mistake you for
that dreadful schoolmaster!" Here her trembling fingers struck a match.

"Draw the curtains," said Lysander, hastily executing his own order, as
the blue sputter kindled up into a flame that lighted the room. "It
ain't quite time for me to be seen here yet."

"Where did you come from? What are you here for? O, my dear, dear
Lysie!" (she gazed at him affectionately), "you ain't in no great
danger, be you?"

"That depends. Soon as Tennessee secedes, I shall be safe enough. I'm
going to have a commission in the Confederate army, and that'll be
protection from anything that might happen on account of old scores. I'm
going to raise a company in this very place, and let the law touch me if
it can!"

He tossed his cap into a corner, and sprawled upon a chair before the
stove, at which his devoted mother was already blowing her breath away
in the endeavor to kindle a blaze. She stopped blowing to gape at his
good news, turning up at him her low, skinny forehead, narrow nose, and
close-set, winking eyes.

"There! I declare!" said she. "I knowed my boy would come back to me
some day a gentleman!"

"A gentleman? I'm bound to be that!" said the man, with a braggart laugh
and swagger. "I tell ye, mar, we're going to have the greatest
confederacy ever was!"

"Do tell if we be!" said the edified "mar."

"Six months from now, you'll see the Yankees grovelling at our feet,
begging for admission along with us. We'll have Washington, and all of
the north we want, and defy the world!"

"I want to know now!" said Mrs. Sprowl, overcome with admiration.

"The slave-trade will be reopened, Yankee ships will bring us cargoes of
splendid niggers, not a man in the south but'll be able to own three or
four, they'll be so cheap, and we'll be so rich, you see," said
Lysander.

"You don't say, re'lly!"

"That's the programme, mar! You'll see it all with your own eyes in six
months."

"Why, then, why _shouldn't_ the south secede!" replied "mar," hastening
to put on the tea-kettle, and then to mix up a corn dodger for her son's
supper. "I'm sure, we ought all on us to have our servants, and live
without work; and I knowed all the time there was another side to what
Penn Hapgood preaches (for he's dead set agin' secession), though I
couldn't answer him as _you_ could, Lysie dear!"

"Wal, never mind all that, but hurry up the grub!" said "Lysie dear,"
putting sticks in the stove. "I hain't had a mouthful since breakfas