"No, indeed. I intended to show you the pearl before it was sold, but Bob received a good price for it. I tell you, it beats me."
"It is always darkest just before daylight," said Leon. "It has been very dark with you, but now you are in a fair way to make a man of yourself. But how did you keep your father from knowing it?"
"I told him Bob had given me ten dollars to go fishing with him, and he said it was all humbug. He would have gone with him for five, and showed him where he could catch some beauties, too."
An audible smile ran around the group as Hank said this, and Bob wanted to know why it was that Joe didn't hire a boat and catch some of those beauties. He could sell them at Middletown as fast as he could haul them in. Hank didn't answer, and Bob continued:
"We have been listening to some stories Leon was telling us about the war."
"I didn't know that Leon had been in the war," said Hank.
"Oh, yes; I was in it from the time the first gun cracked. It was only two years ago that the war closed, and I am now almost twenty-two."
"Then you have been through the same mill that father has."
"Well—no. I was in the Confederacy, but I wasn't on the Confederate side. You see, Jones county, in Mississippi, was rather a hard place to raise soldiers for the rebellion. We were most all lumbermen, and we weren't in favor of the South seceding; so when the South withdrew from the Union we held a meeting in Ellisville and got up a series of resolutions seceding from the Southern Confederacy."
"Why, would they let you do that?" exclaimed Hank, who was greatly astonished.