"Shut up, Orly!" exclaimed Sandy very sternly. "You don't know what you are talking about."

"I'll bet I know what I'm talking about, and my stomach knows too," retorted Orly.

"Don't make a fool of yourself! You don't mean to turn traitor to your father and the cause, Orly?" pleaded Sandy; but he appeared to be trying to keep up appearances.

"Hang the cause!" exclaimed Orly, as though he meant all he said. "My father got me into the scrape, and he will get enough of it before he is many months older."

"Use your reason and common-sense," counselled the elder brother.

"That's what we just haven't been using the last two years, and now I'm going to use my reason and common-sense on my own hook. If you like soldiering without pay or rations, Sandy, you can join the company again as soon as you like; but when you catch me there, you will find a Kentuckian without any eye-teeth," replied Orly, who was only two years younger than his brother, and was considered the brighter boy of the two; and his tones and his manner were vigorous enough to indicate that he meant all he said.

"You are acting like a fool to talk like that before your cousin, who is an abolition soldier."

"Before my cousin! His father and himself have been sensible from the first; and I only wonder that Deck don't quote Scripture to us, and gently remind us that 'the way of transgressors is hard;' for he can't help seeing the truth of the proverb in both of us."

"I didn't know that things had become particularly hard with you," said Deck.

"Orly is as wild as a goat, Deck. Don't mind what he says," interposed Sandy.

"Or what Sandy says," interjected the younger of the two.

"Our company has not been mustered in yet, and of course we could not draw pay or rations," added Sandy, who felt called upon to defend his father and the "cause" from the implied censure of his brother. "Father spent all the ready money he had to pay for rations and tents, and some other things the Confederate government will furnish, and will pay him back for all he has expended. That is the reason why my mother is so short of money just now."

"That's all very good as far as it goes; but I don't believe the Confederate government has got any more money than the Bank of England; and it will be a long day before father gets his money back. We were nearly starved when we left the company."

"But we did not desert, as some folks say we did," added Sandy, who was in favor of putting the best foot forward. "Father sent us home when we spoke of leaving, and he gave us a sort of furlough, in so many words. If he could hear you talk, Orly, he would be ashamed of you."

"As I have been of him more than once," said the younger in a low tone, as though he did not feel fully justified in speaking in that manner of his father, who had a gross failing, which had recently been gaining upon him.

Sandy heard the remark; and he was disgusted, though he could not deny the justness of it. He had been ashamed of his father, but his inborn pride did not permit him to say so outside of the family. If he had been as plain-spoken as his brother, he might have informed Deck, who was the only listener to the conversation, that the furlough had grown out of a quarrel between Captain Titus and his older son.

The captain had always been what is known as a moderate drinker, but the habit had grown upon him after he went to Kentucky. Some of the Home Guard had been shot at while engaged in foraging among the farmers for food in the outskirts of the county-seat where the company was encamped, and it became a dangerous pursuit, as even the commander of the company would not authorize it; for in the status of the body it was nothing but plundering.

Sandy noticed that his father had his whiskey ration in increased proportions, and he knew that it cost money. He and Orly were not half fed, and the father lived on his favorite beverage. It provoked him to wrath, and in a fit of desperation he spoke out to him as plainly as Orly could have done it. The quarrel followed; and when Sandy declared that he and his brother would leave the company, he had driven them from his presence, and ordered them not to return. This was the furlough, "in so many words," as Sandy put it.

Perhaps the approach of the squadron of cavalry was a relief to Sandy Lyon, for it put an end to the conversation of a disagreeable nature to him. He realized the truth of nearly all that Orly had said in regard to the desperate situation of the Home Guard, and the family of its commander; but his pride was still superior to the groans of his stomach.

"Mother and the girls are going back to Derry as soon as she can get money enough to pay the bills," said Orly in a low voice.

"I am ashamed of you, Orly!" protested Sandy, who had heard the remark; for the bugle of the battalion had ceased its blast at that moment. "You have no business to tell family secrets like that."

"Confound your family secrets!" exclaimed his brother. "I don't want to quarrel with you, my brother, as father has done with Uncle Noah; but I am not in favor of starving to death for the benefit of the Southern Confederacy. You have too much family pride when it don't pay, Sandy. You said that our sister Mabel should not go out to work in the family of Dr. Falkirk, when mother said she might."

"Dr. Falkirk might have got a nigger woman to do his housework, instead of paying double wages to Mabel," replied Sandy.

"That is nothing to do with the question. Mabel's wages have been all we had to live on since we got home," returned Orly, letting out more of the secrets of the family without any compunction.

"I wish you would hold your tongue, Orly," added Sandy fretfully.

"I said what I did for a purpose; but I shall have to stop now, for the squadron is nearly here," replied Orly. "When can I see you again, Deck?"

"Almost any time when I am not at drill, or absent on an errand, as I have been to-day. You will find me at the camp or the house," replied Deck, as he rode forward to a point where he could fall into his position in his company.

"Why, there is Uncle Noah at the head of the column!" said Sandy, as the squadron came near enough for him to recognize the familiar face of his relative, even in the midst of his present unwonted surroundings. "He looks like an officer."

"He is what people have been calling him since he came to Kentucky, and is now actually Major Lyon," replied Deck, whom the boys had followed.

"But are you not an officer, Deck?" asked Orly.

"Not at all; Artie and I are high privates. They wanted to make us both sergeants; but after we had talked with father, we declined all positions," replied Deck, as he fell into his place.

It is time to give something of the history of the two families who had emigrated to Kentucky, the family secrets of one of which had been so freely revealed to Deck by the young Home Guardsman with Union aspirations.

CHAPTER III

SOMETHING ABOUT THE LYON FAMILIES

The town of Derry in New Hampshire had contributed fourteen persons to the population of Kentucky, all of them by the name of Lyon. Colonel Duncan Lyon had gone there as a young man, and had made a very handsome fortune. But he died at the age of fifty, and bequeathed his property, consisting of a large plantation, which he had named Riverlawn, because it had a delightful lawn, with great trees scattered over it, though after the English fashion with none