Ericson tried to affect a careless smile, and managed to place his hand on his wounded side. The old man unbuttoned his coat. “Well, I should think so!” he muttered. “He’s lost enough of the life fluid to paint a barn. Quick, Sally, put down a quilt fer ’im to lie on in front o’ the fire!” The girl obeyed as by clock-work, the whiteness of terror and regret in her face. She brought an armful of straw and some quilts and hastily patted out a crude bed for the soldier. “Now,” said the old man, “you must lie down, Johnny.” Ericson sat up erect. “I don’t want to--to be helpless heer,” he stammered. “All through the war I’ve never thought o’ one single thing except Sally, an’ now--” The girl cowered down on the hearth in front of him, and hid her face with her hands. “I didn’t dream you was wounded,” she said. “Ef I’d ‘a’ knowed that, I’d never ‘a’ said what I did. Grandpa told the truth jest now, he did. Lie down, please do!” He raised his eyes to her with a grateful glance. At this juncture the small, remote blast of a bugle fell on their ears, and it struck the tenderness from her great moist eyes. She rose and went to the door. “It’s a searchin’ squad,” she cried, her voice vibrating with fear. “They are at Joe French’s house now. They are shore to come heer next. Ef they take John away he ’ll die!” The old man stared at her rigidly. “We must hide ‘im,” he said. “Sally, he’s an old friend an’ a neighbor. We must hide ‘im!” The wounded soldier stood up, grasped the edge of the mantel-piece and swayed back and forth. There was a sweet comfort in her startled concern that rendered him impervious to fear. “Thar ain’t no place to hide ‘im,” said the girl, with an agonized glance through the doorway toward French’s house. Ericson’s knees began to bend, and he sank into his chair again. “No use,” he muttered. “I ‘lowed I mought git to the woods, but I’d hobble so slow they’d be shore to see me. When they git heer I ’ll tell ‘em you wasn’t harborin’ of me.” The girl turned from the door. “They are a-comin’,” she said. Then her eyes fell on her brother’s uniform. She started, clutched it, and held it toward her grandfather, fired with a sudden hope. “Dress ’im in it,” she said. “I ’ll go out an’ meet ’em an’ tell ‘em nobody ain’t heer except you an’ my wounded brother home on a furlough. The permit is in t’other room. I ’ll show ’em that. They ’ll never dream he ain’t brother when they read the furlough an’ see ’im in the blue uniform.” A sickly smile worked its way through the grimy surface of the soldier’s face as he raised his hand to signify opposition to her suggestion.