"Goin' to go back on us," insisted James, "jes' because a boy has got lots o' lip and can talk to beat the band."
"No," said Buck, keeping his temper. "He sure is game and a great kid, and he stirred me up powerful; but I made up my mind before to-night. I made it up when I was by my sick mother's bed. I'm free to say that that boy's talk before that had a lot to do with it, but the truth is I ain't been satisfied from the start. I never did really belong to this crowd. I got in wrong last summer when I thought I knew better than the Congress of the United States about that draft business and was fool enough to get mad."
Zack James blew out his breath in a sort of contemptuous hiss.
"I meant to tell you all as soon as I come back yesterday," continued Buck, taking no notice of James, "but the trouble in camp stopped me. I only come back to get them boys, and to-morrow I'll start out with 'em. I'm goin' to take them boys home and then I'm goin' to the war."
"Oh, Mr. Hardy," cried Ted, who had been drying his eyes as he listened, and who now started up, "I'm gladder to hear that than to know that we are going home!"
Mitch' Jenkins now spoke for the first time.
"Maybe you are goin' to take them boys home," he said, "but you ain't goin' to the war. You are goin' to jail, and then you are goin' to be shot."
"What do you mean?" demanded Buck in startled tones, plainly disturbed.
Then Ted darted his hand into an inside pocket and brought out a battered newspaper clipping.
"That's what they are sayin' in my neighborhood," declared Jenkins. "And that's why, when I heard of you fellows on the quiet, I came in to join you. I'd let the time to register go by, and so I come in here a-kitin'."