When Ned Griffin brought his exciting narrative to a close Mrs. Gray beckoned him to a seat at the table and gave him a cup of coffee, while Rodney sent one of the girls to his room after a couple of overcoats, and Rosebud to the stable to see the saddle put on his horse and Dick's. He was elated over the prospect of doing even a little to help the Federal soldiers who had shown themselves so friendly to himself and his chum, and determined that Tom Randolph should not go to a Northern prison if he could prevent it. Tom was an old acquaintance and a near neighbor, and that meant a good deal to Rodney Gray. Ned was a little apprehensive that his employer might not be altogether pleased with what he had done, but to his relief Mr. Gray did not have a word of fault to find.

"Rodney seems to have made up his mind to help those Yankees through," said he, addressing himself to the overseer, "and I need not tell you that I shall be glad to have you do anything you can to aid him and them. As to Tom—it looks now as though he would have to stand punishment for his foolishness."

"And how about me?" said Rodney. "It looks as though I was planning to get myself into trouble. If I help the Yankees, my Confederate neighbors will be down on me; and if I help Tom, they'll all be down on me—rebels and Union."

"How are the neighbors going to find it out?" inquired Dick.

"Oh, Tom will tell them," said Rodney carelessly.

"And are you going to help a man who will turn around and blab it on purpose to bring you into trouble?" exclaimed Dick. "I should think his gratitude——"

"Gratitude is the rarest sentiment in the world, my dear boy, as you will learn long before your head is as white as mine. He'll do me a mean turn the first good chance he gets. That's the kind of a chap he is. Have you got your discharge in your pocket? All right. I don't know when you will see us again," said Rodney, when the overcoats made their appearance and the horses were brought to the door, "but when we return we hope to have some better fitting clothes than these, and a pass from the provost marshal. So, mother, if you have any currency that you can spare I shall be glad to have some."

These last words were whispered into the ear of his mother, who led him to her room, where she kept a small store of specie for an emergency. Where the rest was Rodney did not know or care to inquire. It was enough for him that he could get a few pieces as often as he found it necessary to ask for them.

"Now, do be careful," pleaded his mother. "Suppose the hounds strike your trail in spite of all you can do to prevent it, and the soldiers with them find you and Dick in the company of the escaped prisoners! Your discharges would not save you."

"Don't cross a bridge till you come to it, mother," answered Rodney, who had thought of all this while Ned Griffin was telling his story. "We are not going into any danger. Good-by."

In a few minutes the boys were riding post-haste toward Ned's plantation. They reined up to the house and turned their horses over to a darkey as any casual visitors would have done, for Ned told them that the rest of their journey must be made on foot and under cover of bushes and fences.

"There's no telling who may be on the watch," said he, "or whether all our blacks are as loyal as they pretend to be. And, boys, don't say a word in Tom's hearing about showing the Yanks the way to the river. He'll take it for granted, of course, that somebody is going to do it, but we'll make it hard for him to prove it on any of us."

Rodney did not waste many minutes in comparing notes with Mrs. Griffin (he already knew everything she could have told him), but threw his overcoat across his arm and motioned to Ned to go ahead with the basketful of things that had been provided for the fugitives' dinner. It took them three-quarters of an hour to reach the edge of the woods, so slow and cautious were they in their movements, and they found two of the soldiers at the fence waiting for them. Rodney and Dick recognized them on the instant, and shook hands with them through the fence as cordially as though they had always been the warmest of friends.

"Say," whispered Rodney, as soon as the greeting was over. "Call up the corporal and the other Yank. I have a few words to say to you that I don't want your prisoner to hear."

"Are you afraid of him, too?" asked one of the soldiers. "Then I can't understand why you are so anxious to have him go free. We can't leave him in camp alone, for if we do he'll run off."

"He hasn't the pluck to try it," said Ned, passing his basket over the fence. "But I'll stay with him. You are not afraid to trust me, I suppose, after allowing me to stand guard over him all night."

But Ned hadn't told of the astounding proposition Tom made while he was standing guard over him. That was something he kept to himself until he told his story in Mrs. Gray's dining room. He climbed the fence and disappeared in the woods, and presently the corporal and the "other Yank" came up.

"If anyone had told me that I'd ever shake hands with a rebel in this friendly way, I should have said he didn't know what he was talking about," said the corporal. "Johnny, how are you by this time? You and your chum must have got safe home or else you wouldn't be here. You know our story, of course, so there's no need of telling it over again."

"No need and no time," replied Rodney, "for you ought to be jogging along now. You've an open and dangerous country before you, and very likely every man in it is on the lookout for you."

"That's about what Griffin said to us last night," replied the corporal. "We asked him to act as our guide, but he thinks you can be of more use to us."

"I don't know about that; but I will do my best on one condition."

Of course the soldiers knew what that condition was, but listened patiently while Rodney went on to tell them that they never made a greater mistake in their lives than they did when they put faith in Tom Randolph's story and rejected Ned Griffin's. He urged them to release Tom without any more nonsense, and hinted that the sooner they complied with his request, the sooner he would be ready to start with them for Baton Rouge. He also added:

"If you are bound to take Tom with you I can't go, and you'll have to do the best you can for yourselves. He'd find means to let my rebel neighbors hear of it, and then I'd have to go among the Yanks or back to the army; for I couldn't live here. What do you say?"

"What do you say, boys?" inquired the corporal, turning to his companions. "He's a Home Guard, and a mighty mean one, too, judging by——"

"None of that, please," Rodney interposed. "Having submitted the case, you have no business to keep on arguing it. Yes or no, Yanks?"

"I wish we had knocked him on the head before we took him prisoner," said Ben, who could not forget his lost comrade.

"But you didn't, and you can't very well do it now," replied Rodney. "Are you going to let him go or not?"

Ben did not answer; but his three companions gave a favorable, though very reluctant response to Rodney's question, and the latter drew a long breath of relief. Ben looked and acted ugly, and if he had been a little better talker Tom Randolph's chances for liberty and life would have been slim indeed. As Dick Graham afterward explained it, Tom was saved by Ben's want of gab. Rodney's next care was to urge upon the soldiers the necessity of sending Tom about his business with the least possible delay, and of being careful to drop no word in his hearing that would give him a hint of their future movements. Tom would make all sorts of promises, but they must not put the least faith in them, for if he saw an opportunity to do it, he would put a squad on their trail in less than an hour. This done, he and Dick climbed the fence and followed the soldiers toward the camp. Ned Griffin had had time to prepare Tom for Rodney's coming, and the expression Rodney's face wore when he appeared in sight prepared him for the good news.

"You have prevailed upon them to release me and I know it," he exclaimed, seizing one of Rodney's hands in both his own and shaking it with all his might. "And I'll never forget you for it; never in this world. If you want anything, all you've got to do is to say the word, and if I've got it you shall have it. And as for you soldiers—I'll cook up some sort of a story when I reach home that will stop all pursuit till you have had time to reach the Union lines. I am very grateful to you, and will prove it by pulling off my gray suit as soon as I get home. If all Yanks are like you, I am not going to fight any more during the war."

Tom was sure he saw a faint prospect of escape before him, and his joy was so great that it choked his utterance. He continued to rattle on in this way, until the corporal interrupted him with:

"That's all right, Johnny. So long as you keep the hounds off our trail, it's all the return we ask for setting you at liberty."

"Then you are going to release me, aint you?" cried Tom.

"I don't suppose such a thing was ever done before," said the corporal hesitatingly. "And I don't know what the boys will say to me when they hear of it; but I——"

"That don't make any difference, Mr. Soldier. You just tell me to go home, and I will keep the hounds off your trail."

"Well—git!" said the corporal. "You will find your sword and revolver back there in the grove where we hid them yesterday."

Tom lost no time in grasping the corporal's hand and shaking it with all his strength—a proceeding to which the boy in blue submitted with very bad grace. He felt more like giving his late captive a kick, and so did his comrades; but they let him shake their hands instead—all except Ben, who put his hands into his pockets and turned away when Tom approached him. Captain Randolph would have persisted in his efforts to take leave of him also, had he not been warned by a look from Rodney that he had better stop his nonsense and get away while the Federals were in the humor to let him go. Acting upon the hint, he turned away from Ben and disappeared in the direction of the fence.

"If I am any prophet that surly Yank will see the time when he'll wish he had not turned his back on me in that style," soliloquized Tom, when he found himself safe in the lane. "I'll square accounts with him and with Rodney and Dick at the same time. And Ned Griffin, too. I might have given those Yanks the slip last night, if he had been friendly enough to fall asleep as I wanted him to do; but he wouldn't, and now he will see how I will pay him for it."

Tom sped along the lane as if he had been furnished with wings, through the negro quarter and up to the door of the plantation house, where Ned's mother was waiting for him. She had moved her low rocking chair to that door, and had been waiting there ever since she saw Rodney Gray and his two companions disappear in the woods at the end of the lane; for she felt the keenest anxiety for Tom, and wondered what his mother would do if Rodney failed in his efforts to have him released.

"O Tom, I am so glad to see you," she exclaimed, as soon as the captain of the Home Guards came within speaking distance.

"I am a free man once more, Mrs. Griffin," replied Tom loftily, "and it is a fortunate thing for some people whose names I could mention. If I had been kept a prisoner, my Home Guards would have made sad work in this settlement. I'll thank you to lend me a horse. I want to reach home as soon as I can, in order to relieve my mother's anxiety."

And this was all he had to say to the woman who had done more than anybody else to keep him out of prison. By her kindness and generosity she had won the gratitude of Tom's captors and made it comparatively easy for Rodney to effect his release; and although Tom did not know this, he did know that Ned had done his best for him, and one would think he might have had a civil word for Ned's mother. Instead of that he hinted darkly at some things he knew about "some people whose names he could mention," and Mrs. Griffin knew that that was the same thing as a threat. She replied that she did not feel at liberty to lend Ned's saddle-horse without saying a word to him about it, but Tom could have a mule if he wanted it; and with the words she went into the house, leaving Captain Randolph to stand alone at the door until the mule was brought up.

"This is another insult I shall have to remember against the Griffins," thought Tom, running his eye over the ill-conditioned animal that was finally led to the door. "Now, how shall I manage to have those escaped prisoners captured with the least possible delay? If they could be taken now, Rodney and Dick and Ned would be taken with them; but I don't know whether I want that to happen or not. If it should get noised abroad that they were captured with my help, or through information furnished by me, I'd have everybody in the settlement down on me; and goodness knows I've got enemies enough already."

This was a matter requiring thought; and in order that he might have plenty of leisure to devote to it, Captain Tom allowed his mule to walk every step of the five miles that lay between the plantation and Mooreville. He rode past Mr. Gray's house without stopping, and in due time drew rein in front of Kimberly's store, to find the usual number of lazy Home Guards loitering about there doing nothing. They were surprised to see him, for the news of his sudden and mysterious disappearance had been spread all through the settlement. His father, who had spent half the night riding about in search of him, pretended to believe that Tom had fallen in with the soldiers from Camp Pinckney and joined them in pursuit of the escaped Yankees; but there wasn't a man in the country who didn't laugh at the idea as soon as he heard of it. More than that, there wasn't a single member of the Home Guards who had made an earnest effort to trace the fugitives. The most of them paid no attention to Tom's order to turn out, and those who did, returned to their homes as soon as they learned that the Yankees were armed.

"Why, cap'n, where in the wide world did you drop from?" exclaimed Lieutenant Lambert, as Tom Randolph rolled off his mule in front of the store. "Have you been after them Yanks? Your pap said you had."

Tom walked into the recruiting office and met Captain Roach, who began to tell him how his unexplained absence had frightened his mother; but the commander of the Home Guards interrupted him without ceremony.

"Before I tell you anything about myself," said he, turning to the eager Home Guards who had followed him into the office, "I want to know how many of you men would like to win fame, and perhaps promotion, by capturing the four Yankees who are roaming about the country, shooting our comrades down in cold blood."

"I would, for one," replied Lambert promptly.

"And me!" "And me!" "And here too!" chimed in the others; and they threw so much earnestness into their words, and seemed so impatient to learn how the feat could be accomplished, that a stranger would have thought they really meant to do something.

"I am glad to see you so patriotic," said Captain Tom. "And the way for you to prove your words is to—you know where Ned Griffin lives now, don't you? Well, go down there at once, and you will find the men you want at the foot of his lane."

"How do you know that?" demanded Captain Roach.

"Because I left them there not more than—I mean when I escaped from them last night," answered Tom, who, now that the danger was past, would not have sold his experience for any reasonable sum of money. "You don't believe it, do you? Well, it is a fact that I have been a prisoner in the hands of those very men, and narrowly escaped being shot."

"But how did you get away from them?" continued the enrolling officer.

"I knocked one of them down with the butt of his own musket and took to my heels; that's the way I did it."

This was going too far, and Captain Tom was quick to perceive it. Some of his men exchanged sly winks with each other, and turned toward the door as if they had heard quite enough of such stories as that, while Captain Roach, who had put a little faith in Tom's tale at first, sat down in his chair and pulled some papers toward him.

"Continue to report regularly every day," said he, addressing himself to Lambert; "I have received no official notice that Camp Pinckney is ready to take conscripts, but all the same I know it is ready, and an order to send out a squad may come any hour."

"That's a polite way of calling me a liar," said Tom to himself. "I know where I can find those who will take some interest in what I have to say; and if I don't go there and drop a bomb into this camp that will scatter it far and wide, I'm a Dutchman."

He was too angry to say anything aloud. He looked hard at Captain Roach for a moment, and then went out to the hitching rack where he had left his mule, the Home Guards dividing right and left, and making no remark as he passed through their ranks. He went home with all the speed he could induce his long-eared beast to put forth, and the reception he met when he got there almost made amends for the deliberate slight that had been put upon him in the enrolling office; but the best part of the story he intended to tell was knocked in the head by the first words his mother said to him. He was going to describe a terrific battle he had had with the escaped prisoners somewhere in the woods; but his mother cried, as she ran down the steps and clasped him in her arms:

"O Tom! Where have you been? And how came your horse hitched out there in the grove?"

Captain Randolph had forgotten all about his horse, and just then he wished that one of the Yankees had put a bullet through the animal's head instead of tying him among the evergreens. Then he could have said that he did not surrender without a fight, and the dead horse would have proved it.

"Some of the neighbors heard him calling as they were riding along the road, and went in and brought him home; but they saw no signs of you," continued Mrs. Randolph, looking hard at Tom as if to assure herself that he was all there. "You don't know how frightened we all were. The first thing I thought of was those dreadful Yankees, and I was afraid you might have fallen into their hands."

"And that's just what happened to me," replied Tom. "I was a prisoner in less than an hour after I left you yesterday; but I made something of a fight before they took me. I think I know where my revolver is—I threw it into the bushes rather than give it up to the enemy."

"Oh, you reckless boy, how could you do it?" exclaimed his mother. "Come right in and go to bed."

"And when you see that revolver you will notice that there isn't a single cartridge left in it," added Captain Tom, as he followed his mother up the steps. "I threw away my sword, too, but think I can find it again. I didn't surrender, mind you. I was captured at the muzzle of four loaded muskets."

"You dear boy! And how did you get away from them?"

"I waited until they went to sleep last night. Of course they left one of their number to guard me, but a Yankee is no match for a gentleman when it comes to a fight. I just knocked him down and cleared out."

"And wasn't you hurt a bit? Didn't they try to stop you?"

"Of course they tried to stop me, and the way the bullets flew was a caution; but the night was dark, the bushes thick, and I escaped without a scratch."

This was only the introduction to the long story Tom had to tell, and although there was scarcely a word of truth in it from beginning to end, his doting mother believed it all. His father looked slightly incredulous when Tom told how he had laid around in the woods for long hours while the Yankees were searching high and low to find him, for his boots and clothing did not bear out his thrilling narrative. They were dusty, of course, but not at all torn and mussed, as they ought to have been if the wearer had had such a time working his way out of the woods. But Mr. Randolph was so overjoyed to see Tom back safe and sound that he said nothing about it.

"Now, my son, you must quit the Home Guards at once and stay right here on the plantation," said Mrs. Randolph, when she had asked her hero all the questions she could think of. "When you are a private citizen you will not be called upon to assist in capturing desperadoes."

"I've done the very best I could for the South ever since I joined my fortunes with hers," answered Captain Tom; "I have risked life and liberty in her defence more than once, and am ready to do it again; but I can't fight the whole Yankee nation alone and unaided."

"Certainly not," assented his mother.

"I was the only one of the company who had the pluck to face those desperate men in the woods," continued Tom, "and was captured for my pains. I ordered my men out to help me, but they never came. They left me to meet the danger alone; and when I dropped into the enrolling office on my way home, they were loafing as usual and bragging too. And when I told them right where they would find those Yanks, and tried to get them to go out and capture them, do you suppose they would go? They just as good as told me that they did not believe me, and Roach broke in on my story by giving orders directly to Lambert instead of passing them to him through me. I have put up with that man just as long as I am going to; and, father, if you will pay Larkin off and let him go, I'll be ready to take his place to-morrow morning. And now I'll write to the Governor the very first thing I do."

This letter to the Governor, tendering his resignation as captain of State troops, was the "bomb" with which Tom had threatened to "scatter Captain Roach's camp far and wide," but when he sat down to write it, the thought occurred to him that if he said too much the letter might operate like a boomerang, and hurt him more than he hoped to hurt Captain Roach. If he had written it as he had it framed in his mind, it would have been a complete and scathing indictment of the enrolling officer's way of doing business; but the letter he showed his mother, when she came to his room in response to his call, read something like this:

I have the honor to tender herewith my resignation as captain of the State militia which was granted me on the —th day of April last, with authority to raise and command a company of mounted men for home defence.

I have long been of opinion that partisan organizations are not what we need in this hour of our country's peril, and now I am satisfied of it. Our best men long ago went to the front voluntarily, leaving behind them a rabble who cannot possibly be made into soldiers. The men under my command were selected with the greatest care, but I am obliged to say that they are fit for nothing but guard duty at Camp Pinckney. If they were ordered there in a body, to take the place of better men who could be sent to the front, it would be a relief to the community. For myself I have other ideas, which I shall proceed to carry out as soon as I receive notice that my resignation has been accepted.

"That is nothing but the truth," said Mrs. Randolph, after she had read the letter. "But, Tom, I am afraid it will get you into trouble."

"I don't see how," was the reply. "You don't suppose that the Governor will bring it down here, show it to such fellows as Lambert and Moseley and the rest, and ask them what they think of it; do you? He has other fish to fry."

"But suppose he should ask you what your other ideas are," said his mother.

"There's no danger of that. If the Governor thinks that my chief reason for resigning is because I want to go to the front, well and good. I am not to blame for what he thinks. I have other ideas, and that's a fact; and one of them is to see the men who winked and nudged one another to-day when I was trying to put a little courage into them, sent where they will be held with their noses close to the grindstone. Now I'll ride down and mail this, and when the acceptance comes I'll tell Roach what I have done."

"That reminds me that the mail carrier had a race with a squad of Yankee cavalry yesterday," said Mrs. Randolph.

"Great Scott!" exclaimed Tom. "Have they come as close as that to Mooreville? They are bound to get here sooner or later, but I hope they'll stay away a week longer, for then I shall be a free man."

And Captain Tom might have added that he would be glad to see the Federals at the end of a week, provided he received a favorable answer from the Governor in that time. When the Home Guards were ordered away to do duty at Camp Pinckney he would consider his account with them settled; and the other old scores—there were four of them now—could be attended to at some future time.