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.