"That's so," Mr. Sanders assented.
"Yes, it's so," cried the Colonel hotly. "And it's a——" He caught the eye of his wife and subsided. "Excuse me, honey; I'm rather wrought up over this thing. What worries me," he went on, "is that the boys were yerked out of bed, and carried off, and then their own families went to sleep again. But suppose they didn't turn over and go back to sleep: doesn't that make matters worse? I can't understand it to save my life. Why, if it had happened here, the whole town would have been wide awake in ten minutes, and the boys would never have been carried across the corporation line. Tomlin is mighty near wild about it. If I hadn't gone to Atlanta, he would have gone; and you know how he is, honey. Somebody would have got hurt."
Yet, strange to say, Major Tomlin Perdue was far cooler and more deliberate than his brother-in-law, Colonel Blasengame. It was the peculiarity of each that he was anxious to assume all the dangerous responsibilities with which the other might be confronted; and the only serious dispute between the two men was in the shape of a hot controversy as to which should call to account the writer of a card in which Major Perdue was criticised somewhat more freely than politeness warranted.
"You are correct in your statement about the four boys bein' took away," said Mr. Sanders, "but you'll have to remember that the woods ain't so full of Blasengames an' Perdues as they used to be; an' you ain't got in this town a big, heavy balance-wheel the size an' shape of Meriwether Clopton."
"Yes, dear, you were about to be too hasty in your remarks," suggested Mrs. Blasengame. Her soft voice had a strangely soothing effect on her husband. "If some of our young men had been seized, all of us, including you, my dear, would have been in a state of paralysis, just as our friends in Shady Dale were."
"The only man in town that know'd it," Mr. Sanders explained, "was Silas Tomlin. He was sleepin' in the same room wi' Paul, an' they rousted him out, an' took him along. They carried him four or five mile. He had to walk back, an' by the time he got home, the sun was up."
"That puts a new light on it," said the Colonel, "and Tomlin will be as glad to hear it as I am. But I wonder what the rest of the State will think of us."
"My dear, didn't these young men, and the Yankees who arrested them, take the train here?" inquired Mrs. Blasengame. She nodded to Mr. Sanders, and a peculiar smile began to play over that worthy's features.
"By George! I believe they did, honey!" exclaimed the Colonel.
"And in broad daylight?" persisted the lady.