The letter was long for Clarence, and written under great difficulties from date to date.  For nearly a month he had tramped over mountains and across river bottoms, waiting for news of an organized force of resistance in Missouri.  Begging his way from cabin to cabin, and living on greasy bacon and corn pone, at length he crossed the swift Gasconade (so named by the French settlers because of its brawling ways) where the bridge of the Pacific railroad had been blown up by the Governor’s orders.  Then he learned that the untiring Lyon had steamed up the Missouri and had taken possession of Jefferson City without a blow, and that the ragged rebel force had fought and lost at Booneville.  Footsore, but undaunted, he pushed on to join the army, which he heard was retreating southward along the western tier of counties of the state.

On the banks of the Osage he fell in with two other young amen in as bad a plight as himself.  They travelled together, until one day some rough farmers with shotguns leaped out of a bunch of willows on the borders of a creek and arrested all three for Union spies.  And they laughed when Mr. Clarence tried to explain that he had not long since been the dapper captain of the State Dragoons.

His Excellency, the Governor of Missouri (so acknowledged by all good Southerners), likewise laughed when Mr. Colfax and the two others were brought before him.  His Excellency sat in a cabin surrounded by a camp which had caused the dogs of war to howl for very shame.

“Colfax!” cried the Governor.  “A Colfax of St. Louis in butternuts and rawhide boots?”

“Give me a razor,” demanded Clarence, with indignation, “a razor and a suit of clothes, and I will prove it.”  The Governor laughed once more.

“A razor, young man!  A suit of clothes You know not what you ask.”

“Are there any gentlemen from St. Louis here?” George Catherwood was brought in,—­or rather what had once been George.  Now he was a big frontiersman with a huge blond beard, and a bowie, knife stuck into his trousers in place of a sword.  He recognized his young captain of dragoons the Governor apologized, and Clarence slept that night in the cabin.  The next day he was given a horse, and a bright new rifle which the Governor’s soldiers had taken from the Dutch at Cole Camp on the way south, And presently they made a junction with three thousand more who were their images.  This was Price’s army, but Price had gone ahead into Kansas to beg the great McCulloch and his Confederates to come to their aid and save the state.

“Dear mother, I wish that you and Jinny and Uncle Comyn could have seen this country rabble.  How you would have laughed, and cried, because we are just like them.  In the combined army two thousand have only bowie-knives or clubs.  Some have long rifles of Daniel Boone’s time, not fired for thirty years.  And the impedimenta are a sight.  Open wagons and conestogas and