surprised and
pleased. "If he is your choice I have nothing to say beyond this: I
shall be more than satisfied with his election."
"Randolph, Randolph!" shouted Tom's friends, believing that if he could
not get one office he might be willing to take another; but it turned
out that their candidate was not that sort of fellow.
"I don't want it, and what's more to the point, I won't accept it," said
he, wrathfully. "If any one votes for me he will only be wasting his
ballot, for I am going to leave the company. Do you suppose I am such a
fool as to allow myself to be set up and bowled over by Rodney Gray?" he
added in an undertone, in response to a mild protest from his friend on
the right. "His supporters are in the majority and no one else need look
for a show."
Everybody was surprised to hear this declaration from the lips of one
who had thus far taken the deepest interest in the organization and done
all in his power to help it along, and several of the Rangers leaned
forward to get a glimpse of the speaker's face to see if he really meant
what he said. Rodney glanced toward the captain to see how he took it,
and learned what it was that induced the defeated candidate to take this
stand. Leaning upon his cane just inside the door of the captain's tent
was Mr. Randolph, whose face was fully as black as Tom's, and who nodded
approvingly at every word the angry young man uttered.
"I haven't been sworn in yet, and am as free to go and come as I was a
month ago," declared Tom.
"For the matter of that, so are we all," answered the captain, who had
known a week beforehand that young Randolph was sure to be defeated, and
that he would take it very much to heart. "But I considered myself bound
from the time I put my name to this muster-roll. We can't be sworn in
except by a State officer, for the minute we consent to that, that
minute we give up our freedom and render ourselves liable to be ordered
to the remotest point in the Confederacy. We are partisans, and never
will surrender our right to do as we please."
Captain Hubbard and his company of Rangers were not the only dupes there
were in the Confederacy at that moment. It was well known that the new
government was in full sympathy with partisan organizations; and its
agents industriously circulated the report that it would not only aid in
the formation of such organizations, but would allow them full liberty
of action after they were sworn into the service of t
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