"And if you succeed are you going to burn some buildings?"
"I am, most decidedly."
"You have fully made up your mind to that, have you?"
"I have."
"Please present my compliments to your mother when she returns, and say to her that I could not stop to dinner," exclaimed Captain Roach, rising to his feet and reaching for his cap.
"What is the matter with you? Where are you going in such a hurry?" Tom almost gasped.
"I am going to my office, and the first hard work I shall do after I get there will be to put it out of your power to ruin yourself and your father and mother, as you seem bent on doing," answered the captain; and there was a look of quiet determination on his face that Tom had never seen there before. "Of course you do not intend to do this incendiary work alone (you haven't got pluck enough for that," the captain added to himself), "so I shall make all haste to send your men into the army where they can't help you. They will be the death of you if I don't."
"And must I let a man talk about whipping me as if I were a nigger and never do or say the first thing about it?" cried Tom, throwing himself back upon the pillow and covering his face with his hands. "I am not made of that sort of stuff, and I did not think a Confederate officer would advise me to such a cowardly course."
"What would you call a thing in the shape of a man who would sneak up on another's property, in the dead of night when there was no one to oppose him, and touch a match to it?" exclaimed Captain Roach hotly. "Would you call him a coward or not?"
"I don't care," whined Tom. "I am bound to have revenge on the man who dared to say that I ought to be whipped, and I won't give up my plan."