"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.