“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.
“I couldn’t do that, Sally,” he said. “Not to save my life, I couldn’t. Somehow I think the chances o’ my seein’ another sunrise is dead ag’in’ me, an’ I don’t want to die in any other uniform except the one me an’ my comrades has fought in. I’d as soon wear the clothes of a brother o’ yor ’n as anybody else alive, but I can’t put on blue even to escape arrest. I jest can’t! It would be exactly the same as bein’ a spy, an’ the Lord only knows how a fightin’ man hates that sort of a character.”