to help," said Rodney gleefully. "But are you a
partisan and is Dick Graham one, also?"

"Yes, to both your questions; but of course we are sworn into the
service of the State."

"You couldn't be ordered out of the State, could you?"

"Not by a long shot, and we wouldn't go if we were ordered out. If other
States desire independence, let them win it without calling upon their
neighbors for help. That's what we intend to do."

"And that was another thing I wanted to know," said Rodney, with a sigh
of relief. "I am satisfied now, and wish my company was here with me.
Some of the members seemed willing and even anxious to come, but when
the thing was brought before them in the form of a resolution, they
voted against it."

And then he went on to tell the captain how it happened that he came to
Missouri alone, not forgetting to mention how he had fooled the
telegraph operators at Baton Rouge and Mooreville.

"Those operators told that St. Louis cotton-factor I was a Confederate
bearer of dispatches," said he, in winding up his story. "But I haven't
a scrap of writing about me."

"You are a great deal safer without any," replied the officer. "Suppose
those Union men at Truman's house had searched you and found a letter of
introduction to some well-known Confederate living in these parts! They
might have strung you up before we had time to go to your relief. But
how did you fall in with your old schoolmate, Barton? You couldn't have
expected to meet him at the landing?"

This was a question that Rodney Gray had been dreading, for you will
remember that he had had no opportunity to hold a private consultation
with Tom and ask him what sort of a reply he should make when this
inquiry was propounded, as it was sure to be sooner or later. He turned
about in his saddle and rode sideway so that Tom could hear every word
he said.

"He was the last person in the world I expected to see when I left the
steamer at Cedar Bluff landing to get ahead of the Yankee cotton-factor
in St. Louis," said Rodney. "Tom had been over Cape Girardeau way on
business, and got a trifle out of his reckoning when Mr. Westall and his
party of Emergency men picked him up and brought him to the
wood-cutters' camp. We slept there that night and came out together in
the morning."

This was a desperate story to tell, seeing that they were not yet out of
reach of men who could easily prove that there was quite as much
falsehood as truth in it, but R