ainly quite an innocent old party," Shorty
answered, consolingly, "and the things he don't know about army life'd
make more'n a pamphlet. But he has a way of wakin' up to the situation
that is sometimes very surprisin'. I wisht I was able to go about with
him, but I think he's fully able to take care o' himself around in camp.
There's always somebody about who won't see an old man and a citizen
imposed on. But what I'm afraid of is that he's wandered out in the
country, huntin' for somethin' for us to eat, and the guerrillas've got
him."

And he and Si shuddered at the thought of that good old man in the hands
of the merciless scoundrels who infested the mountains and woods beyond
the camps.

"Yes," mourned Si, "Pap's likely to mosey out into the country, jest
like he would on Bean Blossom Crick, and stop at the first house he come
to, and set down with 'em on the porch, and talk about the weather, and
the crops, and the measles in the neighborhood, and the revivals, and
the price o' pork and corn, and whether they'd better hold their wheat
till Spring, and who was comin' up for office, and all the time the
bushwhackers'd be sneakin' up on him, an' him know no more 'bout it
than where the blackbirds was roostin'. He's jest that innocent and
unsuspiciouslike."

"If they've ketched him," said Shorty fiercely, "we'll find out
about it, and when we git able, we'll go out there and kill and burn
everything for five miles around. I'll do it, if I have to spend the
rest o' my life at hard labor on the Dry Tortugas."

They heard the rattle of light wheels on the frozen ground outside, and
the hoof-beats of a quickly-moving horse.

"Buggy or spring-wagon," muttered Si with a farmer boy's instinctive
interpretation of such sounds. "What's it doin' in camp? Strange horse.
In better condition than any around here."

The vehicle stopped in front of the corn-crib at the Deacon's command,
"Whoa!"

"Gracious--there's Pap now," ejaculated Si, with whom memory went in
a bound to the many times he had listened for his father's coming and
heard that order.

"Hello, boys," called out the Deacon. "How are you? Shorty, come out
here."

Shorty sprang up with something of his old-time alacrity, and Si made an
effort to rise, but was too weak.

"Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon,
"and let's see what I've got."

By the light of the blazing pine, the Deacon pulled off the cedar boughs
and develope