen's suit. I am not sure it will fit you, but it is the best I can do until I see how trade is."

"I suppose gold is as potent in Baton Rouge as it was in Little Rock," said Dick. "But do you think our discharges will take us inside the Yankee lines?"

"We'll make them," replied Rodney. "We'll say that we want to report ourselves to the provost marshal and get a paper of some kind from him that will keep the Federal scouts from bothering us; and when we see him we'll bounce him for permission to trade."

The boys went to work to make such improvements in their personal appearance as they could with plenty of soap and water and Rodney's abundant wardrobe, and when a bell rang in a lower hall half an hour later, they answered it looking quite unlike the dusty ragamuffins who had walked unbidden into Mrs. Gray's front parlor. It is true that their coats were a little short in the sleeves and tight across the shoulders, but there were no holes in them or in the light shoes they wore on their feet.

"That's all O. K., mother," said Rodney, catching a momentary glimpse of a well-filled table through the open door. "When you can't think of any other way to put in the time, just ask us if we want something to eat. Now come and sit down with us, and tell us everything that's happened since I have been in the army."

Rodney's entrance into the dining room seemed to be the signal that the house servants had been waiting for. The moment he stepped over the threshold they rushed in through every door, some smiling, some laughing outright, and all pushing and crowding one another in the effort to be the first to shake "young moster" by the hand. Foremost in the struggle was Rosebud, the darkey who had been Rodney's playmate in the days of his babyhood, and who yelled so dolefully when he went away. Although they all inquired particularly after his health, there was not one among them who asked what he thought of the Yankees as fighters now that he had had some experience with them. They knew as well as he did that he and his comrades had failed utterly in their efforts to take Missouri out of the Union.

Mrs. Gray could not describe in one dinner hour everything that had happened in and around Mooreville during the last fifteen months, nor could she do it in a dozen hours; and even at the end of a week she and her husband had many questions to answer as well as many to ask. But before he went to bed that night Rodney knew pretty nearly what Tom Randolph and his Home Guards had been doing, and how he and the enrolling officer stood in the community, and had been made to see at least one thing very clearly: the surest way for him to keep out of the army was to follow Ned Griffin's example and take a position as overseer on one of his father's plantations.

"I am overjoyed to know that you have decided to remain at home with us," said his father, "but, to be honest, I did not look for it, so I gave Griffin the best opening I had. Our upper plantation, as you are aware, is right in the middle of the woods; but I think Ned will be willing to make the change if I ask him."

"Not for the world," said Rodney quickly.

"I am used to living in the woods, so I will take the little farm and let Ned and his mother stay near civilization, where they can see white folks once in a while. Besides, I'd rather like to be within reach of the cotton you've got up there. A Northern paper that came into our hands just before we left Tupelo contained the information that there's going to be trading allowed along the river, and what the Yanks especially want is cotton."

"I don't blame them," said Mr. Gray, with a smile. "It is worth sixty cents a pound in New York."

This piece of news almost took Rodney's breath away.

"Four hundred and fifty bales at—let me see; $270 a——Great Scott, father! That doesn't look as though you are going to be reduced to beggary."

"But you must bear in mind that our cotton is not in New York, but concealed in the depths of a swamp," said his mother; and Rodney afterward had occasion to recall the words when he was working night and day, with Sailor Jack's assistance and Marcy's to keep this cotton out of the hands of rascals, both Union and Confederate, who were trying their best to take it from him by force or to cheat him out of it. This news was so very important that it could be talked of only in whispers; and after the difficulties that lay in the way of getting the cotton into the hands of the traders had been discussed in tones so low that no eavesdropper at the door could have heard a word of it, Mrs. Gray said in her ordinary voice:

"You boys have often spoken of having Northern papers in your possession. Did your officers permit that?"

"Well, no," said Rodney, with a laugh. "It was against orders to look at one of them, and I have seen men triced up by the thumbs for disregarding that order."

"Then how did they get inside our lines?"

"They were taken from dead Yanks, or out of the pockets of prisoners," replied Rodney. "Sometimes they were handed over to an officer, or thrown aside to be picked up by other men who didn't care so much for orders; and those who got them were mighty careful to know who was around when they took them out to read them. Why, mother, I am telling you the gospel truth when I say that all the reliable news we army fellows got was what came to us through the columns of Northern papers, or from the mouths of Northern prisoners. But, as I was saying—$120,000 and over. That's what your cotton is worth, father, and I will take the little farm so as to be where I can see it once in a while."

There were so many questions to be asked and answered that Rodney and Dick scarcely stirred out of the house during the whole of the next day. On the second day they rode out to call upon Ned Griffin and his mother, both of whom shed tears of joy and gratitude when they took Rodney by the hand.

"Yes; thanks to your father's kindness, I am here yet," said Ned, wiping his eyes, which grew misty every time he spoke of his benefactor, "though mercy knows how I am going to pay the debt I shall owe him when the terms of the conscription law are complied with. A hundred pounds of beef and bacon for every darkey on this place, big and little, and beef and bacon worth—worth way up yonder," said Ned, pointing to the ceiling. "It will take me a lifetime to pay it."

"Oh, no, it won't," said Rodney encouragingly, "for if goods are high, your services will command wages in proportion; don't you see?"

"Do you imagine that I will ever charge your father a cent after what he has done for me?" cried Ned indignantly. "I am not that kind of a fellow, and you ought to know it."

"Well, I suppose that is sentiment, but it isn't business," said the practical Rodney. "Now, then, what do you know? Have you the straight of the fights the Home Guards had with those gunboats?"

Ned laughed until he was red in the face, and then went on to give the "straight" of one "fight" as he had heard it from indignant citizens of Baton Rouge, who had petitioned General Williams, the Union commander, to send a company of cavalry to Mooreville with orders to exterminate the Home Guards or drive them from the country. The boys heard much the same story from several disabled veterans of Bragg's army, upon whom they called on their way home, and that was the way Rodney came to know so much about what had been transpiring along the river during his absence. He and Dick also learned from various sources that the enrolling officer would prove to be a jolly and entertaining companion when once they became acquainted with him, but as he was Tom Randolph's friend, they had better not trust him too far at first.

"Perhaps we'll not trust him at all," said Rodney. "We can tell better after we have had a look at him. As we are not in the Confederate service we are under no obligations to go near him; still he might look upon it as a courteous and friendly act if we were to drop into his office to-morrow and tell him 'hallo!'"

With this object in view they rode to Mooreville on the afternoon of the next day, and that was the time they saw Tom Randolph and frightened him nearly out of his wits, as we have recorded, by assuring him that he need not expect to take a squad of conscripts to Camp Pinckney without having a brush with the Union cavalry. It was after they left him that they heard the hounds giving tongue in the woods; but such sounds were common enough in that country, and so they paid no attention to it, although they might have done so had they been able to look far enough into the future to see what was going to happen afterward.

When they reached the enrolling office Rodney found that he knew everyone there except the officer in charge; and as he shook hands with some and barely nodded to others, he told himself that they were just the sort of men he expected to find in Tom Randolph's company of Home Guards. There were a few industrious, hard-working ones among them, but the majority were long-haired, lazy vagabonds, who had never been known to earn an honest living.

"They're a pretty set to fight a gunboat," he whispered to Dick while the two were hitching their horses at the rack. "And I'll bet my roll of Confederate scrip against yours that they never take any conscripts to the camp of instruction. I'll go farther, and say that they will never start with any, for when they are wanted they'll not be found. Now let's go in and see what sort of a chap we have to deal with."

Dick Graham put him down at once as a conceited prig, who did not know a thing outside of office routine, and was so disgusted with the airs he tried to throw on that he did not salute when he handed out his discharge; but Rodney, who did not care any more for the enrolling officer than he did for a crooked stick in the road, pursued a different course, and very soon succeeded in making Captain Roach ashamed of himself. He made him see that there was a big difference between a veteran soldier and a Home Guard, and ended by asking him to dinner.

"Now you've done it," said Dick, as the two mounted their horses and rode homeward. "If your mother had wanted that officer at her table, don't you think she would have asked him long ago?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Rodney. "We're privileged characters, and my folks will back up anything we do or say. Besides, during the last three days I've got to be a policy man."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Just this: so long as Captain Roach collogues with Tom Randolph and his mother—she's the one I am afraid of, for she is a schemer from the word go, I tell you—so long will he be more or less under their influence; and I am well enough acquainted with them to know that they would not hesitate to say or do anything that came into their heads if they thought they could set him against me. So I wanted the first chance at the captain. There's no telling at what moment he may be able to do us a good turn."

When the boys reached home they were surprised to find that there was a good deal of suppressed excitement among the servants, which showed itself now and then in spite of all their efforts to keep it concealed. Rodney's black playmate, who came to the steps to take charge of their horses, was full of news, but his master could not get anything out of him, although he threatened, if he did not speak, to take him on board the gunboats and sell him to the Yankees the first thing in the morning. When they went into the house they met Mrs. Gray, whose face showed that she was not altogether at her ease.

"What's up?" demanded Rodney.

"Nothing more than we can expect in times like these, I suppose," she replied, with a smile. "But the blacks are frightened, and of course that has an effect on me. There are four escaped Union prisoners in the vicinity, and some Confederate soldiers are pursuing them with bloodhounds."

Dick Graham took note of the fact that she did not say "some of our soldiers," as almost every other Southern woman would have done. He thought of the Federal scouts who had captured and released himself and Rodney a few days before, and said mentally:

"I hope they'll not catch them. I wish we could find them long enough to hand them a bottle of turpentine. That would throw the dogs off their trail in short order."

"Well, what are the blacks frightened at?" continued Rodney. "The Yanks don't make war on people of their color."

"But they know that there are two ex-Confederate soldiers in this house——" began Mrs. Gray.

"Now I understand it!" exclaimed Rodney. "And that was the reason Rosebud wouldn't tell me what he had on his mind, though I promised to sell him if he didn't. He was afraid that Dick and I would saddle up and go after those prisoners. Well, we're not making war on Yanks so much as we were, so you can rest easy, mother. But how did you find it out? We didn't hear a word of it in town or along the road."

"Three of the pursuing party rode into the yard not half an hour ago to tell me of it, and to ask if I thought any of our blacks would be likely to feed and shelter the Federals if they came on the plantation," answered Mrs. Gray. "And I could only say truthfully that I was sure they would. The soldiers do not mean to give the poor fellows any rest, or the least chance to escape to the river."

"Hal-lo!" ejaculated Rodney. "Is a Yank a poor fellow in your estimation?"

"A weary and hungry man is always an object of pity," replied his mother, "and such have never been turned from this plantation without having their wants relieved. And now the soldiers have gone and put those dreadful Home Guards after them."

"Haw, haw!" laughed Rodney. "Tom Randolph's Home Guards may be dreadful to unarmed Union men who have never snuffed powder, but veterans, such as I take these escaped prisoners to be, won't stand in fear of them. Why, mother, if these four men were armed they would whip Tom's whole company."

"They are thoroughly armed," said Mrs. Gray. "And when they are in need of food they walk right into a plantation house and demand it."

"That's all right too. You don't expect men to go hungry when there's grub in sight, just because they have the misfortune to be Yanks, do you? Where did they get their weapons?"

Mrs. Gray shuddered as she told the story as we have already heard it; and when she described how the fugitives had surprised, captured, and paroled a squad of six men who had been sent in pursuit of them, Rodney's face and Dick's beamed with admiration.

"I'll bet they are bricks," said the former.

"Top-notch," chimed in Dick.

"And do the Home Guards know that the Yanks are armed?" continued Rodney. "If they do, there isn't a man in the company who will join in the pursuit. They'll make a big show of going if Tom orders them out, but the first good chance they get they'll hide in the woods."

"And I don't know that I blame them," observed Dick.

"Nor me. There's no fun in walking up on an armed and desperate man when he is concealed and can see every move you make, while you cannot see hide nor hair of him. Mother," here he sunk his voice to a whisper, "I hope they won't catch those fellows; and if they come around this house I'll help them if I can."

"Here too," whispered Dick; and Mrs. Gray never uttered a word of rebuke. The boys believed that she would help them herself.

When Mr. Gray came in the matter was talked over again, and he did not appear to be very anxious that the fugitives should be captured. On the contrary he discussed their chances of escape with great composure, and said he thought their prospects would be brighter than they were if they only had somebody with them who could show them how to throw off the dogs. These dogs were not intended to seize the fugitives, you will understand, but merely to overtake and hold them at bay until the soldiers could come up. Large packs of trained "nigger" dogs would sometimes pull down a single man when they found him in the woods, and it is a matter of history that some of our poor fellows who escaped from Andersonville were sadly torn by them.

But the four escaped prisoners in question did not come near Mr. Gray's house that night; or if they did, Rodney and Dick never knew it. It was on the morning of the next day, just as breakfast was nearly over, that the first exciting thing happened. Ned Griffin rode into the yard, and on his way to the back porch he passed along the carriage-way in front of one of the dining-room windows. Rodney had a fair view of his face as he rode by, and Ned looked through the open window and saw Rodney; and in an instant a signal passed from one to the other—a signal so very slight that no one but a schoolboy would have noticed it, but it told Rodney as plainly as words that Ned had news for him that he did not want to divulge in the presence of any third party. So Rodney hastily excused himself and went out on the porch.

"You look just as Rosebud did when I came home last evening," said he, when he saw Ned standing at the foot of the steps holding his horse by the bridle. "But I hope you will be more accommodating than he was, for he would not tell what he had on his mind."

"Say," replied Ned. He looked all around to make sure that there was no else within hearing and then went on. "You heard about those escaped Yankees, didn't you?"

"I heard all about them. What of it?"

"They came to our house last night."

"That's all right. You treated them white, didn't you?"

"I treated them the best I knew how. I thought you and your father wouldn't care."

"Of course not. But we would care if you had treated them any other way. What of it?"

"They want me to guide them to Baton Rouge," continued Ned; and then Rodney noticed that the hand with which he held his bridle trembled like a leaf.

"That's all right too, and I don't see anything alarming in it. Why don't you do it?"

"I am perfectly willing to do it, but you see they have got Tom Randolph with them and won't give him up. They are bound to take him into the city as a prisoner, for they captured him in uniform."

This astounding information almost knocked Rodney over. He sat down on the topmost step, rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, and looked at Ned without speaking.