d the Yankee colonel said that, if anybody bothered you
paroled rebels, it would be your own men and not his. You have brought
me good news."

But all the same it did not bring the quiet home life which Marcy
thought would be his when those arch-disturbers of the peace of the
settlement were carried away from it, for the Confederate authorities
interfered with his plans. In April they passed their first general
Conscription Act, making all the able-bodied men in the Confederacy
between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five subject to military duty,
revoked all leaves of absence, and ordered every soldier to report at
once to his command on pain of being treated as a deserter. The Act
provided for the exemption of those who were able to pay for it, but
Marcy did not know it; and supposing that he was as likely to be
conscripted as anybody else, he passed the most of his time in camp,
where he knew he was safe. We have no space in this book to tell of the
other adventures that fell to his lot, and so we must leave him here for
the present while we take up the history of two of our Confederate
heroes, Rodney Gray and Dick Graham, whom we last saw in Rodney's home
in a distant State. They were full-fledged soldiers as you know, having
served fifteen months in Price's army and Bragg's. They had their
discharges in their pockets and were inclined to say, with Ben Hawkins,
that they would not do any more fighting for the Confederacy until some
"stay-at-homers," whose names they could mention, had had a chance to
see how they liked it. Dick Graham was homesick and longed to see his
father and mother; but they were somewhere in Missouri, and Dick could
not get to them without crossing the Mississippi, which was closely
guarded by the Union navy. There was no way to get around it, however,
and that river had to be crossed; and how they made one unsuccessful
attempt after another to reach the opposite bank; how Rodney Gray
managed to keep out of the army in spite of the efforts that were made
to force him into it; and how he turned the tables on his old enemy Tom
Randolph, and his Home Guards, who tried to bring him into trouble with
the Federals in Baton Rouge, shall be told in the next volume of this
series, which will be entitled "RODNEY, THE OVERSEER."

THE END.

THE

FAMOUS

CASTLEMON

BOOKS.

BY

HARRY CASTLEMON.

[Illustration: Specimen Cover of the Gunboat Series.]

No author of the present day