“Of course I have, but that isn’t the point. If Larkin were here to take your place in camp the work might be easier; but you see he isn’t. He has skipped.”
“Skipped where?”
“Out in the woods, to keep company with Lambert and Moseley, I suppose. And when he went he left word with some of the neighbors that if anything happened to my buildings during the next few weeks, I might thank him for it. He put out as soon as I told him that I couldn’t pay the beef and bacon the government demanded as the price of his exemption.”
“Did you tell Major Morgan that you wouldn’t pay it?”
“Certainly, and I told General Ruggles so; but that didn’t scare them at all. If they want beef and bacon they’ll just take it.”
“Well, now, if that isn’t a pretty way for a common overseer to treat a gentleman I wouldn’t say so,” declared Tom, who really thought that Larkin ought to have stayed at home and been conscripted in his place. “What difference does one man make in the size of an army, anyway? The general could let me go as well as not.”
“But he won’t, unless certain forms are complied with. Be as patient as you can, and remember that I shall leave no stone unturned.”
“Get an honorable discharge while you are about it, so that I shall not be called upon to go through with this performance a second time,” said Tom.
It is true that a single recruit made no great difference in the strength of an army, but for some reason that no one but General Ruggles could have explained it made all the difference in the world so far as Tom Randolph’s release from military duty was concerned. One day, about six weeks after the conversation above recorded, Mr. Randolph walked into camp and told Tom that he was a free man—or rather that he would be in a few hours, for Larkin had been captured by Major Morgan’s scouts, and was now on his way to camp to take Tom’s place.
“And am I to have an honorable discharge?” inquired Tom, who was so overjoyed that he could hardly speak.