s our own way. But I don't suppose they would take us back now."

"Would you be willing to have such a fellow as Rodney Gray order you
around as he does the rest of them!" demanded Tom.

"Why, I don't see what's the matter with Rodney Gray. I never heard the
first word said against him until you took it into your head that he was
going to run against you for second lieutenant. Yes; I'd let him or
anybody else boss me around if he would only teach me how to drill. He's
a nobby soldier, aint he?"

"Nobby nothing," snarled Randolph. "I'll bet you our company will drill
just as well as they do."

"Our company?"

"Yes. You don't imagine that the Rangers are the only ones who will go
into the service from this place, do you? It would not be policy for the
State to send all her best men into the Confederate army," said Tom,
quoting from his father; for although he had been a voter for more than
three years he seldom read the papers, and depended upon others to keep
him posted in the events of the day. "Some of us can't go. Father says
the Yankees will fight if they are crowded too hard, and if they should
happen to come down the river from Cairo, or up the river from New
Orleans, wouldn't the capital of our State be in a pretty fix if there
were no troops here to defend it?"

"Aw! they aint a-going to come up or down," exclaimed the other, who was
too good a rebel to believe that Union troops could by any possibility
gain a foothold in the seceded States. 'The fighting must all be done on
Northern soil.' That's what our President said, and I reckon he knows
what he was talking about."

"Perhaps he don't. Fortune of war, you know," said Randolph, who, ever
since his father suggested the idea, had kept telling himself that
nothing would suit him better than to be captain of a company of finely
uniformed and mounted State Guards. "At any rate we are going to prepare
for what may happen. We are going to get up a company, and my father
will equip every one who joins it. If he has a family, my father will
support them if we have to leave the neighborhood and go to some other
part of the State. What do you say? Shall I put your name down?"

Tom's friend did not give a direct reply to this question. He evaded it;
but when he had drawn away from Tom's side and reached another part of
the grounds (the mounted drill was still going on), he said to himself:

"No, you need not put my name down. I'm going to be a regular soldier
a