o is liable to be called into the ranks in an
emergency, and at no other time; but that does not prevent him from
getting a few friends together and going off on an expedition of his own
as often as he feels like it."

"An expedition of his own?"

"Yes. If the Union men in one county get to make themselves too
promiscuous, and their immediate neighbors haven't the strength or the
inclination to deal with them themselves, the Emergency men in the next
county can slip in some dark night and run the obnoxious characters out.
See?"

"And what does the Emergency man do when his services are not needed?"
inquired Rodney, who was profoundly astonished.

"Why, he can stay quietly at home, if he wants to, and cultivate his
little crops while he watches the Union men in the settlement or acts as
spy for the troops, if there are any in the vicinity."

"But suppose the Union men find it out and pop him over from the nearest
canebrake?" said Rodney.

"He must look out for that, and so conduct himself while he is at home
that no one will suspect anything wrong of him," answered Mr. Westall
indifferently. "His fate is in his own hands, and if he doesn't know how
to take care of himself, he has no business to be an Emergency man. You
might call us a reserve to the State Guard, and that is what we really
are."

"I think you are really freebooters. That is just the way the European
brigands act," were the words that sprang to the boy's lips.

Although he was as wild a rebel as he ever had been, Rodney had a higher
sense of honor than when he wrote that mischievous letter to Bud Goble
for the purpose of getting his cousin Marcy Gray into trouble, and his
whole soul revolted at the idea of being such a soldier as Mr. Westall
described. If that was the way a partisan was expected to act, Rodney
wished he had not been so determined to become a partisan. Why didn't he
stay in his own State and follow the fortunes of the Mooreville Rangers,
as he had promised to do? Finally he said:

"Are the State Guards the same as the Home Guards?"

"Not much; any more than a good Confederate is the same as a sneaking
Yankee," replied Mr. Westall. "The Home Guards are known to all honest
men as Lyon's Dutchmen. There is hardly a native born citizen among
them, and yet they have the impudence to tell us Americans what kind of
a government we shall have over us."

"Have you Emergency men had much to do yet?"

"We haven't done any fighting, if t