The lonely, homesick young Missourian was almost overwhelmed by the kindly greeting that Rodney's mother gave him, but his friend was quick to notice it and came to his relief. When his mother said that Mr. Gray had gone to Mooreville on business and might not be back for an hour or two, he seized Dick by the arm and hurried him up to his room.
"I have known you a good while, but I never saw you look so glum before," said he, as he closed the door and forced Dick into a seat.
"You may well say that," replied the latter. "I bore up pretty well until I saw you and your mother together, and that knocked me. It's a fur ways to Little Rock, and there are a good many Yanks on the road."
"I'll trust you and your discharge to get along with the Yankee cavalry if I can only see you safe over the river," said Rodney. "There is where the fun is going to come in."
"Don't you think that the commanding naval officer, or the provost marshal at Baton Rouge, might be prevailed upon to give me permission to go over openly and above-board?" inquired Dick.
"Not much. You wouldn't do it yourself if you were in their places. How would they know but that you were a spy or a bearer of secret despatches, and that your discharge was a humbug? I tell you, Dick, since I have had time to think of the way those Yankee scouts treated us when they told us to come in out of the wet, I confess to a very friendly feeling for the Yankees. How many are there who would have run us in, just to be able to say that they had captured a couple of graybacks?"
"That's so," assented Dick.
"Now the best thing you can do is to stay with me long enough to rest your hands and face, say a week or such a matter, and then we'll go up to Vicksburg——"
"Suffering Moses!" exclaimed Dick. "There is a portion of two Yankee fleets up there, according to the last report I read, and they are fighting our fellows all the time."
"Well, say Port Hudson then. There hasn't been much of any fighting there. We'll buy a light, tight boat and provision it——"