Billings, the South Carolina boy, reached home too late to take part in the bombardment of Fort Sumter. and he told Rodney that he was very sorry for it. Every one of the gallant five thousand who had fought for thirty-four hours to compel a handful of tired and hungry men to haul down their flag was looked upon as a hero, and Billings said he might have been a hero too, if he had only had sense enough to leave school a month earlier. But he was all right now. He was a Confederate soldier and ready to do and dare with the best of them. Dick Graham, whose home you will remember was in Missouri, wrote in much the same strain that Dixon did. His State was in such a turmoil and seemed to be so evenly divided between Union and disunion, that Dick could not tell which way she was going until he saw Governor Jackson's answer to Lincoln's call for volunteers. "There can be, I apprehend, no doubt that these men are intended to make war upon the seceded States," said the Governor. "Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary in its objects, inhuman and diabolical and cannot be complied with. Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on such an unholy crusade." "When I read those burning words," Dick wrote, with enthusiasm, "my mind was made up and I knew where I stood. I expected some such move on the Governors part, for when he came into office in January, he declared that Missouri must stand by the other slave States whatever course they might pursue. I kept my promise and enlisted in a company of partisans raised under the terms of the Military Bill, which makes every able-bodied man in the State subject to military duty. Price is our immediate commander, but we were required to take the oath to obey the Governor alone." "There, now," exclaimed Rodney, when he read this. "What's the reason our Governor can't swear the Rangers in as well as the Governor of Missouri can swear his troops in? I believe he could if there wasn't something back of it." "What do you think there is back of it?" inquired his father. "I can't imagine, unless there is some sort of an arrangement existing between him and the Confederate authorities at New Orleans," replied Rodney. "The Governor lets on that he is strongly in favor of independent organizations, but he don't act as if he was." Rodney showed Dick's letter to Captain Hubbard, who posted off to Baton Rouge with, it; but he got no satisfaction there. There had been no such Military Bill passed in Louisiana, the Governor said, and there was no need of it, the situation there and in Missouri was so different. The latter State was exposed to "invasion" (by which he meant that Captain Lyon's small company of regulars was likely to be reinforced), but Louisiana was so protected on all sides that Lincoln's hirelings could not get at her if they tried. "Then he wouldn't assume control of the company?" said Rodney.