"Hal-lo!" ejaculated Rodney. "Is a Yank a poor fellow in your estimation?"
"A weary and hungry man is always an object of pity," replied his mother, "and such have never been turned from this plantation without having their wants relieved. And now the soldiers have gone and put those dreadful Home Guards after them."
"Haw, haw!" laughed Rodney. "Tom Randolph's Home Guards may be dreadful to unarmed Union men who have never snuffed powder, but veterans, such as I take these escaped prisoners to be, won't stand in fear of them. Why, mother, if these four men were armed they would whip Tom's whole company."
"They are thoroughly armed," said Mrs. Gray. "And when they are in need of food they walk right into a plantation house and demand it."
"That's all right too. You don't expect men to go hungry when there's grub in sight, just because they have the misfortune to be Yanks, do you? Where did they get their weapons?"
Mrs. Gray shuddered as she told the story as we have already heard it; and when she described how the fugitives had surprised, captured, and paroled a squad of six men who had been sent in pursuit of them, Rodney's face and Dick's beamed with admiration.
"I'll bet they are bricks," said the former.
"Top-notch," chimed in Dick.