"But what do you suppose makes the returned veterans so anxious to get rid of these Yankee uniforms and things?" continued Tom. "It looks to me as though there might be something back of it."
"That's the way it looks to me, too," replied Captain Roach. "They don't want to have a Yankee scouting party ride up on them suddenly and say: 'Look here, Johnny; have you been robbing some wounded or captive Yank? If not, where did you get those blue clothes?'"
"But the Yankees are not here," cried Tom.
"I know they are not here now, but they're coming; and if they keep on besting us at every point, as they are doing at this minute, they will be here before long, too. You needn't think that Farragut is going to remain idle down the river, or that Flag-Officer Davis is going to keep on doing nothing up the river while we are fortifying Vicksburg. There's going to be fun here one of these days."
And sure enough there was. It came much sooner than Captain Roach had any reason to think it would, and Lieutenant Lambert of the Home Guards, whom we saw on his way to ask advice of a Confederate veteran, was the man who did the most to help it along. He found the soldier of whom he was in search at his home. He was sitting on the gallery enjoying his after supper smoke; but when he saw the Home Guard alight at his gate he staggered to his feet, laid hold of the crutch that leaned against the house behind his chair, and said, in mock alarm:
"The man you want to see don't live here no more. He done moved outen the country two year ago come next July. Clear yourself. I'm that skeared of gray-back soldiers that I can't sleep none fur a week after seein' one of 'em."
"Aw! Quit your nonsense," growled Lambert, "or, by gum! I'll come there and lick ye even if you aint got but one leg to defend yourself with." He hitched his horse at the fence, shook hands with the veteran, then seated himself on the porch close by his chair and continued: "Me and you have always been the best kind of friends, Abner, and I don't want you to sniff at me just kase you've been shot by the Yankees and I aint."
"I won't, Sile; I won't never do the like no more. But a Home Guard! And lickin' a gunboat that's got 'leven inches of iron on her sides and four foot of solid oak back of that, with nothing in the wide world but popguns!" said the veteran, taking his pipe from his mouth to indulge in a hearty peal of laughter. "_And_ Tom Randolph fur a cap'n. That there is a leetle the worst I ever heard of. Hey-youp! Steady on the left centre!" he yelled, dropping his crutch upon the gallery and grasping with both hands the stump of his leg, which he had wrenched a little too severely during his paroxysms of merriment. "I almost disremembered that I aint got only part of a leg on this side. I left the rest up to Shiloh. I'm glad to see you again, Sile; I am so. But I would be a heap gladder if me and you had chawed hard-tack and fit the Yanks together. Then you wouldn't be no such triflin' thing as a Home Guard."
