"O Tom, I'll never consent to that," exclaimed his mother, almost tearfully. "You had much better follow young Griffin's example. Your father and I can arrange all that by sending Larkin into the army and putting you in his place."
Larkin was Mr. Randolph's overseer; and he had not been conscripted by Captain Roach because his employer had claimed exemption for him. Mr. Randolph supposed, and so did his wife, that Tom was provided for as long as the war continued; and as it was necessary that they should have an overseer they decided that Larkin would do as well as anybody else, and Tom's father had entered into a verbal contract to purchase his freedom by providing the hundred pounds of bacon and beef demanded by the Confederate Government. They would not have done such a thing if they had had the least suspicion that Tom's position as captain of the Home Guards was likely to bring him into contact with the Yankees.
"That is the only alternative," said Tom. "I must face death or confinement in a Northern dungeon, or I must send my resignation to the Governor at the new capital. But I am afraid Larkin will demand a larger bounty than father will be willing to pay."
"Your father will not give him a penny with my consent," said Mrs. Randolph very decidedly. "He is a hireling, and his wishes will not be consulted. He will simply be discharged; that is all there is of it."
"But he is obstinate and hard to deal with, and perhaps he will refuse to go before his year is out," suggested Captain Tom.
"In times like these civil contracts are not worth the paper they are written on," said his mother, in a tone which seemed to imply that she had already determined upon some course of action. "There are some hundred hands on this plantation, and if your father should find it impossible or inconvenient to pay, within twelve months, the eighty thousand pounds of meat which the Confederate Government will demand as the price of Larkin's exemption, then what? I think myself that Larkin will take to the woods before he will go into the army."
"I don't care where he goes so long as he gets out of my way," declared Captain Tom. "I don't know what our neighbors will think of me when they see me in the field with a gang of niggers, but I can't discover any other way out of the difficulty; can you?"
"At present I cannot; but I would much rather know that you were safe in the field and within sound of the dinner-horn, than to fear that you were in danger of being shot or captured. Perhaps we had best let the subject rest where it is until I have had time to ask your father what he thinks about it. I will tell you our decision to-morrow; and meanwhile don't commit yourself. There goes the bell."
It was the call to dinner and Captain Tom answered it, although he did not have much appetite for the things he found on the table. His father had of late got out of the way of asking his son if he had heard any news in town, but when the latter remarked that he had met and talked with Rodney Gray that morning, and that Rodney and his companion had been captured by the enemy while on the way home, Mr. Randolph took interest enough in the matter to inquire into the particulars, and to ask Tom if he didn't think he would run some risk in taking conscripts to camp.
"Risk!" repeated Captain Tom. "You may well say that. Roach thinks I will have to fight my way, and so does Rodney. He said in so many words that I would be sure to lose my prisoners, that the Home Guards would be brushed out of the way like cobwebs, and if I got through with a whole skin he would call me a good one. Risk! I should think so. It's positively dangerous!"