es 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?"

"A great deal better."

"All right, then."

Harry took from his saddle bags the purse which he had removed from his
coat pocket when he undressed, and handed a ten dollar gold piece to the
charcoal burner.

"What is it?" asked the charcoal burner.

"A gold eagle, ten dollars."

"I've heard of 'em, but it's the first I've ever seed. I'm bound to say
I regard that shinin' coin with a pow'ful sight o' respeck. But if I
take it I'm makin' three dollars. Them clothes o' mine jest cost seven
dollars an' I've wore 'em four times."

"Count the three dollars in for shelter and gratitude and remember,
you've made your promise."

Perkins took the coin, bit it, pitched it up two or three times,
catching it as it fell, and then put it upon the hearth, where the
blaze could gleam upon it.

"It's shorely a shiner," he said, "an' bein' that it's the first I've
ever had, I reckon I'll take good care of it. Wait a minute."

He picked up the coin again, ran up the ladder into the dark eaves of
the house, and came back without it.

"Now, Johnny Reb," he said, "put on my clothes and see how you feel."

Harry donned the uncouth garb, which fitted