“Quick, that will never do!” she cried, causing the old man to look up with a start. Taking a case from a pillow on the bed, she filled it with the gray uniform and crushed it into the bottom of the old man’s chair.
“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.