“I would fight for him till the very last,” Isaac wrote; “he has been so good to me, always noticing me with a bow when he comes into our regiment, as he sometimes does, and when he can, speaking to me a pleasant word. He knows I sawed his sister’s wood, for I told him so. It seemed so mean-like to be passing myself off for better than I am, and you know a soldier’s dress does improve a chap mightily, giving him kind of a dandy air. Why, even Harry Baker and Bill look like gentlemen, though Harry gets drunk awfully, and has been in the guard-house twice, But, as I was saying, Captain Carleton didn’t appear to think a bit less of me, though he struck me on the shoulder, and laughed kind of queer when I said why I told him I sawed Mrs. Mather’s wood, and the next day I saw him talking with our colonel, and heard something about sergeant, and _Isaac Simms_, and ‘too young to be expedient.’ Then, when I met him again, he asked me wasn’t I twenty-one, in such a way that I knew he wanted me to tell him yes; but, mother, I thought of that prayer we said together, the morning I came away, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ and I couldn’t tell a lie, though the answer stuck in my throat and choked me so, but I out with it at last. I said, ‘No, sir, I was only eighteen last Thanksgiving,’ and then his face had the same look it wore when I told him I was a wood-sawyer. ‘And so I suppose you’ll be nineteen next Thanksgiving’ he said, adding ‘You don’t know what you lost by telling the truth so frankly, but the moral gain is much greater than the loss. You are a brave boy, Isaac Simms, and worthy of being a second George Washington.’ I do like him so much! Can’t you send him something, mother, if it’s nothing more than the nice cough-candy you used to make, or some of that poke-ointment? I notice he coughs occasionally, and I heard him say his feet were sore. I’d like to give him something, just to see his handsome white teeth when he laughed, and said ‘Thank you, my boy.’ Oh, I would almost die for Captain Carleton.” Surely, after reading this, the widow could feel no more animosity against the Carletons, on account of Jimmie’s sin. “Every family must have a black sheep,” she said to Annie, though where hers was she could not tell. It surely was not John, nor Eli, nor Isaac, so she guessed it must have been the girl baby that died before ’twas born, and for whom she shed so many tears. She shouldn’t do it again, she’d bet, for if it had lived, it would most likely have cut up some rusty or other, just as Jim Carleton had,—married _Bill Baker_, like as not; and with this consolatory reflection, the widow took up Isaac’s letter for a second time, resolving in her own mind that she would send that Captain Carleton something if she set up nights to make it.