"That shows good sperrit, but ef I wuz set to do it I wouldn't. Do you know whar you are an' what's around you, Johnny Reb?"
"No, I don't."
"Wa'al, you're right inside o' the Union lines. The armies o' Patterson an' McDowell hem in all this forest, an' I reckon mebbe it wuz a good thing fur you that the storm came up an' you got past in it. Wuz you expectin', Johnny Reb, to ride right into the Yankee pickets with that Confedrit uniform on?"
"I don't know exactly what I intended to do. I meant to see in the morning. I didn't know I was so far inside their lines."
"You know it now, an' if you're boun' to do what you say you're settin' out to do, then you've got to change clothes. Here, I'll take these an' hide 'em."
He snatched Harry's uniform from the chair, ran up a ladder into a little room under the eaves, and returned with some rough garments under his arm.
"These are my Sunday clothes," he said. "You're pow'ful big fur your years, an' they'll come purty nigh fittin' you. Leastways, they'll fit well enough fur sech times ez these. Now you wear 'em, ef you put any value on your life."
Harry hesitated. He wished to go as a scout, and not as a spy. Clothes could not change a man, but they could change his standing. Yet the words of Perkins were obviously true. But he would not go back. He must do his task.
"I'll take your clothes on one condition, Mr. Perkins," he said, "you must let me pay for them."
"Will it make you feel better to do so?"