Rodney Gray had got upon his feet, but when he heard these words he sat down again. He stared hard at Ned as if he were trying to understand something that was too hard for him, and shouted:
"Rosebud!"
"What are you going to do?" asked Ned, when in response to the summons the darkey came tumbling out of the kitchen with a slice of bacon in one hand and a chunk of corn pone in the other.
"I am going to ask you to come into the house and tell your story to Dick and the folks from beginning to end," answered Rodney. "Give your horse to Rosebud and come on."
Ned Griffin followed his conductor with some reluctance, for he did not know what a man who had fitted out half a dozen partisan rangers, and who was a large slaveholder besides, might think of an overseer who gave aid and comfort to Union soldiers and abolitionists without saying a word to him about it. The quick-witted Rodney must have known what he was thinking about, for after placing Ned in a chair and carefully closing all the doors that gave entrance into the dining room, he walked up to his father and whispered:
"Those escaped prisoners were up to Ned's last night, and he is afraid you will think hard of him for giving them a bite to eat."
"And loaning them blankets too, Mr. Gray," chimed in honest Ned, who meant that his employer should know the full extent of his offending. "They had blankets enough first and last, but were so hard pressed by the dogs that they had to throw away everything except their guns."
"Well, I assure you that I don't think hard of you for giving hungry men something to eat and a bed to sleep on," said Mr. Gray. "I should have done the same thing myself if they had applied to me; but I trust you exercised due care while you were doing it."
"I know what you mean, sir," answered Ned, "and there isn't a white person living who knows what happened on that plantation last night except my mother and Tom Randolph."
A shell from one of the gunboats in front of Baton Rouge could scarcely have created greater consternation in that room than Ned Griffin's last words. Mr. Gray thought that Ned's doings might as well be published in Richmond at once, and was about to say as much, when Rodney took a great load from his mind, and astonished him almost beyond measure at the same time, by quietly remarking that Tom was a prisoner in the hands of the Yankees, who were bent on taking him to Baton Rouge. Then he requested Ned to tell them just what had happened on his plantation the night before, and the latter gave the particulars substantially as follows: