"What for?" inquired the captain.
"Have you forgotten, sir, that you put me under arrest?"
"Why did you not stay in the guard-tent when I put you there?" said the officer, with a smile.
"Because the colonel ordered me out, sir. I am glad he did so, for it gave me a chance to go with my company and see Rodney and Dick helped out of their scrape."
"Well, behave yourself in future, and we'll not say any more about your being under arrest."
Marcy knew that would be the upshot of the matter. If the captain meant to put him in arrest, he had no business to permit him to go on that expedition.
The next morning things went on in their usual haphazard way, and the colonel did not say a word about disbanding the school. He thought better of it after he had taken time to cool off; but it was not so with Rodney Gray. By allowing himself to be led away by the excitement of the hour he had done something he never could forget if he lived to be a hundred years old, and he longed to leave the academy and everybody in it behind him, and mingle with people who believed as he did, and who did not know of the meanness of which he had been guilty. And, what was very comforting as well as surprising, the colonel permitted him to go without asking any disagreeable questions.
"I don't know that I blame you," said he, in a discouraged tone. "I think I should be glad to go somewhere myself. I have been hoping almost against hope that these troubles might be settled without a war, but I don't believe they ever will be. The folks about here seem to think that the people of the North are cowardly, but they are not. They are simply patient; but there will come a time when their patience will be exhausted, and then they will sweep over us like an army of locusts."
"You don't really think they will fight, do you, sir?" said Rodney, who was surprised to hear the colonel talk in this strain.
"I am sure of it. When Beauregard opens his batteries upon Sumter, you will see an uprising that will astonish the world. I am sorry to part with you, but you may go. You would no doubt get a letter from your father in a few days any way, so I don't suppose it makes much difference."