"I don't care a picayune what he thinks," replied Rodney, his excitement increasing as the Governor's carriage began to circle around toward the front and center of the company. "If that man in the fatigue cap and duster isn't General Lacey, all the descriptions I have heard of him are very much at fault."
"And do you really believe," began the captain, who was profoundly astonished.
"I don't believe, I know that he means to muster us into the Confederate service," interrupted Rodney. "Hold on a minute before you do a thing or let a man answer to his name. My father knows him by sight."
Without again asking permission to leave his place, Rodney put his horse in motion and rode over to the tree under whose friendly shade Mr. Gray was sitting while he watched the drill.
"Father," said he, speaking rapidly and panting as if he had been running instead of riding, "who is that in the carriage with the Governor? Is it General Lacey?"
Mr. Gray nodded and looked up at his son as if to ask him what he was going to do about it.
"Well, he has come here to muster us in, and the orderly has gone after the roll-book," continued Rodney. "The general is a Confederate officer, and if we let him muster us in, he will make Confederate soldiers of us, won't he?"
"That's the way it looks from where I sit," answered Mr. Gray.
"It's the way it looks from where I sit too, and I just won't have any such trick played upon me," said Rodney, hotly. "I know what I want and what I want to do; and as long as I am a free man, nobody shall make me do anything else."
"Are you going to back out?"