A few of Tom Randolph’s fellow-sufferers had repeatedly declared in his hearing that they never would be taken to Camp Pinckney alive; but when the roll was called inside the stockade at sunset the following day, their dreary, toilsome march having been completed by that time, every one of them answered to his name. Not one of their number had made his escape, and indeed it would have been foolhardy to attempt it, for the guards were alert and watchful, and it was whispered along the line that they had strict orders to shoot down the first man who tried to break away.

Not to dwell too long upon this part of our story, it will be enough to say that Tom Randolph remained in the camp of instruction for two solid months, during which time he suffered more than he thought it possible for mortal man to endure. He was given plenty to eat, such as it was, but scarcely a night passed that he was not aroused from a sound sleep to go on post or to repel an assault that was never made, and during the day-time he was drilled in the school of the soldier and company, and in the manual of arms, until all the muscles in him ached so that he could not lie still after he went to bed. Every hour in the day indignities were put upon him that caused his blood to boil, and he made matters worse by resenting them on the spot, the result being that he did more police duty than any other man in camp. Time and again he sought an interview with the commandant, intending to complain of his treatment and ask when he might look for his release, but he never saw the general except from a distance, and then was not permitted to approach him. All this while his father, who visited him at irregular intervals, bringing news from the outside world, was doing his best; but there were so many difficulties in his way, and so much red tape to be gone through, that he found himself balked at every point, and it is a wonder he was not tempted to give it up as a task beyond his powers.

“You see Roach’s books show that I claimed exemption for Larkin, and I’m afraid that’s against us,” he said to Tom one day, after talking the matter over with General Ruggles.

“But you have as much right to change your mind as other folks, I suppose,” replied Tom.

“Of course I have, but that isn’t the point. If Larkin were here to take your place in camp the work might be easier; but you see he isn’t. He has skipped.”

“Skipped where?”

“Out in the woods, to keep company with Lambert and Moseley, I suppose. And when he went he left word with some of the neighbors that if anything happened to my buildings during the next few weeks, I might thank him for it. He put out as soon as I told him that I couldn’t pay the beef and bacon the government demanded as the price of his exemption.”

“Did you tell Major Morgan that you wouldn’t pay it?”

“Certainly, and I told General Ruggles so; but that didn’t scare them at all. If they want beef and bacon they’ll just take it.”

“Well, now, if that isn’t a pretty way for a common overseer to treat a gentleman I wouldn’t say so,” declared Tom, who really thought that Larkin ought to have stayed at home and been conscripted in his place. “What difference does one man make in the size of an army, anyway? The general could let me go as well as not.”

“But he won’t, unless certain forms are complied with. Be as patient as you can, and remember that I shall leave no stone unturned.”

“Get an honorable discharge while you are about it, so that I shall not be called upon to go through with this performance a second time,” said Tom.

It is true that a single recruit made no great difference in the strength of an army, but for some reason that no one but General Ruggles could have explained it made all the difference in the world so far as Tom Randolph’s release from military duty was concerned. One day, about six weeks after the conversation above recorded, Mr. Randolph walked into camp and told Tom that he was a free man—or rather that he would be in a few hours, for Larkin had been captured by Major Morgan’s scouts, and was now on his way to camp to take Tom’s place.

“And am I to have an honorable discharge?” inquired Tom, who was so overjoyed that he could hardly speak.

“No; and I was foolish to ask for it,” said his father in disgust. “The general laughed in my face and said you hadn’t done anything worthy of it. Don’t say a word about it, but thank your lucky stars that you have escaped being ordered to the front.”

When the man Larkin and a few other conscripts were brought in under guard, Tom Randolph was standing as near the big gate as the camp regulations would allow him to get, waiting impatiently for somebody to come out of the commandant’s office and tell him he could go home. He was mean enough to try to attract Larkin’s attention when the latter tramped wearily into the stockade, but the man was so wrapped up in his troubles that he could hardly have recognized his best friend, if he had had one among the curious crowd that was gathered about the gate. Tom was a little disappointed, but quickly dismissed Larkin from his mind when he saw his father approaching with an expression on his face that was full of good news.

“Come right along,” said he. “It’s all settled now. There stands the officer who has orders to pass us out.”

“So the general has consented to do me justice at last, has he?” exclaimed Tom, who was not half as grateful as he ought to have been. “And he kept me here all these weary days and allowed me to be insulted and abused on account of that man Larkin, did he? Thank him for nothing. But I’ll fix some others who are as much to blame for my being here as General Ruggles is. I haven’t wasted all my time since I have been in jail, I tell you.”

“I brought a mule for you to ride,” continued his father. “But don’t you think we had better bunk with the guard to-night? It will be as dark as a pocket in an hour, and besides it is going to rain.”

“I don’t care if it rains pitchforks. I’ll face them rather than remain in this dreary hole a moment longer,” declared the liberated conscript. “And I am not going to the barracks after my clothes or blankets. I will them to the first man who can put his hands on them.”

Tom reached home in due time in spite of the rain and other discomforts that attended him on his journey, and it is scarcely necessary to say that his mother welcomed him as one risen from the dead. Her husband had told her doleful stories of Tom’s life in camp, and she was afraid that he would sink under his many hardships before his release could be effected. But Tom was not as badly off as he pretended to be. A few days’ rest made him as uneasy and full of meanness as he had ever been in his life; but it is fair to say that his uneasiness was due to an unaccountable delay in the carrying out of a certain little programme which he had arranged while living in the stockade. This was what he meant when he told his father that he had not wasted his time since he had been in jail.

During the month of September it became known to the guards and conscripts at Camp Pinckney that a meeting of cotton and tobacco planters had been held in Richmond “to consider the expediency of the purchase by the Confederacy, or of a voluntary destruction of the entire cotton and tobacco crop,” to keep it from falling into the hands of the Union forces. It is hard to tell why the news was so long in coming down to Louisiana, for the meeting, which was described as “one of the largest, wealthiest, and most intelligent that had ever assembled in the city,” was held as early as February. Among the other resolutions acted upon by this patriotic assemblage was one calling upon the Southern people to destroy all their property in advance of the invading armies, even to their homes, so that the conquest of the United States should be a barren one. Of course this resolution met the hearty approval of those of the Camp Pinckney guards and conscripts who had no property worth speaking of, and some of them declared that if General Ruggles would let them have their own way for twenty-four hours they would destroy thousands of bales of cotton which the owners would never burn themselves so long as they saw a prospect of selling them to the Yankees. This set Tom Randolph to thinking, and with the aid of some of the Pearl River Home Guards who were still on duty at the camp, he made up a nice little plan to revenge himself on several of the Mooreville people who had incurred his enmity. It might have been successful, too, if Tom had not allowed his unruly tongue to upset it. As soon as he reached home he began waiting and watching for some signs of activity on the part of the Pearl River vagabonds, but up to this time the clouds that hung over the swamp, and which he watched every night with anxious eyes, had not been lighted by any signal-fires.

The life that Tom Randolph now led was dreary and monotonous in the extreme; no healthy boy could have endured it for a week. Did he take Larkin’s place as overseer and do his work? Well, hardly; and he never had any intention of doing it. The field-hands did the work as well as the overseeing, and Tom spent his time in loafing or in riding about the country on a bare-back mule. It is true that Major Morgan’s “drag-net” had not cleared the neighborhood of everyone who was subject to military duty, for a few of the desperate ones, like Lambert and Moseley, had taken to the woods, and a few others had joined the Yankees in Baton Rouge, where they were safe from pursuit; but it had caught the most of the able-bodied men and boys of Tom’s acquaintance, and now he found himself almost alone. He saw Rodney and Ned now and then, but never spoke to them if he could help it, or visited them on their plantations; for since they, with Mrs. Griffin’s aid, kept him from being sent to a Northern prison, he disliked them more than he did before. He had never got over being surprised at Mr. Gray’s action in standing between Ned and the conscript officer, while he permitted the other telegraph operator, Drummond, to take his chances. Mr. Gray must be Union at heart or else he would not have done that; and if he was Union he ought to be driven out of the country. Tom found a world of consolation in the reflection that he would soon be even with him.

It was while the returned conscript was taking his usual morning ride on his mule, with a gunny-sack for a saddle, that he met his old first lieutenant, as described at the beginning of the last chapter. He knew that the man was living in the woods, otherwise he would have had him for company at Camp Pinckney, and he was surprised to find him riding along a public road in broad daylight. Lambert was also mounted on a mule, the property of his late employer, which he had appropriated to his own use without troubling himself to ask permission. He remembered that Tom had once drawn a sword upon him, and flattered himself that in Camp Pinckney his tyrannical captain was being well paid for that and other indignities he had put upon his Home Guards; consequently he was not a little astonished and vexed to find him breathing the air of freedom on this particular morning.

“How did you manage to get away from them fellers, anyhow?” inquired Lambert, nodding in the direction of the camp.

“I have influence with the governor,” replied Tom loftily. “I did not want to stay, and consequently I didn’t.”

“Afeared of the Yanks, was you!” continued Lambert with something like a sneer.

“No more afraid than yourself. You took to your heels and are in danger every moment of being caught and sent to camp, while I faced the music at once and will never have to do it again. I am discharged from military service for all time to come.”

“Well, by gum! I won’t do none,” said Lambert fiercely; and Tom noticed that every time he spoke he looked behind and on both sides as if he were in constant fear that Major Morgan’s men might steal a march upon him. “I say let them that brung the war on do the fightin’. I didn’t have no hand in it, an’ nuther am I goin’ to holp ’em out. Yes, I’m livin’ in the woods now, me an’—an’ some other fellers; but I have to come out once in a while to get grub an’ things, you know.”

“Then why don’t you come at night?” asked Tom.

“Kase it suits me better to come in the daytime. I aint a-skeared. There’s plenty kiver handy.”

“But if you dismount and take to your heels you’ll lose your mule.”

“Who keers? ’Tain’t my mu-el, an’ if they take him I can easy get another. What you drivin’ at now?”

“I am my father’s overseer.”

“Shucks! You couldn’t tell, to save your life if a corn row was laid off straight or not.”

“No matter for that,” said Tom sharply. “As long as I hold the position I can live at home and show myself openly; and that’s more than you can do. Have you seen that converted Confederate and his Yankee friend lately?”

“Who’s them?” inquired Lambert.

“Why, Ned Griffin and Rodney Gray.”

“Oh, yes; I see ’em every day ’most. They’re livin’ down there snug as you please, an’ as often as I——”

“Go on,” said Tom, when the man paused suddenly. “As often as you what?”

“As often as I want to see ’em I see ’em,” added Lambert.

“That isn’t what you were about to say at first,” replied Tom. “I hope you are not a friend of theirs?”

“Look a-here, cap’n, wasn’t I first leftenant of the Home Guards?”

“You were, and a very good officer you made, except when you took it upon yourself to act without waiting for orders from me; and then you always brought yourself into trouble. Can you be trusted?”

“If I can’t, what’s the reason I was ’lected to that office?” asked Lambert in reply. “What do you want of me?”

“The members of the Randolph family are not quite as poor as some people seem to think, I want you to understand,” said Tom in a mysterious whisper. “We have several little articles hidden away that our neighbors know nothing about, and next week we shall have some store tea and coffee and salt to hand around to those who need them. Your shoes are full of holes, too. You ought to have a new pair.”

If Lambert had given utterance to the thoughts that were in his mind, he would have said that his old commander would miss it if he hoped to bribe him in this way. There were few people in the settlement who did not stand in need of the articles Tom mentioned, but Lambert knew where he could get them for the asking. Still he wanted to know what Tom wished him to do, and said so.

“You fought the conscript officers offen me long’s as you could, an’ I aint likely to disremember it,” he replied.

“I kept you out of the army for more than a year, and now is the time for you to pay me for it,” replied Tom impressively. “Now listen while I tell you something. You know that our government has ordered every planter who owns cotton to burn it so that it will not fall into the hands of the Yankees, don’t you?”

“No!” answered Lambert. He was surprised, for this was news to him; but he saw what Tom was trying to get at.

“Well, it is the truth, and those who do not comply with the order will be punished in some way, and their property destroyed by our own soldiers. Now there’s old man Gray; he has cotton.”

“And he won’t never burn it,” exclaimed Lambert.

“That’s the idea exactly. He’d rather sell it to the Yankees for sixty cents a pound; and so far as I can see there is nothing to hinder him from doing it.”

“Less’n some of our fellers slip up an’ burn it for him,” put in Lambert.

“You’ve hit it again,” exclaimed Tom, who told himself that he wasn’t going to have any trouble at all in bringing the man to do the work he had suddenly laid out for him. “He can sell his cotton if nobody stops him, but my father can’t sell his because he is known to be a loyal Confederate. Do you think that’s fair or right?”

“I know it aint,” answered Lambert. “Gray is Union, and oughter be sent amongst the Yanks where he b’longs; but your paw is Confedrit and so am I. Do you want me to tech off that cotton?”

“Well, no; not exactly that. You know where it is, I suppose?”

“There aint much of anything in the woods in this country that I don’t know something about,” said Lambert with a grin. “I reckon I might find it if I took a notion.”

“That is what I thought, and now I come to the point. While I was in camp I learned that a squad of our soldiers is coming here some day to look after the very cotton we are talking about,” said Tom, who did not think it would be just the thing to say that he had proposed the expedition himself, and accurately described the bayou in which Mr. Gray’s four hundred bales could be found. “Now if you happen to see that squad while you are riding about the country——”

“I’ll take leg-bail mighty sudden, I bet you,” interrupted Lambert.

“Without offering to show them where the cotton is hidden?” cried Tom.

“You bet! I aint got no call to go philanderin’ about the woods with a passel of soldiers, an’ if you was the friend you pertend to be you wouldn’t ask sich a thing of me.”

“Why, man alive, they are Home Guards,” began Tom.

“Then I wouldn’t trust none of ’em as fur as I could sling a church house,” replied Lambert.

“And besides, they don’t know that you have been conscripted, for they belong to the Pearl River bottoms, miles away from here.”

“No odds; Major Morgan’s men can give me all the dodgin’ I want to do, an’ if them Pearl River fellers don’t find that cotton till I show it to ’em they’ll never find it. I jest aint goin’ to run no fule chances on bein’ tooken to that camp.”

Tom Randolph wished now that he hadn’t broached the subject to Lambert at all, for what assurance had he that the man, whom he knew to be vindictive and untrustworthy, would not go straight to Mr. Gray and tell him all about it?

“I thought you were a friend of mine, but since you are not it’s all right,” said Tom, intimating by a wave of his hand that Lambert’s refusal was a matter of no moment whatever. “But come with me to the house, and let me see if I can’t find something for you.” And as he spoke he looked down at the man’s broken shoes and bare, sunbrowned ankles.

“Shucks!” exclaimed Lambert. “I don’t need to go beggin’ shoes an’ stockin’s of nobody; an’ as for the salt an’ store tea that you’ve been talkin’ about, I have them in the woods every day.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Tom bluntly.

“It don’t make no odds to me whether you do or not, but it’s a fact.”

“Where do you get them? You haven’t the cheek to go to Baton Rouge, after the part you played in having the place bombarded by the Union fleet. You wouldn’t dare show your face there, and I don’t believe you have any friends to bring goods through the lines for you. I haven’t forgotten that old man Gray wanted that mob to thrash me as if I were a nigger, and I hope you remember that he was strongly in favor of hanging you. Ned Griffin warned you, and you jumped out of bed and ran for your life.”

“Do you reckon I’ve disremembered all the things that happened that night?” said Lambert with a scowl. “I aint, I bet you, an’ mebbe you’ll find it out some of those days. I aint nobody’s coward, an’ I dast do a good many things when I make up my mind to it. You jest watch, an’ you’ll see fire some of those nights. But when you see it you may know that no Pearl River Home Guards didn’t have a hand in it.”

“Will you do it yourself?” said Tom gleefully.

“I aint a-sayin’ who’ll do it, but it’ll be done. I’ve been mistreated an’ used like a dog all along of this war, an’ I’m a-goin’ to even up with somebody to pay for it.”

“And when the work is done come to my house; ask for anything I’ve got and I will give it to you. Where are you going now?” asked Tom, as the man began digging his heels into his mule’s sides and tugging at one of the reins in the effort to turn the beast around.

“I reckon I’d best be joggin’ along back. I’ve been out from under kiver ’most long enough. You watch out an’ you’ll see that fire; that’s every word I’ve got to say about it.”

The two separated and rode off in different directions—the one in a brown study, and the other shaking his head and muttering angry words to himself. Lambert was very well satisfied with the result of the interview, for it had suggested something to him that he never would have thought of himself, but Tom could not drive away the thought that perhaps it would have been better for him if he had turned his mule’s head down the road instead of up when he left his father’s gate that morning.

“I know that Lambert was awfully angry at me because I shook my sword in his face, but what else could I do when he acted as if he were about to rush up the steps and lay violent hands upon me in mother’s presence?” soliloquized Tom. “Perhaps I talked too much and at the wrong time; but if Lambert plays me false, I’ll put every Yankee scouting party that comes along on his trail. I’ll keep a bright lookout for that fire, as he told me, but I shall not draw an easy breath until I see it. Then I shall feel safe, for of course if he fires that cotton he will not tell on himself.”

Tom went up to his room at his usual hour for retiring, but instead of going to bed he drew a big rocking-chair in front of a window that looked out toward Rodney Gray’s plantation, and seated himself in it to watch for Lambert’s signal fire—the light on the clouds which would tell him that one of Mooreville’s most respected citizens was being punished because he, Tom Randolph, didn’t like him. He had no assurance from Lambert that he would see the blaze that night, but he hoped he would, and he resolved that he would sit at that window for six months, if necessary, rather than miss the sight and the gratification it would afford him.

“Lambert’s face grew as black as a thunder-cloud when I reminded him that Mr. Gray was one of the mob who wanted to hang him for bringing about the bombardment of Baton Rouge,” thought Tom, “and I know he will have revenge for that if he gets half a chance.”

Tom had not yet made up for the sleep he lost at Camp Pinckney, and in less than half an hour he was slumbering heavily. It was long after midnight when he awoke with a start and a feeling that there was something unusual going on. His eyes rested on the window when they were opened, and the sight he saw through the panes sent a thrill all through him and brought him to his feet in an instant. The glare on the sky told him there was a fire raging somewhere in the depths of the forest, and that it must be a big one, for the whole heavens in that direction were illuminated by it.

“He’s done it; as sure as the world he’s done it,” said Tom, who was highly excited. “It’s all the proof I want that I am not so much of a nobody as some people make me out to be. But I had no idea that baled cotton would give out such a blaze as that. However, four hundred bales, if they were all in one place, would make a pretty good-sized pile.”

Tom’s first impulse was to rush downstairs and tell his mother the good news, but he was afraid she might not keep it to herself. She would be likely to call his father’s attention to the light in the sky, and that was a thing Tom did not care to have her do. Mr. Randolph had changed wonderfully of late—ever since he missed salt from his table and learned that cotton was worth sixty cents a pound in Northern markets—and Tom had not failed to notice it. He wasn’t half as good a Confederate as he used to be, and even showed a desire to be friendly with Mr. Gray and Rodney, who belonged to that unpatriotic class of planters spoken of by the Southern historian who “were known to buy every article of their consumption in Yankee markets,” that is to say, in Baton Rouge. This being the case Tom did not go downstairs and tell what was going on in the swamp for fear his father might have something sharp and unpleasant to say about it. He sat in his chair and watched the light until it began to fade away before the stronger light of the rising sun, and then went to bed, happy in the reflection that there was one traitor in the neighborhood who would not make a fortune out of the unholy war that had been forced upon the South by Lincoln’s hirelings.

It was almost noon when he opened his eyes again, and the first move he made was for the window that looked toward the swamp that inclosed Rodney Gray’s plantation on three sides. Of course all signs of the conflagration had long since disappeared, but it had left gloom and anxiety in the house below, as Tom found when he went down to eat the late breakfast that had been kept warm for him. His mother seemed to have grown a dozen years older since he last saw her.

“What is the matter?” he demanded. “Your face is as long as my arm.”

“O Tommy, did you see it last night?” she asked in reply.

“See what last night?” faltered Tom, who began to have a faint suspicion that it would be a wise thing for him to make his mother believe, if he could, that he had slept soundly through it all.

“Why, the fire. Someone’s cotton has been destroyed. Mr. Walker, who lives on the plantation below, saw the light and came up this morning and told your father about it, and together they have gone to the swamp to look into the matter.”

“Oh! the swamp,” repeated Tom with a chuckle. “That’s all right, and father need not have troubled himself to ride so far without his breakfast. Please tell the girl to give me a bite of something. Old man Gray has some cotton in there, I believe.”

“But, my dear, we have two hundred bales in there, too.”

The tone in which the words were uttered struck Tom dumb and motionless for a moment. Then he groped blindly for the nearest chair and dropped into it. It was true that his father had a fortune hidden not more than half a mile from the bayou in which Mr. Gray’s four hundred bales were concealed, and up to that moment he had forgotten all about it. It was also true that all the cotton that had been run into the swamp was plainly marked with the initials of the owners’ names, but Tom didn’t know whether Lambert could read or not. He had never thought to ask him, and now he blamed himself for his stupidity. If it was the Pearl River vagabonds, and not Lambert, who applied the torch, there was the same trouble to be feared. Tom took particular pains to tell the men with whom he conspired to destroy Mr. Gray’s property that every bale of it was marked R. W. G., but he now remembered, with a sinking at his heart that almost drove him crazy, that these Home Guards were as ignorant as the mules and horses they rode on their plundering expeditions, and perhaps there was not one among them who knew one letter from another. The fear that the wrong pile might have been committed to the flames threw him into a terrible state of mind.

“I don’t wonder that you are sadly troubled,” said his mother, in a sympathizing tone. “But I suppose it is about what we can look for in times like these. I never did expect to save that cotton. I was sure that if the Yankees did not steal it the rebels would destroy it.”

(Mrs. Randolph called them “rebels” now. A few months before she would have spoken of them as “Confederates” or “our own brave soldiers.”)

“Take it away,” yelled Tom, addressing the girl, who just then brought his breakfast in from the kitchen. “I don’t want anything to eat. I never want anything more as long as I live. How many thousand dollars was that cotton worth?”

“You’ll fret yourself sick if you give way to your feelings like this,” protested his mother. “We are not sure that anyone has troubled our cotton; we only fear it.”

“It would be on a par with the luck that has attended me all through this miserable war if every pound of it was gone up in smoke,” said Tom in a discouraged voice. “It’s some consolation to know that we are all poor together, for of course the men who knew where to find our cotton knew where to find Gray’s and Walker’s also.”

With these words Tom snatched his hat from the rack in the hall, and went down the steps and out to the gate to watch for his father’s return. The latter was a long time coming, and his face wore so dejected a look when he rode up and passed into the yard, that Tom could not find it in his heart to speak to him. He simply turned about and went into the house to wait, with as much fortitude as he could command, for his father to come in and tell the terrible news that was so plainly written on his face. His wife, who met him at the door, did not say a word until he had seated himself in the chair he usually occupied by the front window, and then she whispered the question:

“Is it all gone, George?”

“Every bale,” replied Mr. Randolph with a groan. “In the first place, nearly three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of niggers ran away and left us with barely a handful to do our work for us, and now the cotton I was depending on to start me afresh when the war ended has run away too; or gone up in the elements, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Of course Mr. Gray’s cotton——” stammered Tom.

“Wasn’t touched,” said Mr. Randolph, finishing the sentence for him. “You may believe it or not, but it is a fact that our cotton alone was destroyed. Walker and I found Mr. Gray and Rodney and Griffin and a dozen or so others in the swamp when we got there, and they had been trying to drag some of my bales out of reach of the flames; but they didn’t go there until morning, and of course were too late to be of any use.”

“The cowards!” exclaimed Tom bitterly. “If they saw the fire when it was burning, why didn’t they go at once?”

“Would you have done it?” replied his father. “They thought the fire had been set by soldiers and were afraid to go out in the dark; but if the soldiers had had a hand in it they would have burned other cotton. It was the work of someone who has a spite against us, and he has made beggars of us. I haven’t a dollar of good money, or a thing that can be turned into money; and even if I had, you and your Home Guards have made yourselves so obnoxious to the Baton Rouge people that I wouldn’t dare go there to trade. Oh, yes; we’re fit candidates for the poorhouse if there was one in the county.”

Tom Randolph covered his face with his hands and trembled violently. He could not speak, but told himself that the world would not have held half so much trouble for him if that man Lambert had never been born into it.