"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 a.s.sume 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.

To this the Colonel made no reply, and Mr. Sanders became the complainant. "I dunner what we're comin' to," he declared, "when a pa.s.sel of Yankees can yerk four of our best young men on a train in this town in broad daylight, an' all the folks a-stanin' aroun' gapin' at 'em, an' wonderin' what they're gwine to do next."

"Say no more, Mr. Sanders; say no more--the mule is yours." This in the slang of the day meant that the point at issue had been surrendered.

"I suppose Lucy Lumsden is utterly crushed on Gabriel's account,"

remarked Mrs. Blasengame.

"Crushed!" exclaimed Mr. Sanders; "no, ma'am! not much, if any. She's fightin' mad."

"I know well how she feels," said the pale, bright-eyed little woman.

"It is a pity the men can't have the same feeling."

"Why, honey, what good would it do?" the Colonel asked, somewhat querulously.

"It would do no good; it would do harm--to some people."

"And yet," said the Colonel, turning to Mr. Sanders with a protesting frown on his face, "when I want to show some fellow that I'm still on top of the ground, or when Tomlin takes down his gun and goes after some rascal, she makes such a racket that you'd think the world was coming to an end."

"A racket! I make a racket? Why, Mr. Blasengame, I'm ashamed of you! the idea!"

"Well, racket ain't the word, I reckon; but you look so sorry, honey, that to me it's the same as making a racket. It takes all the grit out of me when I know that you are sitting here, wondering what minute I'll be brought home cut into jiblets, or shot full of holes."

Mrs. Blasengame laughed, as she rose from the table. She stood tiptoe to pin a flower in her husband's b.u.t.ton-hole.

"You've missed a good deal, Mr. Sanders," said the Colonel, stooping to kiss his wife. "You don't know what a comfort it is to have a little bit of a woman to boss you, and cuss you out with her eyes when you git on the wrong track."

"Yes," said Mr. Sanders, "I allers feel like a widower when I see a man reely in love wi' his wife. It's a sight that ain't as common as it used to be. We'll go now, if you're ready, an' see the Major. I ain't got much time to tarry."

"Oh, you want me to go too?" said the Colonel eagerly. "Well, I'm your man; you can just count on me, no matter what scheme you've got on hand."

They went to Major Perdue's, and were ushered in by Minervy Ann. "I'm mighty glad you come," said she; "kaze 'taint been ten minnits sence Ma.r.s.e Tomlin wuz talkin' 'bout gwine over dar whar you live at; an' he ain't got no mo' business in de hot sun dan a rabbit is got in a blazin'

brushpile. Miss Vallie done tole 'im so, an' I done tole 'im so. He went ter bed wid de headache, an' he got up wid it; an' what you call dat, ef 'taint bein' sick? But, sick er well, he'll be mighty glad ter see you."

Aunt Minervy Ann made haste to inform the Major that he had visitors. "I tuck 'em in de settin'-room," she said, "kaze dat parlour look ez cold ez a funer'l. It give me de shivers eve'y time I go in dar. De cheers set dar like dey waitin' fer ter make somebody feel like dey ain't welcome, an' dat ar sofy look like a coolin'-board."

Mr. Sanders was very much at home in the Major's house; he had dandled Vallie on his knee when she was a baby; and he had made the Major's troubles his own as far as he could. Consequently the greeting he received was as cordial as he could have desired. "Major," he said, when he found opportunity to state the nature of his business, "do you know young Gabe Tolliver?"

"Mighty well--mighty well," responded Major Perdue, "and a fine boy he is. He'll make his mark some day."

"Not onless we do somethin' to help him out. They ain't no way in the world he can prove that he didn't kill that feller Hotchkiss. Ike Varner done the killin', but he's gone, an' I think his wife is fixin' to go to Atlanta. They've got the dead wood on Gabriel. They ain't no case at all ag'in the rest; but you know how Gabriel is--he goes moonin' about in the fields both day an' night, an' it's mighty hard for to put your finger on him when you want him. An' to make it wuss, Hotchkiss called his name more'n once before he died. It looks black for Gabriel, an' we must do somethin' for him."

Major Perdue leaned forward a little, a frown on his face, and stretched forth his left hand, in the palm of which he placed the forefinger of his right. "I'll tell you what, Mr. Sanders, I'm just as much obliged to you for coming to me as if you had saved me from drowning. I have come to the point where I can't hold in much longer, and maybe you'll keep me from making a fool of myself. I'll say beforehand, I don't care what your plan is; I don't care to know it--just count on me."

"And where do I come in?" Colonel Blasengame inquired.

"Right by my side," responded Major Perdue.

Without further preliminaries, Mr. Sanders set forth the details of the programme that had arranged itself in his mind, and when he was through, Major Perdue leaned back in his chair, and gazed with admiration at the bland and child-like countenance of this Georgia cracker. The innocence of childhood shone in Mr. Sanders's blue eyes.

"I swear, Mr. Sanders, I'm sorry I didn't have the pleasure of serving with you in Virginia. If there is anything in this world that I like it's a man with a head on him, and that's what you've got. You can count on us if we are alive. I don't know how Bolivar feels about it, but I feel that you have done me a great favour in thinking of me in connection with this business. You couldn't pay either of us a higher compliment."

"Tomlin expresses my views exactly," said Colonel Blasengame; "yet I feel that one of us will be enough. It may be that your scheme will fail, and that those who are engaged in it will have to take the consequence. Now, I'd rather take 'em alone than to have Tumlin mixed up with it."

"Fiddlesticks, Bolivar! you couldn't keep me out of it unless you had a bench-warrant served on me five minutes before the train left, and if you try that, I'll have one served on you. Now, don't forget to tell Tidwell that I'll be glad to renew that dispute. I bear no malice, but when it comes to a row, I don't need malice to keep my mind and my gun in working order. I'm going down to Malvern to-morrow, and before I come away, I'll have everything fixed. There are some details, you know, that never occurred to you: the police, for instance. Well, the chief of police is a very good friend of mine, and the major was Bolivar's adjutant."

"Well, I thank the Lord for all his mercies!" cried Mr. Sanders; and he meant what he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

_Nan and Margaret_

It was hinted in some of the early chapters of this chronicle that none of the characters would turn out to be very heroic, but this was a mistake. The chronicler had forgotten a few episodes that grew out of the expedition of Cephas to Fort Pulaski--episodes that should have stood out clear in his memory from the first. Cephas was very meek and humble when he started on his expedition, so much so that there were long moments when he would have given a large fortune, if he had possessed it, to be safe at home with his mother. A hundred times he asked himself why he had been foolish enough to come away from home, and trust himself to the cold mercy of the world; and he promised himself faithfully that if he ever got back home alive, he would never leave there again.

Captain Falconer was very kind and attentive to the lad, but he was also very inquisitive. He asked Cephas a great many artful questions, all leading up to the message he was to deliver to Gabriel; but the instructions he had received from Mr. Sanders made Cephas more than a match for the Captain. When the lad came to the years of maturity, he often wondered how a plain and comparatively ignorant countryman could foresee the questions that were to be asked, and provide simple and satisfactory answers to them; and the matter is still a mystery.

Well, Cephas was not a hero when he started, and if the truth is to be told, he developed none of the symptoms until he had returned home safely, accompanied by Mr. Sanders. Then he became the lion of the village, and was sought after by old and young. All wanted to hear the story of his wonderful adventures. He speedily became a celebrated Cephas, and when he found that he was really regarded as a hero by his schoolmates, and by some of the young women, he was quick to appropriate the character. He became reticent; he went about with a sort of weary and travel-worn look, as if he had seen everything that was worth seeing, and heard everything that was worth hearing.

Now, what Cephas had seen and heard was bad enough. He could hardly be brought to believe that the haggard and wild-eyed young fellow who answered to Gabriel's name at the fort was the Gabriel that he had known, and when he made up his mind that it really was Gabriel, he couldn't hold the tears back. "Brace up, old man," said Gabriel. It was then in a choking voice that Cephas delivered Mr. Sanders's message, using the dog-latin which they both knew so well. And in that tongue Gabriel told Cephas of the tortures to which he and his fellow-prisoners had been subjected, of the horrors of the sweat-boxes, and the terrors of the wrist-rack. So effective was the narrative that Gabriel rattled off in the school tongue, that when he was ordered back to his solitary cell, Cephas turned away weeping. He was no hero then; he was simply a small boy with a tender heart.

There were grave faces at Shady Dale when Cephas told what he had seen and heard. Major Tomlin Perdue, of Halcyondale, became almost savage when he heard of the indignities to which the unfortunate young men had been subjected. He wrote a card and published it in the _Malvern Recorder_, and the card was so much to the purpose, and created such indignation in the State, that the authorities at Washington took cognisance thereof, and issued orders that there was to be no more torture of the prisoners. This fact, however, was not known until months afterward, and, meanwhile, the newspapers of Georgia were giving a wide publicity to the cruelties which had been practised on the young men, and radicalism became the synonym of everything that was loathsome and detestable. Reprisals were made in all parts of the State, and as was to be expected, the negroes were compelled to bear the brunt of all the excitement and indignation.

The tale that Cephas told to Mr. Sanders was modest when compared to the inventions that occurred to his mind after he found how easy it was to be a hero. Though he pretended to be heartily tired of the whole subject, there was nothing that tickled him more than to be cornered by a crowd of his schoolmates and comrades, all intent on hearing anew the awful recital which Cephas had prepared after his return.

One of the first to seek Cephas out was Nan Dorrington, and this was precisely what the young hero wanted. He was very cold and indifferent when Nan besought him to tell her all about his trip. How did he enjoy himself? and didn't he wish he was back at home many a time? And what did Paul and Jesse have to say? Ah, Cephas had his innings now!