"Is there anything else you can do with safety? You can ride about the country at the head of your Home Guards occasionally, just to let the Union men see that you are keeping up your organization, and after I receive word that the camp of instruction has been established, you can take the conscripts there as fast as I can get them together; and that's about all you can do."
"It's a dog's life compared with what I thought a partisan's life would be," growled Tom, "and perhaps it isn't safe for me to ride about the country. The threats that were made against me last night——"
"Will amount to nothing, I assure you," interrupted Captain Roach. "The hot-heads who made them and who seemed to be so fierce for a fuss are few in number, and have had time to recover their senses since then. You can't find a man in town who will say that he was willing to go with the rabble last night; and more than that, the order-loving people in the community would not stand by and see a mob run things to suit themselves. You saw Lambert this morning, didn't you? Well, he goes around as freely as he ever did, and no one says a word to him."
Captain Tom thought of the compact that Lambert and the rest of the Home Guards had made to stand by one another in case of trouble with the citizens, but thought it best to say nothing about it to his friend Roach. Of course he had to give the required promise over and over again before the conscript officer became satisfied of his sincerity, and he did it with apparent willingness; but all the while he was telling himself that the men who had threatened to whip him as if he were a nigger, no matter who they were, would hear from him some day, and in a way they would not like. It took a great load off his mind to know that he would not be mobbed as soon as he showed himself in Mooreville. In fact it cured his "excitement and distress of mind" in a very few minutes; and when his mother returned at the end of half an hour he had discarded his gown and slippers, and was sitting up dressed in his full uniform.
CHAPTER VII.
A PERPLEXING SITUATION.
When Captain Roach went to his office that evening, after the best dinner he had ever eaten in that house, Tom Randolph rode down with him; and before he had gone half a mile was able to tell himself that he had been borrowing trouble and without reason. He saw no coldness whatever in the greetings of those he met along the road, and the few who stopped to speak with him about the occurrences of the previous day declared with one accord that they did not lay any blame at his door; but the way they denounced and threatened Lieutenant Lambert was a pleasant thing for Tom to hear.
"That man's election wasn't legal any way," was what Tom always said in reply. "But because I have permitted him to act as my second in command he has somehow got it into his head that he is a bigger man than I am, and has a right to do as he pleases. If he has at last found out that I know a trifle more than he does, and that it is a soldier's place to wait for orders from his superior, it will be a good thing for Lambert. If the Baton Rouge people want those gunboats driven away from their town and will send me word, I will go down and do the work for them as it ought to be done."
Tom knew that he was quite safe in talking in this lofty way, for he had learned during his interview with the committee that the people of Baton Rouge would not look kindly upon or support any effort that was made to drive the boats away. As long as they were let alone the Yankees were not unpleasant fellows to have around. They put good food into the mouths of some of the city people, good hats and shoes on their heads and feet, and good money in their pockets, and were on the whole more desirable neighbors than their own enlisted men would have been, for the latter had nothing to give in exchange for garden produce and milk and butter and eggs. But the energetic manner in which they went to work to scatter Lambert's Home Guards proved that these peaceable gunboat men were ready to fight at a moment's notice.