“Set on it,” she said. “An’ don’t git up, whatever you do.” Then she wrung her hands despairfully as she surveyed the room. A twitching of Ericson’s yellow face warned her that he was returning to consciousness, and a new terror pierced her heart. “Ef he comes to,” she thought, “he ’ll deny being a Union soldier, an’ then they ’ll take ‘im--my God, have pity on the pore boy!” She turned from the door and limped smilingly toward the waiting officer. “Ef brother wakes,” she said, “I hope you won’t git mad at nothin’ he says. Fer the last two days he has been clean out ’n his head. Once he declared to us that he was actu’ly President Jeff Davis. Thar’s no tellin’ what idea may strike ’im next.” “I ’ll try not to wake him,” said the captain. “I ’ll merely step inside very carefully. I wouldn’t do that if--if my men were not watching. You see they’d wonder--” “Come on, then.” The rigidity of a crisis held her features. She entered first, and pushed the great cumbersome door open before her. The old man regarded them with sleepy looks and began to nod again. The officer stood over the form in blue a moment, then peered under the bed, and even up the funnel-shaped chimney. “It’s all right,” he whispered to Sally. Ericson opened his eyes and smiled faintly. The girl comprehended his frame of mind; he had not noticed that his clothes had been changed. “You’ve run me in a hole,” he said to the captain. “I’m ready to go, but I don’t want you to think that these folks are a-harborin’ of me. I come heer uninvited. The truth is, that young lady ordered me off, an’ I’d ‘a’ gone, but I keeled over in the door.” He put a hand on either side of him, and with a strenuous effort managed to sit up. Then he noticed his change of uniform, and as he plucked distastefully at his coat-sleeve, he stared first at the girl and then at the captain. “Why, who’s done this heer?” he asked. “I ain’t no Yankee soldier. I’m a rebel dyed in the wool.” The girl laid her hand on the officer’s arm. “Come on, please, sir; he’s gittin’ excited. Ef we dispute with ‘im he ’ll git to rantin’ awful.” Without a word the officer followed her from the cabin and down toward where his men stood. She walked rapidly, her steps quickened by the rising tones of Ericson’s voice behind her. She put her handkerchief to her dry eyes, and said, plaintively: “I hardly know what to do. We’ve had no end of trouble. First the news come that pa had fell, an’ then brother come home like he is now.” “He looks like a very sick man,” said the officer, with a bluntness peculiar to times of war. “Perhaps I ought to ask our surgeon to run over and take a look at him.” She started, her face fell. “Old Doctor Stone, nigh us, is a-lookin’ after ‘im,” was the hasty product of her bewildered invention. “He ’ll do all that can be done--an’--an’ I want to keep brother from thinkin’ about army folks as much as I can. Will you-uns camp nigh us long?”