“Well, I have seen you when you looked a trifle pearter, that’s a fact.” “And what brought me to this? The Yankees and their cowardly sympathizers. I don’t blame the boys in blue so much, for brave soldiers always respect one another, even though their sense of duty compels them to fight under different flags; but the traitors we have right here among us are too mean to be of any use. And the meanest one among them is Rodney Gray.” The first speaker was Lieutenant Lambert, who, by his zealous efforts to serve the cause of the South, brought about the bombardment of Baton Rouge, and the person whom he addressed was the redoubtable Captain Tom himself, who had just returned to Mooreville after undergoing two months’ military discipline at Camp Pinckney. The last time we saw these two worthies was shortly after the Confederate General Breckenridge made his unsuccessful attempt to capture Baton Rouge, and the conscripting officer, Captain Roach, disappeared so completely that no one had ever heard a word of him since, and the veteran Major Morgan, backed by fifty soldiers who hated all Home Guards and other skulkers as cordially as they hated the Yankees, came to take his place. Knowing that Captain Roach had been very remiss in his duty, that he had spent more time in visiting and eating good dinners than he had in sending conscripts to the army, Major Morgan hardly gave himself time to take possession of the office in Kimberley’s store before he declared that that sort of work was going to cease entirely, and that everyone in his district who was liable to military duty, Home Guards as well as civilians, must start for the camp of instruction at once or be taken there by force. The news spread rapidly, and in a very few hours everyone in the settlement had heard it. The wounded and disabled veterans of the Army of the Centre, of whom there were a goodly number in the neighborhood, were overjoyed to learn that at last there was a man in the conscripting office who could not be trifled with, and some of the civilians, who came under the exemption clause of the Conscription Act, secretly cherished the hope that Captain Tom and his first lieutenant might be sent to serve under Bragg, who did not scruple to shoot his soldiers for the most trivial offences.