Rodney listened to every word of this conversation, and told himself that his friend's chances for escape were very slim indeed.
"Take a keg and sit down over there," said Mr. Westall, pointing to the farthest chimney corner and addressing himself to the prisoner, while Nels and one of the other wood-cutters began making preparations for supper. "Now, if you have no objections, Mr. Gray, we should like to hear the rest of your story. You must be set in your ways, or else you never would have come up here simply to carry out your idea of becoming a partisan. You will find plenty of them in these parts. Indeed, you will find more of them than anything else."
It did not take Rodney long to make Mr. Westall and his four companions understand just how matters stood with him, for there was really little to tell. He was careful not to let his auditors know that he had acted as drill-sergeant, for Captain Hubbard's company of Rangers, for if he touched upon that subject, Mr. Westall might ask him where he received his military education; and if he answered that he got it at the Barrington Academy, and Mr. Westall happened to know that his prisoner had been a student at that very school, then what would happen? The fat would all be in the fire at once, for the Emergency man would very naturally want to know why the two boys had not given each other some sign of recognition when they first met. That would never do; so Rodney steered clear of these dangerous points, and Tom Percival sat in the chimney corner with his elbows on his knees and listened to the story. When it was finished and Mr. Westall and his companions had asked him a few leading questions, Rodney ventured to inquire what an Emergency man was.
"He is a partisan in the truest sense of the word," was Mr. Westall's answer. "He is a soldier who is liable to be called into the ranks in an emergency, and at no other time; but that does not prevent him from getting a few friends together and going off on an expedition of his own as often as he feels like it."
"An expedition of his own?"
"Yes. If the Union men in one county get to make themselves too promiscuous, and their immediate neighbors haven't the strength or the inclination to deal with them themselves, the Emergency men in the next county can slip in some dark night and run the obnoxious characters out. See?"
"And what does the Emergency man do when his services are not needed?" inquired Rodney, who was profoundly astonished.
"Why, he can stay quietly at home, if he wants to, and cultivate his little crops while he watches the Union men in the settlement or acts as spy for the troops, if there are any in the vicinity."
"But suppose the Union men find it out and pop him over from the nearest canebrake?" said Rodney.
"He must look out for that, and so conduct himself while he is at home that no one will suspect anything wrong of him," answered Mr. Westall indifferently. "His fate is in his own hands, and if he doesn't know how to take care of himself, he has no business to be an Emergency man. You might call us a reserve to the State Guard, and that is what we really are."