Tom Randolph covered his face with his hands and trembled violently. He could not speak, but told himself that the world would not have held half so much trouble for him if that man Lambert had never been born into it.
CHAPTER III.
MR. RANDOLPH CARRIES TALES.
When Tom Randolph and the man Lambert brought their interview to a close and rode away in different directions, as we have recorded, the latter turned into the first lane he came to, and finally disappeared in the woods. For three or four miles or more he rode along the fence that separated a wide corn-field from the timber, passed in the rear of Mr. Gray’s extensive home plantation, and at last came out into the road again opposite the house in which Ned Griffin and his mother now lived. Having made sure that there were none of Major Morgan’s men in sight (he feared them and the Baton Rouge people more than he did the boys in blue) Lambert crossed the road and threw down the bars that gave entrance into the door-yard. The noise aroused Ned’s hounds, whose sonorous yelping quickly brought their master to the porch.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said Ned, when he saw who his visitor was. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I have been looking for you all day. Have you done anything for your country since I seen you last?”
Ned’s manner would have made Tom Randolph open his eyes, and might, perhaps, have aroused his suspicions, there was so much unbecoming familiarity in it. More than that, his words seemed to imply that there was some sort of an understanding between him and the ex-Home Guard. The latter seated himself on the end of the porch, pulled his cob pipe from his pocket and tapped his thumb-nail with the inverted bowl to show that it was empty, whereupon Ned went into the house and presently came out again with a plug of navy tobacco in his hand. The sight of it made Lambert’s eyes glisten.
“I aint seen the like very often since the war come onto us,” said he, as he proceeded to cut off enough of the weed to fill his pipe; “an’ this here nigger-heel that we uns have to put up with nowadays aint fitten for a white man to use. Do you know, I think Rodney Gray is jest one of the smartest fellers there is a-goin’?”
“I’ve always thought and said so,” replied Ned. “But what has he done lately that is so very bright?”
“Hirin’ me to watch that cotton of his’n so that I could tell him if I see anybody castin’ ugly eyes at it,” said Lambert, settling back at his ease on the gallery so that he could enjoy his smoke to the best advantage. “When you told me that Rodney would take it as a friendly act on my part if I would do that much for him, I didn’t think there was the least bit of use in it, but now I know there is. I run up agin somebody a while ago, an’ who do you think it was?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, but I hope it wasn’t anyone who had designs on that cotton.”
“It was that Tom Randolph,” answered Lambert.