"But you might threaten to conscript them if they don't obey my orders," suggested Tom.
"I shouldn't like to do it for a little thing like that," replied Captain Roach. "They've got the uniforms, and I don't see how you are going to keep them from wearing them. What difference does it make, anyway? You don't have to go on dress parade."
"No matter for that," replied Tom. "I didn't enter the service to command a lot of Yankees, and I won't do it. Suppose a general officer should happen along and order them out for drill and inspection! I'd feel so ashamed of myself that I know I should take to my heels."
"Make your mind easy on that score," was the captain's answer. "If you don't take to your heels until that happens you will never run. Judging from what I have learned since I have been here, the government cares no more for companies of this kind than it does for so many wild hogs in the woods. If it were not for you and your mother I would conscript the last one of them."
"But what do you suppose makes the returned veterans so anxious to get rid of these Yankee uniforms and things?" continued Tom. "It looks to me as though there might be something back of it."
"That's the way it looks to me, too," replied Captain Roach. "They don't want to have a Yankee scouting party ride up on them suddenly and say: 'Look here, Johnny; have you been robbing some wounded or captive Yank? If not, where did you get those blue clothes?'"
"But the Yankees are not here," cried Tom.
"I know they are not here now, but they're coming; and if they keep on besting us at every point, as they are doing at this minute, they will be here before long, too. You needn't think that Farragut is going to remain idle down the river, or that Flag-Officer Davis is going to keep on doing nothing up the river while we are fortifying Vicksburg. There's going to be fun here one of these days."
And sure enough there was. It came much sooner than Captain Roach had any reason to think it would, and Lieutenant Lambert of the Home Guards, whom we saw on his way to ask advice of a Confederate veteran, was the man who did the most to help it along. He found the soldier of whom he was in search at his home. He was sitting on the gallery enjoying his after supper smoke; but when he saw the Home Guard alight at his gate he staggered to his feet, laid hold of the crutch that leaned against the house behind his chair, and said, in mock alarm: