The private rose cautiously to his trembling feet, and aided by his too weighty crutch he went slowly through the wood toward the cabin where dwelt Sally Tripp. “It’s the nighest house,” he said to himself. “Shorely she won’t refuse to let me in.” However, when he had passed through the wood and saw the cabin not fifty yards from him in the open, a screw of blue smoke curling from the mud-and-stick chimney, misgivings which had depressed him ever since he had parted with her attacked him anew. He forgot that he had lost nearly every ounce of his life-blood, and stood almost erect, resting hardly the weight of his hand on the gun as his eyes drank in the familiar old scene. Then he heard the massive bar of one of the doors squeak as it was lifted from its wooden sockets, and in the doorway stood a golden-haired vision. “Thank God, it’s her!” Ericson muttered; and the sight of her standing there, looking afar off toward the camp of the Federals, gave him courage. He dropped his gun, determined not to exhibit weakness, and walked erectly, if slowly, toward her. He saw the girl turn pale, stare at him steadily, and stifle a scream with her hand at her lips. “Don’t you know me, Sally?” he asked. She stared mutely, inwardly occupied with her outward appearance, fearing perhaps that a tithe of her gladness of heart at seeing him might be detected by his supersensitive, pleading eye. “Thar ain’t nothin’ to keep me from knowin’ of you,” she said. “As fur as them clothes on yore back is concerned, they become yore sort powerful well. A rebel is a rebel anywhar.” Again the qualms of physical weakness stirred within him. He hung his head, praying for strength to keep from falling at her feet. She smiled relentlessly and continued: “I reckon when the Union men attackted you-uns last night you broke an’ ran like all the rest. I seed that fight, John Ericson. Me an’ grandpa scrouged down behind the chimney so as not to git struck an’ watched the trap the bluecoats was a-layin’ fer you-uns. We seed the reinforcements slide in round ‘Old Crow’, an’ knowed most o’ you-uns would play mumbly-peg ‘fore mornin’. I mought ‘a’ ‘lowed you’d git off unteched, knowing them woods as well as you do.” His silence, his downcast attitude may have shamed the girl, for a change came over her. She cast a hurried glance at the far-off encampment, and a touch of anxiety came into her tone as she added: “You’d better git back into hidin’, John Ericson. The Union soldiers have been sendin’ out searchin’ squads all day fer men that got aloose in the woods. They say they pulled Jake McLain right out ’n his bed. His wife had burnt his rebel uniform an’ said he was a Yank a-lyin’ up sick, but the powder-stains on his face give him away, an’ they tuk him off.”