officer under old Stetson, Colonel Carvel used to take me up to
his house on Fourth Street to dinner. And he gave me the clothes on my
back, so that I might not be ashamed before the fashion which came there.
He treated me like a son, sir. One day the sheriff sold the Vicksburg.
You remember it. That left me high and dry in the mud. Who bought her,
sir? Colonel Carvel. And he says to me, 'Lige, you're captain now, the
youngest captain on the river. And she's your boat. You can pay me
principal and interest when you get ready.'

"Judge Whipple, I never had any other home than right in, this house. I
never had any other pleasure than bringing Jinny presents, and tryin' to
show 'em gratitude. He took me into his house and cared for me at a time
when I wanted to go to the devil along with the stevedores when I was a
wanderer he kept me out of the streets, and out of temptation. Judge, I'd
a heap rather go down and jump off the stern of my boat than step in here
and tell him I'd fight for the North."

The Judge steadied himself on his hickory stick and walked off without a
word. For a while Captain Lige stood staring after him. Then he slowly
climbed the steps and disappeared.

CHAPTER, XV

MUTTERINGS

Early in the next year, 1861,--that red year in the Calendar of our
history,--several gentlemen met secretly in the dingy counting-room of a
prominent citizen to consider how the state of Missouri might be saved to
the Union. One of these gentlemen was Judge Whipple, another, Mr.
Brinsmade; and another a masterly and fearless lawyer who afterward
became a general, and who shall be mentioned in these pages as the
Leader. By his dash and boldness and statesmanlike grasp of a black
situation St. Louis was snatched from the very bosom of secession.

Alas, that chronicles may not stretch so as to embrace all great men of a
time. There is Captain Nathaniel Lyon,--name with the fateful ring.
Nathaniel Lyon, with the wild red hair and blue eye, born and bred a
soldier, ordered to St. Louis, and become subordinate to a wavering
officer of ordnance. Lyon was one who brooked no trifling. He had the
face of a man who knows his mind and intention; the quick speech and
action which go with this. Red tape made by the reel to bind him, he
broke. Courts-martial had no terrors for him. He proved the ablest of
lieutenants to the strong civilian who was the Leader. Both were the men
of the occasion. If God had willed that the South sh