"Oh, that's war, you know," said the lieutenant lightly. "But you will see now why the sergeant and I must decline your kind invitation to take supper and sleep at your house. We don't want to put ourselves in a position to be surrounded and captured, for we are pretty close to Baton Rouge, and those Yanks might decide to take us along instead of parolling us. If we camp in the woods with our dogs around us we'll know that we are safe. Now, we shall have to bid you good-by, captain. You will get your company together and do what you can to help us?"
"Look out that they don't get the first shot at you, sah," suggested the sergeant.
"And if you are lucky enough to catch them may I depend on you to send them to camp under guard?" added the lieutenant. "It might be to your interest to make the acquaintance of our colonel."
Captain Randolph shook hands with the two veterans and promised to do all a loyal soldier could do to head the fugitives off from Baton Rouge and send them back to Camp Pinckney; but there was not so much heart in his promise as there was in the one he made before he learned that the Yankees were armed and daring. In order to keep up appearances, however, he put his horse into a lope as soon as the hand-shaking was over, and made the best of his way to the enrolling office. He found a few Home Guards loafing there, but not half as many as he would have found two days before. These valiant men had heard that they might be ordered off with a squad of conscripts any time, and they did not care to go while the Union cavalry were riding about through the country. So the most of them stayed at home, holding themselves in readiness to take to their heels if they saw a horseman approaching, and had any reason to believe that he had been sent by Captain Roach to warn them to report for duty. The captain was at his desk, and for some reason or other seemed to be in the best of spirits.
"You ought to have dropped in about half an hour ago," said he, as Tom walked into the office after hitching his horse at the rack in front of the door. "I have had a very pleasant visit from one of your old friends, who has just returned from Bragg's army."
Captain Randolph was so surprised that he forgot all about the daring Yankees who were running wild in the woods in close proximity to Mooreville. He left home for the express purpose of warning the enrolling officer against Rodney Gray and his chum Dick Graham, but something in the captain's manner told him that his efforts in that direction would not meet with much success; for the returned soldiers had had the first chance at the captain, and they were both smooth-tongued, winning fellows.
"If you are speaking of Rodney Gray——" began Tom, in angry tones.
"So you have seen him, have you!" exclaimed the enrolling officer, leaning back in his chair and breaking out into a peal of laughter. "Well, he's a good one, isn't he?"
"If you are speaking of him," sputtered Tom, "you know as well as I do that he is no friend of mine. I have told you so more times than I can remember."
"I know you have, and I confess that I treated him and his chum rather coldly when they came into the office and said they wanted to set themselves square with me by showing that they were honorably discharged Confederate soldiers," answered the captain. "But they did not seem to care a snap for me or for my opinion of them."