"It is all that a coward deserves," replied Lindley severely.
"I am no coward, any more than you are," protested Percy. "You know that father did not wish me to join the army, though I wished to do so."
"I know that you wished to do so just as any other coward does,—over the left."
"What could I do when father told me not to go to the war?"
"What could you do? You could have gone! If you had not been a poltroon, you would have joined the first regiment that came in your way."
"I never was in the habit of disobeying my father," pleaded the young agent.
"You were not? You ran away to New Orleans last winter when your father told you not to go. You came home from the academy when he told you to remain there. You have spent the evening in Mobile when he told you not to go there. I could tell you instances all day in which you disobeyed him, and mother too," continued the soldier warmly.
"That was different."
"It was different; and you could obey your father in a bad cause, but not in a good one. I am heartily ashamed of you, and I don't feel willing to own you as a brother of mine."
"But my father told me that I could better serve the good cause by going with him than I could by joining the army."