"Take care of the Home Guards, and drive the rebels away from Williamston, and you can go quail-shooting any time," replied Marcy. "But I am afraid it will be a long time before that will come to pass, or my home will be a safe place for me to live," he soliloquized, as he settled back in the stern of the boat and looked up at the stars while Julius plied the oars. "Captain Beardsley will be forced to leave the country and so will Colonel Shelby; but they will go straight to Williamston or some other place that is in the hands of the Confederates, and send first one scouting party and then another into the settlement to trouble us Union people."
That was what Marcy thought, and it was what he told his mother when he reached home the next morning; and knowing that the Federal colonel had not yet had time to "capture or scatter" the Home Guards, he did not remain long in the house, but ate a hasty breakfast and set out for the camp of the refugees, walking under cover of all the fences, and making use of every bush and inequality of the ground to conceal him from the view of any one who might chance to be passing along the road. It was well that these precautions were adopted; for when he and Julius were safe in the woods they looked back and saw about twenty mounted men enter the yard and surround the house. They were the Home Guards, and had been sent there by Beardsley and Shelby, who knew that Marcy would be sure to visit his mother on his return from Plymouth. They were in the house half an hour or more, but went away as empty-handed as they came.
"That means the loss of more property for you, Captain Beardsley," said Marcy to himself: and when the other refugees heard of it they said the same thing, and vowed to make their words good that very night; but, about one o'clock that afternoon, one of the paroled prisoners came into camp with the information that he had barely escaped falling into the hands of a squad of Federal cavalry who were raiding the settlement, and that Beardsley and Shelby were being punished already for the rows they had kicked up in the neighborhood.
"I was hid in my corn-crib when the Yankees went by my house," said the soldier, "and the feller in command of 'em was the same chap I seed with 'em once before. They had scooped in as many as a dozen of the meanest of the Home Guards, Beardsley and Shelby amongst 'em, and were taking 'em off Plymouth way. My old hat riz on my head when I heard Beardsley tell the Yankee cap'n that if he'd go into my house he'd ketch a rebel soldier in there, but that there Yankee cap'n 'lowed that he knowed what he was doing, and that he wasn't hunting no paroled prisoners. Now, who do you reckon told him that a paroled prisoner lived in my house?"
"I did," replied Marcy. "I said a good word for you while I was in Plymouth, and the Yankee colonel said that, if anybody bothered you paroled rebels, it would be your own men and not his. You have brought me good news."
But all the same it did not bring the quiet home life which Marcy thought would be his when those arch-disturbers of the peace of the settlement were carried away from it, for the Confederate authorities interfered with his plans. In April they passed their first general Conscription Act, making all the able-bodied men in the Confederacy between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five subject to military duty, revoked all leaves of absence, and ordered every soldier to report at once to his command on pain of being treated as a deserter. The Act provided for the exemption of those who were able to pay for it, but Marcy did not know it; and supposing that he was as likely to be conscripted as anybody else, he passed the most of his time in camp, where he knew he was safe. We have no space in this book to tell of the other adventures that fell to his lot, and so we must leave him here for the present while we take up the history of two of our Confederate heroes, Rodney Gray and Dick Graham, whom we last saw in Rodney's home in a distant State. They were full-fledged soldiers as you know, having served fifteen months in Price's army and Bragg's. They had their discharges in their pockets and were inclined to say, with Ben Hawkins, that they would not do any more fighting for the Confederacy until some "stay-at-homers," whose names they could mention, had had a chance to see how they liked it. Dick Graham was homesick and longed to see his father and mother; but they were somewhere in Missouri, and Dick could not get to them without crossing the Mississippi, which was closely guarded by the Union navy. There was no way to get around it, however, and that river had to be crossed; and how they made one unsuccessful attempt after another to reach the opposite bank; how Rodney Gray managed to keep out of the army in spite of the efforts that were made to force him into it; and how he turned the tables on his old enemy Tom Randolph, and his Home Guards, who tried to bring him into trouble with the Federals in Baton Rouge, shall be told in the next volume of this series, which will be entitled "RODNEY, THE OVERSEER."