"I never looked for you to be so good to me, Ned," faltered Lambert, who seemed to be so dazed that he did not realize the necessity of acting quickly.
"Don't thank me; thank Mr. Gray," said Ned hastily. "If it had not been for him I am afraid I should have left you to look out for yourself; for I know how you and Tom Randolph have been working against me. But you can't injure me now, and so I can afford to be magnanimous. Are you going to clear out or not?"
Yes, Lambert thought he had better take a friend's advice and seek safety in flight while the way was open to him; and when Ned heard him say that he wheeled his horse and set off post-haste to carry the same warning and advice to another party whose name had that night been rather unpleasantly mentioned in connection with a sound thrashing. This one was Tom Randolph, who heard his ring at the door but lacked the courage to answer it, for something told him that he would hear disagreeable news if he did. Mr. Randolph answered the bell himself, and the words he listened to almost drove him frantic. Ned did not tell him that the mob had threatened to whip Tom, for, as he afterward said, he couldn't get his consent to go as far as that; but he said enough to put Mr. Randolph into a terrible state of mind. He stamped his feet on the gallery, shook his fists over his head, and wished from the bottom of his heart that every member of the Home Guards had been sent to the front and killed off long ago, and then he went in to tell his wife about it, and leave her to break the news to Tom in any way she thought best. To say that the young man was utterly confounded would be putting it very mildly. He was terribly frightened, of course, and angry as well; but for some reason or other he did not seem to stand so much in fear of personal violence as he did of losing his commission. When his mother had repeated word for word the conversation that took place between Ned Griffin and Mr. Randolph, and Tom had asked a question or two, he jumped to his feet and charged about the room like a caged wild animal.
"There isn't a man in the world who has half the trouble I do," he said, almost tearfully. "That idiot Lambert has broken up the company as completely as though the Yankees had come in and captured every member of it."
"And think of the misery he has brought upon the Baton Rouge people," suggested his mother.
"I don't care a picayune for the Baton Rouge people," said Tom in savage tones. "They ought to have known that they would bring themselves into trouble by being so friendly with the Yankees; but all the same Lambert showed himself a born fool when he fired on that gunboat. I should be glad to see him and every man who went with him conscripted and put where they would have to behave themselves, if I could only get others to fill their places; but that is something I can't do. And if I lose my men I shall have to throw up my commission or go into the army. When I meet them at the enrolling office in the morning I will talk to them in a way they will remember."
But when morning dawned upon his sight after a restless and sleepless night, the captain of the Home Guards had several other things to occupy his mind. First came a committee of twelve stalwart men appointed by the indignant citizens of Baton Rouge, who called at Mr. Randolph's house to inquire what Tom meant by sending a gang of ruffians to their peaceful city to bring destruction upon it, and death and wounds to its quiet inhabitants, in that wanton, useless, and outrageous manner. The scathing denunciation and threats that Captain Tom was obliged to listen to before he and his mother could convince the visitors that he was in no way to blame for it, that he did not know the first thing about it until it was all over, and that the Home Guards had acted on their own responsibility and without orders from him, were things he never forgot; and the only way he could pacify the committee, who seemed determined to have revenge upon somebody before they left town, was by promising to turn his company over to the conscripting officer as soon as he could get to his office. Tom knew when he said it that his Home Guards would refuse to be disposed of in that way, but he was so much afraid of the Baton Rouge men and so anxious to see the last of them, that he would have promised more than that for the sake of inducing them to leave the house.
Although Tom did not know it until afterward, the committee took a little responsibility from his shoulders by calling at Kimberly's store before they went home and telling Captain Roach, in the hearing of some of the Home Guards, that if he did not at once conscript every man who was in any way concerned in Lambert's mad act they would petition the Governor to remove him and put in his place an officer who would attend to his business. And this threat of theirs was what brought some of the Home Guards to Captain Tom's house, where we found them at the beginning of the first chapter.