E-text prepared by Roger Frank
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
([http://www.pgdp.net])
from page images generously made available by
the Google Books Library Project
([https://books.google.com])

GIRLS OF ’64

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

New YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS

ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA

MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

Three short raps upon the window pane.

GIRLS OF ’64

BY

EMILIE BENSON KNIPE

AND

ALDEN ARTHUR KNIPE

Authors of “A Maid of ’76,” “Polly

Trotter, Patriot,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY

EMILIE BENSON KNIPE

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1918

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1918

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1918

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Three short raps upon the window pane]

[A flag of truce, honored alike by the Confederacy and the Union]

[Young Stanchfield struggled to sit up]

[“Dorothea met a Union officer in Coulter Woods”]

GIRLS OF ’64

CHAPTER I

NEWS FROM THE NORTH

Corinne twisted and turned before the mirror over the console table, flicked a speck of powder from her sacque and stood back to regard herself appreciatively. She felt her toilette to be extremely distinguished when war deprivations were taken into account.

“I’m ready,” she drawled, addressing her cousin. “If we-all don’t want to be late we might as well start. It’s ’most train-time.”

Harriot settled back in her chair and began to rock furiously.

“I don’t think I’ll go to the dêpot to-day,” she said finally.

Corinne looked at her indignantly.

“What did you let me take all the trouble to powder my nose for then?” she demanded. “You know ma won’t let me go alone in that crowd, and there’s sure to be some news.”

“Oh, bother the news!” Harriot murmured under her breath, unconsciously turning her head to look in the direction of the kitchen.

“Harriot May!” cried Corinne disapprovingly, “you speak as if you didn’t care about the victories of our great Confederacy.”

“But they aren’t always victories,” Harriot returned bluntly. “That’s the trouble. We’re just as apt to hear that the hateful Yankees have beaten us again and—and besides, I’d rather stay here, anyhow.” Once more she turned an eye toward the cooking-quarters and sniffed.

“You’re not thinking of eating again?” Corinne demanded.

“Yes, I am,” Harriot answered blandly. “Aunt Decent’s going to make corn meal poundcake and if we hang ’round the kitchen she’ll bake us each a little patty-pan.”

“You’re such a child,” Corinne said, with the patronizing smile fifteen bestows upon twelve; but if she expected Harriot to resent her grown-up airs she must have been disappointed. The “child” suddenly jumped to her feet as a faint odor of baking drifted into the room.

“Come on, Corinne!” she insisted, “Aunt Decent is taking the first pan out of the oven now. Besides, I’ll coax her to give us some cush to feed Saretta’s baby. She’s sure to be there after clabber.”

Corinne followed, still protesting; but cakes were not so plentiful in the South during this, the second year of the war, that even a girl who preferred to think herself very much of a young lady could afford to scorn them.

“Well, the train’s always late anyway,” she murmured indulgently, as if in excuse for letting her cousin have her own way.

Led by Harriot the two went toward the kitchen by a circuitous route as if they had just happened to pass by. Outside the door was a group of colored mothers and orphan-tenders, awaiting the special rations which were doled out to little babies, and among them was Saretta with Aunt Decent’s newest grandchild in her arms. Harriot, wise in the management of the dusky autocrat, said nothing of patty-pans until she had stuffed the baby. Then she broached the subject tentatively.

“Land sakes, but you is the eatin’est child!” Aunt Decent exclaimed heartily, and that was sufficient assurance that there would be a special portion of the coveted poundcake for the two girls.

“I wish I had gone over to the Polks. Cousin Sally would have walked to the dêpot with me,” Corinne hinted with conscious cunning. Harriot, who had no other cousins in Georgia, was decidedly jealous of Corinne’s many relatives.

“I’ll go to the dêpot with you now,” Harriot said good-naturedly. “Not that I care anything about your old train,” she added, as they started off.

“Its arrival is the only thing that ever happens in this stupid little town,” Corinne snapped.

“Maybe,” Harriot agreed, “but how any one can enjoy seeing a crowd of ladies in black silk Talmas covered with dust, is more than I can understand.”

“There are the wounded officers,” Corinne suggested, a trifle self-consciously.

“Yes, all trying to look interesting,” Harriot answered, with more than a trace of scorn in her tone.

Corinne regarded her askance for a moment.

“What in the world has come over you to-day?” she asked. “That’s no way to speak of our heroes. If you weren’t my very own cousin—”

“Well, I am,” Harriot interrupted, “and I’m just as much for the South as any one.”

“More so than some, I hope,” Corinne interrupted in her turn.

Harriot stopped short in her tracks.

“If you say a word about mother being a Submissionist, I’ll never speak to you again,” she threatened seriously.

“I wasn’t going to mention Aunt Parthenia,” Corinne asserted, but the younger girl shook her head as if she were not so sure of this.

“Just because mother didn’t think we should have seceded doesn’t make her a traitor to the South,” she continued earnestly. “Besides, April is rebel enough for a whole family.”

The girls walked on again in silence. They had touched upon a delicate subject, and Corinne, with unusual good sense, held her tongue until they reached the railroad shed where the expected train was just coming to a stop.

A large crowd had already gathered to hear the latest news of the outside world. Because the mails were seriously interrupted and few newspapers were published in the South, the people of the towns and villages were almost wholly dependent upon the information to be picked up from travelers; so, for miles about the little town of Washington, Georgia, the inhabitants of the district drove or rode in to meet the daily train.

This particular afternoon there was an unusually large crowd clustered around the wheezy engine with its string of shabby coaches.

“More wounded,” Harriot whispered, nodding toward a number of flat cars attached to the end of the train.

“I don’t think so,” Corinne answered, a little excitedly. “They’re filled with ladies and gentlemen, and there’s something going on. Lets get closer.”

They elbowed their way through the press until they came within earshot of a Confederate officer, who was speaking to the assemblage. His arm was in a sling and over his shoulders he had a faded blanket shawl which, with his threadbare gray uniform, gave him a most dilapidated appearance. But his audience, well used to the sight of ragged soldiers, listened with marked attention to his words.

“It has as much force as a soap-bubble,” the officer was saying as the girls came within sound of his voice. “Just suppose Abe Lincoln took it into his head that it was wrong to keep birds in cages. And then suppose he issued a proclamation to France ordering her to open all her cage doors and let out the birds. Does anybody think France would pay any attention to it? Of course not! They would insist, first of all, that the birds would starve if they were let out. Secondly, they would say it was none of Lincoln’s business and, lastly, they would know, just as we know, that the birds don’t want their freedom.”

“What has Abe Lincoln to do with French birds?” Harriot whispered.

“Hush!” Corinne admonished her, straining her ears to catch the next words.

“Well, my friends,” the officer went on, “that’s the way it is with this Emancipation Proclamation. You know, and I know, that our servants don’t want to be free. They wouldn’t know what to do with freedom if they had it—and it’s none of Abe Lincoln’s business anyway! What authority has he over our great Confederacy? Not that much!” and he snapped his fingers with a fine gesture of indifference. “No more than he has over France. For two years he has been trying to beat us and now, ladies and gentlemen, he’s getting desperate. This proclamation is his last move to scare us. He knows at last that Cotton is King. And, let me tell you, the Knights of the Golden Circle are not idle. The North is about ready to give up. This proclamation doesn’t amount—”

The train gave a jerk and, starting off, put an end to his oratory. The crowd cheered as the passenger cars moved slowly away to carry the news to the next stopping-place along the line.

But there was a lack of heartiness in the shouts of applause, and a rather silent group of people hurried toward their homes. Men looked at each other with sober faces and shook their heads somewhat doubtfully.

“I’m going straight back to ma,” said Corinne, as the two girls turned to retrace their steps.

“But the patty-pans!” Harriot exclaimed. “They’ll be done by the time we get home.”

“Save mine till to-morrow,” Corinne answered. “Ma’s sure to want to talk to Aunt Parthenia in the morning, and I’ll come over with her.”

The Stewarts and the Mays lived at opposite ends of the town so that the girls separated immediately. Harriot, thinking of corn meal poundcake, hurried to the cook-house. Perhaps because she feared to be tempted, she put Corinne’s portion out of sight at once, then munching her own share, went in search of her mother.

She had not been at all impressed by the harangue she had heard at the station. That sort of speech-making was no new thing to her, and she had failed wholly to grasp the significance of what the Confederate officer had said. Nevertheless she knew that her mother would be interested in any news arriving by the train and was ready enough to report what she had heard.

The town house of the May family was a spacious building. On one side of a wide hall were the parlors. On the other were the breakfast and state dining-rooms. Back of these were various offices for the administration of the estates. At each end of the dining-room, looms for homespun had been set up; for the many slaves, both in town and on the plantations, had to be clothed as well as fed. It was here that Mrs. May spent the greater portion of her days at this time of year. The spinning-wheels humming made an accompaniment to the clang of the battens; and several old colored women, wearing gay bandanas, bent their heads over a basket of cotton which had just been brought in. Aunt Decent’s daughter Isabel was busily carding and near the great fire-place Jim’s Jimmy was standing. It was his business to keep the fire going, and the heat made the child so drowsy that he was not allowed to sit down, for fear he would fall sound asleep and tumble into the flames.

As Harriot entered the room, Mrs. May stepped back and forth following her thread before the loom, with a slow grace that brought to mind pictures of stately minuets that might have been danced in years past upon the very floor over which she moved so lightly.

“You’re just in time, my dear,” she called, catching sight of Harriot. “I need some one to reel thread into hanks for me.”

Harriot set to work willingly.

“I’ve just come back from the dêpot,” she began, once the task was well started. “There were a lot of people there to-day.”

“What news did you hear?” asked Mrs. May.

“Oh, nothing much,” Harriot replied. “There was an officer made a speech about birds in cages and freedom and France. He was wounded in the arm, but people didn’t seem to care about what he said. At least they didn’t cheer nearly as much as I’ve heard sometimes.”

“Was it about the fighting?” Mrs. May’s tone was anxious, for she had both a husband and a son in the Confederate army.

“No,” drawled Harriot, “it wasn’t interesting. It was all about old Abe Lincoln and a Proclam—”

“Harriot,” Mrs. May interrupted abruptly, “suppose you run upstairs to April and see if you can’t help her with her hair. She’s to take supper at Pettigrew’s.”

“But mother,” Harriot began, surprised at this unusual request.

“Run along, honey,” her mother insisted. “And send Merry down to me.”

Somewhat puzzled, Harriot left the busy room and ran to the floor above, entering her sister’s chamber without ceremony to find April standing, slight, fair and very beautiful, while her brown maid, Merry, laced her stays. Her wonderful blond hair had already been woven into an intricate crown, and, at sight of it, Harriot flopped into a chair.

“Mother wants Merry,” she announced. “Don’t ask me why, ’cause I don’t know.”

April regarded her young sister for a moment without speaking.

“Mother said I was to help with your hair. I knew you wouldn’t let me touch your precious yellow wig,” Harriot went on. “But it wasn’t a bit of use my telling her that. I suppose I might just as well go down again.”

“If mother sent you up here, you’d better stay,” April remarked knowingly. “Merry can go as soon as I’m laced.”

“All right,” agreed the good-natured Harriot, “though I don’t see why—. Mammy says you’ll have a red nose ‘sho’ as you’he bohn’ if you wear your things so tight.”

“And she says you won’t have ‘a toof in yoh haid’ if you eat so much poundcake,” April retorted with a laugh. “You can go down to Old Miss, Merry,” she added to the maid.

But the door had hardly closed upon Merry when April turned a serious face to her sister.

“What were you blabbing that made mother send you up here?” she demanded.

Harriot was genuinely surprised and injured.

“Not one earthly thing,” she declared stoutly. “Corinne and I went to the dêpot to hear the news and I had just begun to tell mother about it. I didn’t say a thing in the world.”

“What is the news?” April inquired anxiously. “Has Rosecrans—”

“I tell you I didn’t hear a thing about the war,” Harriot insisted, much aggrieved. “If I had, it isn’t a crime to mention it, is it? Besides, I’d only begun when mother sent me up to you. There was a man talking about Abe Lincoln and a proclamation, letting the birds free or something. I didn’t understand much of it.”

“What have Abe Lincoln’s proclamation to do with us?” said April sharply, more to herself than to her sister.

At that moment Mrs. May came into the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

“I have no doubt the proclamation is the promised emancipation of the slaves, honey,” she suggested quietly, having overheard April’s question. “I didn’t wish it mentioned before the women downstairs. There is no use unsettling the quarters yet. But they’ll learn of it fast enough; for, from now on, the negroes are free.”

“Mother!” exclaimed April passionately, “how can you say such things? What does the South care for Lincoln’s proclamation? And as for the slaves—they’ll do as they’re bid. They know they can’t escape the hounds just because a miserable Yankee says they’re free.”

Mrs. May looked at her beautiful daughter in silence for a moment, shaking her head gently. When she spoke it was with a note of sadness in her voice.

“It hurts me to hear you talk like that, my child, even though I know you don’t mean it. You are no more capable of sending the hounds after one of our people than I am.”

“Oh, well, our servants will never leave us,” April replied with deep conviction. “What difference does this proclamation make to us? Mr. Davis is the President of our country, not Abe Lincoln.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand, dear,” Mrs. May replied patiently. “As I see it, this proclamation gives the Confederacy its death-blow. England, which has been seizing slave ships and fighting slavery for many years, cannot side with the South in this war when slavery is made the open issue. Without her aid what shall we do? You know how short we are already of necessities. If England refuses to supply us, how can we go on?”

“Oh, but, mother, we must beat them,” April cried. “We shall find a way.”

“Honey,” Mrs. May went on earnestly, “I want to prepare you for what is coming. Remember how rapidly our resources are dwindling and—”

“Our soldiers are the bravest in the world,” April broke in vehemently. “The Yankees can never beat them!”

“That may be true,” her mother admitted, “but they cannot fight without powder for their guns. Think of the shifts we are already put to. Your father has just written me to have the smoke-house floor dug up and boiled for the salt that may be obtained. There is talk of sacrificing the tobacco crop to get the niter in it. Wool is so precious that it is against the law to kill a sheep—and look!” she went on, holding out her slender hands stained with dyes. “In order to barely clothe our people I must work as I never expected to in my life. Of that I do not complain, but do you not see that this cannot go on indefinitely? For a year or two we may manage to exist; but the end is certain. I want you to realize it, my child.”

April trembled for a moment and then with a brave toss of her head she lifted her eyes to her mother’s.

“I’m going to a party and I shan’t cry,” she insisted, struggling with the emotions that threatened to bring hot tears. “We’re obliged to win! We just must! I’ll wear Georgia jeans—I’ll starve for the cause. I would die for it, mother, if it would help us to win!”

It was not sheer bravado that had brought forth this explosion. April was quite sincere in what she said. The cause of the South was right and holy in her eyes and she was ready to meet, with cheerfulness, any sacrifice that might be demanded of her. To doubt for a moment a successful issue of the struggle seemed to her like a confession of disloyalty.

This her mother well understood, but she also had a fuller realization of the issues at stake and the resources of the contending forces.

“My darling April,” she said gently, “I don’t want to spoil your party but it is better that you should learn from me what this proclamation means to the South. You will surely hear more of it tonight, but now it will not come to you as a bitter surprise. Let us drop the matter for the present and I’ll help you into this,” she continued, picking up from the bed a skirt of ruffled pink tarleton. “Harry, light more candles. We’ll be extravagant for once and take a good look at sister in all her finery. It may be the last to run the blockade.”

Harriot sprang to her feet to light an improvised candle which consisted of a corncob wrapped with a twisted wick dipped in resin and wax. As there were no matches to be had she was forced to kindle it from the small fire burning on the hearth.

But, as she stooped, April shook her head decidedly.

“No, Harry, don’t,” she cried, crossing the room hurriedly. “Just set the logs blazing and you shall see me by fire-light and so save our candles. I’m beginning to realize what is the matter with us-all of the South. We’re ready enough with fine words or big brave deeds, but we neglect the little things and so waste our resources. From now on, I mean to make the small sacrifices that are needed. If we all do that, we shall be able to endure to the end and win!”

April was barely seventeen, but she spoke with a fresh spirit of resolution and sincerity, and there was a thoughtfulness in her beautiful face that gave it a look of dawning maturity.

“And I’ll do my share, too!” Harriot exclaimed, carried away by her sister’s enthusiasm. “I can do it, if April can. Hereafter I’ll not eat so much poundcake—and I’ll see that Corinne doesn’t, either.”

Mrs. May smiled a little sadly, wishing, perhaps, that this willingness to accept privations had been born of faith in another and better cause.

CHAPTER II

A STRANGE GUEST

The year 1863, which was ushered in by the Emancipation Proclamation, was one of steadily waning fortune for the Confederate Cause. Even temporary successes in Virginia or elsewhere could hardly blind the South to such blows as the loss of Vicksburg and the Union victory of Gettysburg. Hope flared up after Chickamauga, but 1864 opened with no better prospect than had 1863, and resources dwindled steadily. Food became so scarce that many were actually near the starvation point. In the State of Georgia, however, which, as yet, the war had touched but lightly, there was comparative plenty, and the people of little Washington, though they were forced to give up many seeming necessities, lived in tolerable comfort.

Thus Mrs. May’s predictions apparently were far from fulfillment, and April’s conviction of the ultimate victory of the South was strengthened. Moreover, Georgia crops were counted upon to feed the army, and this kept men at home in legitimate employment and the life of the community took on a semblance of what it was in normal times. Officers on recruiting service or attached to the military prisons at Andersonville and Millen, were to be seen everywhere; so that there was no lack of escorts for ladies, who never stirred out of their native towns without a gentleman in attendance.

There was a continual round of parties and balls which, though they lacked the lavishness of former occasions, were gay and lively in spite of conditions that might well have depressed a less sanguine people.

And, as was natural, there was no hint upon the part of the soldiers that victory for the Southern arms was in the slightest degree doubtful. The gallant captains and lieutenants who, with the courtly grace of their time, bowed low over the dainty hands of their fair partners in the dance, never failed to promise success with so sincere a conviction that those who listened thereafter turned a deaf ear to all suggestions of possible defeat.

That the Yankees had won battles was not denied; but it served only to increase the bitterness in the hearts of most Confederates, and there was a good deal of talk at this time of seizing property belonging to those who were suspected of sympathizing with the North, of whom there were more than a few in the State. But this came to nothing. There were, indeed, some among the far-seeing Southerners who were not above placing a portion of their crops in the hands of these Union men, thinking thus to save a little from the inevitable wreck.

On the whole, however, April’s firm faith in the triumph of her cause appeared to be justified. As month after month passed, the memory of her mother’s warning grew less impressive. Moreover, the proclamation freeing the slaves had had no effect whatever upon the negroes owned by Colonel May, for they were well and kindly treated. Throughout the country generally there was more or less restlessness to be noted among the colored population, but those of them who ran away fled from indifferent or cruel masters, and the better class of Southerners showed little sympathy for such owners.

Moreover Mrs. May was one of the Kentucky Harriots who had always opposed secession. She had even heard herself referred to, in whispers to be sure, as “Henry May’s Yankee wife.” And in her own family she had never concealed a certain understanding of the North and had deplored the action of those hot-heads and politicians who had precipitated the conflict. But her husband was the colonel of a Georgia regiment, and her son, a lieutenant, and it never occurred to her to oppose their decision once it was taken.

Between April and her mother there was a very deep and true bond of affection; but, when Mrs. May strove to soften her daughter’s bitterness toward the Union, the girl could not forget the fact that Kentucky was largely loyal to the North, and discounted her mother’s opinion as being tinged with Yankee sentiments which a true Georgian could not accept. Thus, while there was no breach in their love for each other, the elder woman realized that circumstances made it impossible for her to ease the blow she believed must some day shatter April’s hopes. And the girl, seeing nothing of the increasing misery outside her own prosperous circle, and hearing only the most optimistic predictions from the scores of young officers who danced attendance upon her whenever the opportunity afforded, grew increasingly confident and was more than ever ready to testify to her loyalty by a resentment toward anything that savored of sympathy for her enemies. Yet out of this well-nigh fanatical spirit unhappiness was bound to come. Already April hid a secret sorrow which sometimes brought tears to wet her pillow ere she went to sleep.

The passing of a year changed Harriot but little. She was still a most practical and unsentimental young person who looked upon the procuring of food for herself as the first duty of a growing girl. It was with no surprise, therefore, that Mortality, another of Aunt Decent’s granddaughters, found her, one warm day in the early part of 1864, discreetly screened behind some shrubbery, munching persimmon dates.

“Oh, here yoh is!” exclaimed Mortality, flopping down on the grass beside the rustic chair on which Harriot sat. “Ah was a-thinkin’ yoh might know who-all ’tis what’s comin’ in. More refugee-ers, I ’spects.”

“Oh, goodness!” cried Harriot, standing up suddenly and peering through the bushes at a rather dilapidated ambulance drawn by two very thin mules which was slowly nearing the house. “If any more people come here I’ll have to sleep in a trundle bed in April’s room.”

Harriot’s wail was not without justice. Already the May house was overflowing with less fortunate individuals who had been driven out of their own homes or who were breaking their journeys about the country. The rich planters of the South boasted of their hospitality, and now that war had brought privations to less fortunate friends they felt an added obligation to share all they possessed. Every household that could afford it, sheltered some “refugees,” as those were called who had been forced to forsake their own homes.

But this new arrival at the May establishment hardly appeared to be one of these. As Harriot watched, she saw a young girl maneuver her wide hoops through the narrow door of the ancient vehicle and proceed gravely about the business of superintending the disposal of her luggage upon the broad piazza. Then, having paid the driver, the newcomer sat down upon one of her brass-studded boxes with a sigh of relief.

“’Clare to goodness,” chuckled Mortality, “that fancy miss ac’s lack she’d done come to stay. An she don’t appear to have no folks neither.”

“She must have come to the wrong house,” Harriot whispered. She had watched the proceedings of the stranger with increasing interest. There were no congenial girls of her own age living near, and her cousin Corinne was too grown-up to have any fun with these days. Harriot would have been glad to find a playmate; but she shook her head, being certain that this calm young stranger had made a mistake. No such guest was expected, that she knew.

“Mother and April are away, so I reckon I’d better tell her,” she went on half to herself, and, stepping out briskly from behind the shrubbery, she hurried toward the house, followed by Mortality.

“This is Mr. Henry May’s house,” Harriot began at once. “Colonel Henry May, you know. He’s my father, but of course he’s with the army.” She paused a moment, but no answer being forthcoming she continued rather breathlessly: “Mrs. Gordon May’s place is over on the Abbeville road. Perhaps they are the ones you’re looking for—or maybe the Beaumont Mays, though they’re no kin to us and are living in Augusta now.”

Again she paused, but the only response was a widening of the girl’s smile, and Harriot grew slightly embarrassed; but she noted the well-made and rather fashionable clothes of this silent stranger and her regret continued to deepen.

“It’s a pity that man drove off so fast,” she went on, feeling that some one must talk. “Our horses have mostly been pressed, and I don’t know what I’ll find to send you away in, ’specially as mother and April are at the Ladies’ Aid meeting, sewing for the soldiers. But of course I’m ’bliged to find something.”

“’Deed, Miss Harry, ’tain’t no use talkin’,” Mortality half whispered. “Don’t you-all see she’s one of ’em dumbies?”

At this the strange girl laughed outright, a bright, cheerful laugh that set Harriot to smiling too.

“Really I’m not dumb,” the visitor said with a chuckle. “I’ve just been wondering what happened to all my letters. I wrote weeks ago that I was coming.”

“Oh, you did?” Harriot replied vaguely. “Well, of course, now-a-days letters never go where you expect them to.”

The other nodded calmly, and Harriot regarded her with increasing admiration. She was so cool and self-possessed.

“At any rate, I’m here now!” the girl on the trunk remarked philosophically. “It’s too late to help that, isn’t it? But, if I’m in the way, I can go back to New York, can’t I? Though it’ll probably be no end of trouble.”

“To New York!” Harriot exclaimed incredulously. “Did you run the blockade?”

“No,” the other answered rather regretfully. “I wanted to—it would be a fine adventure, wouldn’t it?—but I wasn’t allowed. Papa wished me to travel by land, so they sent me down under a flag of truce. This is your mother coming in, isn’t it?”

A carriage was rolling briskly into the drive and in another moment it drew up at the block near the porch. As Mrs. May descended the stranger slipped down from the trunk and went to meet her.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Parthenia,” she said precisely. “I fancy I should have waited for an invitation from you, shouldn’t I? But father had to leave so unexpectedly—and even though we had had no answer to our letters he said it would be best for me to come, as he had information that you were still here. If you don’t want me, I suppose I can arrange for another flag of truce to go back under, can’t I?”

There was just the shadow of a break in the gentle voice as the strange girl said this; and the crisp pronunciation with its broad “a,” so different from the slow Southern drawl, held a certain appeal that went straight to Mrs. May’s heart.

“My dear child, of course you must stay,” she said, taking the young girl in her motherly arms. “You are most welcome but—but, honey, who are you?”

CHAPTER III

A GLIMPSE OF MR. LINCOLN

At Mrs. May’s question the strange girl drew back from the motherly embrace and glanced up at the older woman almost reproachfully. “I should think you would know who I am when I called you ‘Aunt Parthenia,’” she said.

“My dear,” Mrs. May hastened to reply, “half of Alabama and nearly all of Georgia call me ‘Aunt Parthenia.’ Between the Mays and the Harriots I have so many connections that I can’t remember them all. Especially those I’ve never seen.”

The girl’s face brightened immediately.

“I am Dorothea Drummond,” she announced, and with the words the mystery was ended. Once more she was folded in Mrs. May’s arms with a warmth that left no doubt of the affection that prompted it.

“Susie’s baby!” Mrs. May exclaimed. “My little sister’s baby! Girls! Girls!” she cried excitedly to her two daughters, “this is your own cousin from England.”

“I’m mighty glad you did come to the right place after all!” Harriot burst out, taking her cousin’s hand and shaking it vigorously.

“Even though you thought I was a ‘dumby’?” Dorothea laughed back, with a twinkle in her eye.

“I never did think so,” Harriot protested, and then turned to Mortality, who was gaping curiously. “Itty, you run to Aunt Decent right off and tell her my cousin, Miss Dorothea, is here, and is as hungry as she can be. We’ll be out presently. Run now. You are hungry, of course,” she went on, addressing Dorothea, as Mortality scampered away. “You’re ’bliged to be, after coming all the way from England.”

By this time April had dismissed the carriage and joined them.

“We are very glad to see you, Dorothea,” she said, leaning down and kissing the girl warmly. Her welcome was sincere, for not only was she attracted by Dorothea’s appearance, but the fact that this new cousin had come from England, where the South still counted upon sympathy for their cause, was an additional reason for cordiality. “I thought you were about my age,” she added with an inviting smile.

“I am past fifteen,” Dorothea replied.

“Then you’re my cousin most!” Harriot insisted. “I’m not fourteen yet, but you’re nearer my age than you are April’s.”

“You’re just a baby, Harry,” April teased.

“Oh, it’s horrid to be the youngest!” her sister protested. “Your family never want you to grow up.”

“I think it’s rather worse to be both the youngest and the oldest,” Dorothea put in, laughing. “Then you’re expected to be both grown-up and a baby, too.”

“All the same you’re mostly my age,” Harriot maintained stoutly, and, as if to seal their friendship, she, too, kissed Dorothea enthusiastically.

“But that doesn’t make her any more your cousin than she is mine,” April contended. “You needn’t think, Harry, that you are going to have Dorothea all to yourself.”

It was said so sweetly that the newcomer, looking up into the face of the radiant girl before her, felt a warm throb in her heart. She was no longer a stranger. Her experiences in New York and Washington had not served to break through the reserve that she came, one day, to recognize as the British side of her character; but her welcome here had none of the English formality to which she was accustomed. This Southern greeting, with its frank cordiality, stirred within her a response hitherto unknown. She was a little puzzled at the dawning of a new day in her outlook upon life.

“You girls will have to share a cousin, but she is all my niece,” Mrs. May laughed. “Come in, my dear,” she went on, putting an arm about Dorothea. “You will find that we are without many things to make you as comfortable as we should like; but we are not the least, tiny bit less glad to see you on that account.”

She led the way into the breakfast room where a substantial “refreshment” was being prepared for this latest guest. And here, after she had eaten a little, Dorothea told of her experiences in Washington before she started South.

“I really did come from England to visit you, Aunt Parthenia,” she said. “You know you wrote many times that you would be glad to see me.”

“Of course!” Mrs. May nodded.

“Well,” the girl went on, “father had to come over on diplomatic business, and I begged him to bring me because I wanted to know my relations in America. When we sailed every one thought that the war would be ended by the time we arrived; but it wasn’t, so I stayed with father in Washington. I wrote you as soon as we landed, saying I was coming; and father had the letter sent through the lines. But, of course, I was not very much surprised at not hearing from you; though it never occurred to me that you might not have received my letter. Then, quite suddenly, just when we were nicely settled, father was ordered to South America.”

“And was he ’bliged to go?” demanded Harriot, munching the remains of a pecan praline garnered from Dorothea’s lunch.

“Oh, of course,” her cousin answered. “That is the way it always is in the Diplomatic Service. You can’t ever tell where you may be sent the next day. There was a ship leaving almost immediately, and father only had an hour or two to get ready if he was to reach New York in time to sail. He was for starting me back to England with Fräulein—”

“Who was she?” asked April.

“My governess and companion,” Dorothea replied with a laugh. “I wonder where she is now, poor Fräulein? Well, I teased father to let me try to come here if I could safely, and he said I might. Then he took the train, and a few days afterward I started South.”

“But, my dear,” Mrs. May exclaimed, “there must have been something more than that. How could you travel without an escort?”

“Besides, the Yankees would never let you through their lines,” April put in bitterly. “Did you run the blockade?”

“I thought for a little while I should have to, if I was to come at all,” Dorothea continued. “You see, just before he left, father wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, asking that I be permitted to go through the Union lines on my way here. So the next day I went to see Mr. Stanton. It was a long time before I was let into his office; but at last I was, and he sat at a large desk with father’s letter, which I had sent in to him, in his hand. He looked at me pretty sharply.

“‘Well, young lady,’ he began at once. ‘You might have spared yourself this trip. I have issued the last pass through our lines.’

“He said it as if he were rather pleased to have a chance to growl at me. You see the English are not popular in Washington—”

“That is to their everlasting credit,” April broke in warmly. “They are all friends of the Confederacy.”

“That is what Mr. Stanton was thinking,” Dorothea went on, nodding her head wisely. “Father had warned me that there might be trouble. The Secretary, of course, didn’t want to offend the English if he could help it, and I didn’t mean to be put off so easily.

“‘Surely you could let me have a pass, sir, couldn’t you?’ I pleaded.

“‘I could—but I won’t,’ he answered gruffly.

“‘My father thought you might take his position somewhat into consideration,’ I suggested meekly.

“‘Then he should have written to Seward!’ the Secretary of War snapped out angrily. ‘I am not one of those who think it would do any good to our cause to favor the English.’

“‘But the Drummonds are Scots, sir,’ I reminded him, at which he threw up his head like a restive horse.

“‘It is the same thing,’ he cried.

“‘Ye’ll nae find a Scotsman agreein’ wi’ ye in that, Mr. Secretary,’ I retorted, for you know we are not English and it annoys us to have people think we are.

“Before he could reply we were both surprised to hear a low chuckle of amusement and I turned to meet the gaze of a tall, lanky man, whom, of course, I recognized at once.”

“Abe Lincoln!” ejaculated Harriot scornfully, and Dorothea eyed her younger cousin with a momentary look of surprise.

“You’d never think of calling him that if once you’d seen him,” she went on slowly. “I don’t know quite how to describe him—”

“They say he’s the ugliest man in America,” April interrupted with a laugh of derision.

“Oh, but he isn’t ugly!” Dorothea protested earnestly. “Truly he isn’t. He’s not like any other man I ever saw. I looked up into his face, and it was so sad that my heart just ached and I felt that I wanted to comfort him, only—only there wasn’t any way I could do it, was there? And he was tired, too, dreadfully tired. You could tell from the droop of his body—and his eyes. But all that I noticed later. When I turned round first, he was smiling and watching me with so pleasant a look that I wasn’t at all afraid or embarrassed, as one would have expected.

“‘Well, little girl,’ he said, just as father might have said it, ‘I think you scored on the Secretary of War that time; though indeed we all make the same mistake in this country. But what is it all about?’

“He put his hand on my shoulder and we stood together before Mr. Stanton, who scowled up at us for all the world like an angry schoolmaster at two naughty pupils.

“‘The young lady is the daughter of Mr. Drummond of the British Embassy,’ the Secretary grudgingly explained. ‘She wishes to go to Georgia, and I have just told her that it is impossible.’

“‘Hum!’ murmured Mr. Lincoln, looking down at me with a twinkle in his eye though his face was quite sober. ‘So you think she is too dangerous a person to receive a pass through our lines, Mr. Secretary?’

“‘I intend to issue no more passes, Mr. President,’ Mr. Stanton said bluntly.

“Again Mr. Lincoln looked down at me, drawing a long face.

“‘You know he’s quite right,’ he murmured, half to himself. ‘The pass privilege has been greatly abused, no doubt of that, and when the Secretary of War puts his foot down there’s no moving him. I suppose we’ll have to go over to the Secretary of State and see what he can do for us.’

“Mr. Stanton snorted.

“‘Mr. President!’ he exploded, ‘is our cause to be jeopardized by the weakness of a man who can’t say “No”?’

“‘Is our cause so weak that it will be put in jeopardy by letting a little girl pass through our lines?’ Mr. Lincoln answered patiently.

“I don’t know what Mr. Stanton might have said to that, for before he could speak a man in uniform came hurrying in with a dispatch in his hand which he laid on the desk. The messenger himself seemed excited and much pleased, as if he bore good news. The Secretary glanced at it and then jumped to his feet with an exclamation of delight.

“‘This is better than we could possibly have expected, Mr. President!’ he cried, handing the paper to Mr. Lincoln. I do not know what it was all about, but it was plainly something which was favorable to the North, and I watched Mr. Lincoln as he took the message, only to see an expression of deep sadness come over his face. Whatever he read on the yellow slip in his hand brought no gladness to his heart. He stood there, forgetting all about us, and gazed out of the window with the look of one who had learned of a great sorrow.

“Mr. Stanton watched him for a moment and seemed to grow irritated at his lack of enthusiasm.

“‘Are you displeased with the news, Mr. President?’ he asked irritably.

“‘My grief is for all those who suffer,’ was the quiet answer and Mr. Lincoln handed back the message to the Secretary who sat down at his desk again.

“Then the President turned to me once more and, noting that Mr. Stanton was busying himself with other matters, he led me into an alcove beside a wide window and asked me all about myself; who I was, why I wanted to go South and if I was interested in the war? And I told him the truth, which was that I hadn’t thought very much about it.”

“And then I suppose he asked you if you’d read ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and gave you a copy,” April cut in sarcastically.

Dorothea gave a funny little chuckle.

“Not exactly, but he did wish to know if I’d read it and what I thought of it. And I said I thought it very long, at which he seemed highly amused and agreed with me heartily. After that, for some time, he looked out of the window evidently thinking deeply, all the while jingling some keys or coins in his pocket, but at length he spoke again.

“‘My dear,’ he said, gently, ‘you tell me you are going South on a visit to a little country village. Perhaps, down there, you may escape this war. Maybe before you return it will be all over; but remember that the South is a part of my country as dear to me as is the North. I have ready a Proclamation of Amnesty for the whole South, from Mr. Davis down to the humblest citizen, which shall be published the moment they lay down their arms.’”

“The South will not have to beg Mr. Lincoln for mercy!” cried April. “But he seems to have made a Yankee of you, Cousin Dorothea,” she added, a little suspiciously.

“Oh, no,” Dorothea answered quickly. “I’ve always been for the South, you know. ’Most everybody in England is, but I do admire Mr. Lincoln. I can’t help that. He’s queer, and his clothes don’t fit him, and—and—Oh, I can’t explain what I feel—but, when you talk to him, you know in your heart that he is a great man.”

She spoke so earnestly and seriously that for a moment her hearers were impressed and there was silence around the table.

“I want to hear about your coming through the lines,” Harriot broke out at last. “It must have been great fun.”

“I think that had better wait till Dorothea is settled down,” Mrs. May said, rising to her feet. “Come with me, my dear, and I’ll show you to your room.”

CHAPTER IV

UNPACKING TRUNKS

“It’s a charming room, Aunt Parthenia!” Dorothea exclaimed, glancing out of the window overlooking the box-edged beds of the flower garden, but noting particularly the cheerful blaze on the hearth. “I shall love it here so much that I shan’t ever want to go away again.”

Mrs. May turned from straightening the curtains at the front where the windows opened on the gallery roof.

“That’s very prettily said, my dear,” she returned. “We shouldn’t like anything better than to have you stay always in your American home.”

There was a suspicion of tears in Dorothea’s eyes as she looked up at her aunt and then, impulsively, she put her arms about the elder woman with a convulsive hug.

“I really have never had a home,” she murmured, half to herself; and Mrs. May, understanding what was in the girl’s heart, patted her shoulder lovingly.

“April is next door to you and I’m just across the hall,” Harriot explained a moment later.

“Where she can look down upon the cook-house, and see just what’s going on,” April said, banteringly.

“Indeed I can,” Harriot admitted unblushingly. “I always know what Aunt Decent is baking by the smells coming in at the windows. You’ll find that my room has decided advantages, Dorothea.”

While they were waiting for the trunks to be brought up Dorothea, yielding to Harriot’s insistent demands for the story of her adventures on the way from Washington, told briefly what had happened.

“It wasn’t very much,” she began. “Everything was made very easy for me, and all the people I met were so pleasant and kind, that it seemed as if I was finding friends wherever I went. All the Americans are like that, aren’t they? It’s different in England. Of course, as I might have expected though I didn’t, Fräulein lost all her courage and refused to go. You might have thought she would have to fight. She talked of both armies as if they wouldn’t have anything to do but kill us. But I wasn’t to be put off. There was a Mrs. Warren and her two children who were going through the lines at the same time, and she looked after me till we reached Charlotte. There I was handed over to a Miss Pettigrew who brought me here. So you see,” Dorothea ended, “it wasn’t much of an adventure after all.”

“Oh, but you haven’t told us about the soldiers, or the flag of truce or—or lots of things you must have seen,” Harriot suggested.

“There isn’t really much to tell,” Dorothea returned; but in her answer there was a hint of reluctance to talk of the matter. “We crossed a river called the Rappahannock in boats with a white flag flying, ‘under the special protection of the two great American armies,’ they said. There was a rope stretched on the Southern side and a Confederate officer met us, lifting the barrier to let us through. All the officers on each side were very polite and friendly to each other, exchanging newspapers and inquiring for mutual friends; but before we knew it everything was all over. After that, we were driven over awful roads to call on one of your commanding officers to deliver our passes and thanks for our special truce, as is customary. Oh, here are my boxes and I want to unpack them.”

Seeming glad of a diversion which allowed a change of subject, Dorothea ended her recital abruptly and turned to where two colored boys were unstrapping her luggage. Mrs. May watched her for a moment and unconsciously shook her head as if a little puzzled. April, her eyes upon the floor, sat immovable, as if her thoughts were very far away.

“I wonder why she doesn’t want to talk about the soldiers?” Harriot asked herself. All three had noted something of a lack of frankness that had set them wondering.

But trunks fresh from outside the blockade had a strong attraction for April and Harriot. Mrs. May, too, did not attempt to conceal her curiosity. However she had many household duties that called for immediate attention.

“I’m just as anxious to see your pretty things as the girls,” she said, as she rose to leave the room; “but I am obliged to wait till later. I’ll send Merry up.”

At once there was a protest.

“We don’t need her!” Harriot exclaimed.

“Let us help Dorothea, mother,” April proposed, a little excited in anticipation of a look at foreign finery.

“Very well,” Mrs. May agreed and went away regretfully. She, too, was anxious to see if the fashions had changed greatly during the years when the war had cut them off almost wholly from the rest of the world.

Left to themselves the three girls contemplated the fine array of boxes and trunks, which seemed to hold an excessive amount of apparel for one young lady.

“Gracious me!” exclaimed Harriot. “It’s good those two big wardrobes are in this room. You must have a dress for every day in the month.”

“Wait and you’ll see what I have,” Dorothea laughed knowingly. “There are lots of things besides clothes. I had to be very careful about my packing.”

“Why?” demanded the practical Harriot.

“Because the Union army wanted to be sure I wasn’t carrying anything down here that would be useful,” Dorothea explained. “They examine everything, of course. I suspected it would be like the customs house business in Europe, so I prepared.”

“And did they dare to search through everything?” demanded April indignantly.

“No, not everything,” Dorothea answered with a significant emphasis on the last word. “The man who was detailed to look over my luggage was awfully nice. He asked me at once if I had anything in my boxes that would give ‘aid or comfort to the enemy’ and I said, ‘No, sir! because I don’t call an aunt or a cousin an enemy, do you?’ He laughed and remarked he’d heard of those ‘as was enemies and those as wasn’t’; but when I told him I came from England, he looked at all my traps, shook his head and let them go through without much bother. As a matter of fact he fastened bands of white muslin on them with dabs of red sealing-wax to show they were ‘passed packages’—and you know I was just a little disappointed.”

“But why?” demanded Harriot. “If he let them through without mussing everything, I should think you would have been glad.”

“Oh! but I’d packed them so carefully,” Dorothea answered with a knowing smile. “Come, let’s have a look—but you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

All three set to work but they had not gone far when Dorothea had to repeat her warning.

“Look out for that. Cousin April,” she said, as the older girl took a tightly rolled silk parasol out of the trunk.

“It’s mighty pretty,” April remarked, looking at it curiously, “but not very perishable. I don’t see why I need be ’specially careful of it.”

“Open it over the bed,” Dorothea advised, and, when her suggestion was followed, a shower of pills fell out.

“Oh!” cried April and Harriot in one breath. “You hid contraband in it. What are these, Dorothea?”

“Opium pills!” was the answer. “I read in the papers that the poor Southern soldiers had little to stop the pain of their wounds, so I brought as much as I could. It isn’t very easy to get in Washington, though I sent to a lot of chemists’ shops so I wouldn’t be suspected.”

“That’s fine!” exclaimed April. “We’ve had an awful time about opium. Last year it rained just at the wrong time and our rows of poppies had very few flowers on them. We have been very short of it since.”

“And it’s a dreadfully sticky task to get the opium,” Harriot explained, twisting up her face. “We have to pick the poppy heads when they’re ripe and pierce them with a coarse needle. Then we have to catch the gum in a cup and let it dry. We’re hoping to get a lot this summer.”

Meanwhile, as they talked, the unpacking went on, and presently April held up a beautiful French doll of huge proportions.

“Is this for little Harriot?” she asked, with a teasing grin at her younger sister who had never, even in her younger days, had any taste for dolls.

“That’s one of the things I was most disappointed about,” Dorothea answered. “I just longed for the examining officer to find that, and I had made up my mind to tell him it was for my little Cousin Harriot; but he never noticed it.”

“It’s very pretty,” Harriot remarked coldly, “but I’m a trifle too old for dolls.”

“Not for this one,” Dorothea cried. “It’s stuffed with ground coffee and quinine pills.”

“Then I’d be glad to have it,” Harriot shouted, ready to laugh at herself. “Give it to me, April.”

“No, no!” her sister replied, retreating across the room. “Dorothea didn’t say she brought it for you. She said she was going to say that. However, you can have the pills, if you want them. They’re fine and bitter, worse than any dog-wood berry ones you ever tasted.”

“I’ll have some of the coffee, too,” Harriot insisted. “Oh, just imagine a cup of real coffee! I believe I’ve forgotten what it tastes like. But, Dorothea, how did you ever think of such a thing as stuffing a doll with coffee?”

“It wasn’t my own idea at all,” Dorothea confessed. “Some years ago, when father and I were traveling on the Continent, we saw a woman who tried the same trick in one of the custom houses. I can still remember my horror when the officer who was examining her luggage picked up a perfectly beautiful doll, all dressed in flowered silk, and deliberately snapped off its head, in spite of the fact that she told him it was for her brother’s little girl who was ill. But I was more astonished when the man drew out yards and yards of the finest lace which was concealed in the doll’s body. That’s what gave me the idea.”

“Such are the advantages of travel,” said April quizzically.

“It must be great fun to go everywhere,” Harriot put in half enviously. “Nobody I know ever went any farther than New Orleans or the White Sulphur. I’ve only been to the plantation and back, and that wasn’t even out of Georgia. I certainly should like to travel in Europe, wouldn’t you, April?”

“Indeed I should,” her sister agreed. “You are quite to be envied, Dorothea.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” was the unexpected answer. “It isn’t so much fun as you’d think. Most of the time you live in hotels and keep wondering if they are clean. Father and I would love a chance to settle down and have a home of our own. We talk a lot about it; but, somehow, there never comes a time when we can do it. Look out, April, that hat’s full of tea!” she exclaimed suddenly. “You’ll find it between the crown and the lining.”

Mrs. May came in again at that moment to see how the unpacking was progressing and stayed to praise the thoughtfulness and ingenuity that had brought them so many long-foregone luxuries.

“China tea!” she exclaimed, snuffing it longingly. “Yes, it’s there, I can smell it. How good it will taste after the sassafras and raspberry leaves we’ve been drinking. But,” she went on with a drop in her voice, “I think we must keep it for invalids.”

“But, Aunt Parthenia, I brought it for you!” Dorothea insisted. “They are presents from papa—the medicines and groceries—and he’d want you to have them, wouldn’t he? In that box there are some things I picked out myself for you and the girls.”

Dorothea, flushed with pleasure at the reception her gifts were receiving, opened another trunk in some little excitement. On her knees before it she paused in momentary embarrassment.

“I don’t know whether you’ll laugh at what I’ve brought; but I read in the papers how short you were of such things in the South and I thought they might be more useful than just luxuries.”

So saying she produced package after package of trimmings, ribbons, buttons, sewing silk, pins, needles, hair-pins and other feminine oddments. At each fresh discovery of these simple treasures Mrs. May and the two girls gave expression to their surprise and delight.

“Real pins!” exclaimed Mrs. May, looking at them as if they were strange and little known treasures. “I hoarded my last dozen for months, but they vanished long ago.”

“And real needles, mother, see!” cried Harriot.

April laughed gayly.

“You’d think that Harry cared for nothing in the world so much as sewing,” she teased.

“I do sew sometimes,” Harriot protested. “And now that we have some truly buttons, not persimmon seeds, I’ll do more of it. I like to sew on buttons when we have them.”

“I think the pins are the greatest blessing you could have brought us, Dorothea,” Mrs. May assured her enthusiastically. “I am so tired of sticking things together with thorns and pretending they are pins because they have sealing-wax heads.”

Then they began to find the dainty dresses, and lengths of fine materials that Dorothea had brought and, like four women anywhere, they were completely absorbed in fingering them and admiring them, each, no doubt, wondering if they would be becoming. They laughed and joked, praising this or that piece of silk, or camel’s hair, or de beige, and forgetting everything else for the time being. Then suddenly Dorothea stopped talking and listened. She had heard a gentle knocking at the door.

“Some one wishes to come in, Aunt Parthenia,” she said, calling attention to the summons.

But as she spoke the door slowly opened and there appeared on the threshold, the dearest, sweetest white-haired little lady that Dorothea had ever seen, who at the sight of the finery scattered about, clasped her hands in delight.

“Fal-lals!” she exclaimed. “Oh joy!”

“Oh, Imogene,” cried Mrs. May, “here are things that will delight your heart. I didn’t know you were in. But this is Susie’s daughter from England who has just arrived. I’m sure you’ll love her.”

Dorothea’s heart went out, on the instant, to this lady who, with a smile of welcome, came swiftly into the room and held out her arms.

“Your mother was my dearest friend, my child,” she said in a low, musical voice that seemed to thrill the girl. “I am overjoyed to see her daughter.”

CHAPTER V

CONFIDENCES

For a moment Miss Imogene’s white hair gave Dorothea the impression that she was quite an old lady; but that quickly vanished. There were no betraying wrinkles in the bright face and the girl was puzzled, for, in spite of a certain youthfulness, there was also the suggestion of a past generation in the ways of this new-found friend.

Miss Imogene was very small, with the tiniest hands and feet, and she walked as if borne from place to place upon the air. When she spoke it was in a gentle, plaintive voice which seemed to belie the sprightly expressions she used and the sparkling wit and raillery that were ever ready on her tongue.

She was dressed daintily and with care. The material of her gown was far from fine, and the ribbons and ornaments of the luxurious days before the war were absent. Nevertheless she had the manner of wearing costly stuffs and carried herself with a certain style that was the envy of many a younger woman.

She embraced Dorothea tenderly, with a little catch of her breath as if this meeting brought back vivid remembrances of past joys and sorrows. Then holding the girl at arms’ length she surveyed her critically with sparkling black eyes.

“Bless me, Parthenia!” she exclaimed, “she is as dark as I am, and yet I can see my dear Susie’s face again. We shall love each other,” she went on directly to Dorothea. “I intend to make you love me for your mother’s sake.”

“I think I love you already,” Dorothea answered half-shyly. Indeed this quaint little lady had the knack of winning those with whom she came into contact.

“Everybody loves Cousin Imogene,” Harriot declared. “You just can’t help it, you know.”

“The boys as well as the girls,” April laughed; “so look out for your beaux, Dorothea.”

“Do not believe all that they say, my dear,” Miss Imogene protested with the very faintest of becoming blushes. “They love to tease their old cousin. And now let me see the finery you have brought from the outside world.”

She was soon hovering over the silks and satins and fine linen Dorothea spread out for them to admire.

“Ah,” murmured Miss Imogene, holding a gay flowered muslin in her dainty fingers, “I wore a dress made of a material quite like that when Larry Stanchfield gave his celebrated supper. You remember, ’Thenia.”

“Indeed I do,” Mrs. May answered with a knowing glance at the other. “And I remember his toast ‘To the fairest of all dark women! Fairer than any blonde.’”

“Do you really recollect that?” murmured Miss Imogene.

“Yes, my dear, and I know whose slipper he drank it out of,” Mrs. May continued. “It was a very gay party and not one to be forgotten.”

“But the dresses were cut very differently in those days,” Miss Imogene said, a little hurriedly, almost as if she wished to change the subject.

“But whose slipper was it?” demanded the inquisitive Harriot.

“Cousin Imogene’s, of course,” April responded, laughing.

“Is that true?” Harriot insisted.

“Yes, honey,” Miss Imogene replied. “I dropped it as I was getting into our coach when we went home after the Militia Ball. Dear me, how long ago that seems!”

“And didn’t you ever get it back?” Harriot questioned.

“No, not that one, but the next day a little glass slipper came, filled with sweet hearts,” Miss Imogene answered with the most charming of smiles.

“We’ve seen it on your dressing-table!” the two girls cried delightedly.

“Yes, that is the very one,” Miss Imogene confessed. “And there was a bit of verse with it. Let’s see if I remember it.” She looked up at the ceiling a moment, her eyes half closed as if she could see there the picture she brought back in her mind.

“Ah, now I know. It went like this:

‘Accept, fair lady, in exchange

For one I hold,

This crystal slipper filled with hearts

From one made bold

By Cupid, who alas, can find no shoe to fit

Which will contain the hearts that seek a place in it.’

“It is rather pretty, don’t you think?” she ended, appealing to them all with the gentlest of smiles.

“I think it’s beautiful,” said Dorothea enthusiastically.

Already she was growing to love this strange lady who, while she was quick to realize the present, seemed also to be dwelling in the past.

“But who sent it, Cousin Imogene?” demanded the inquisitive Harriot.

“Harry,” said her mother rather sharply, “don’t ask so many questions.”

“But I wanted to know,” Harriot persisted, and there was a momentary argument before the matter was disposed of; although Dorothea noticed that Miss Imogene did not betray the name of the gentleman who had sent her the crystal slipper.

It took a good while to unpack all of the trunks, for each piece of finery was exhibited and talked over and admired by these Southern ladies whom the war had now deprived of all such pretty things. But it was finally accomplished. The cupboards and bureau drawers were filled and the empty boxes banished to the attic.

“At last, my dear, you are at home,” said Mrs. May as she surveyed the room, once more in order. “And you must rest an hour before supper.”

“I really don’t feel tired, Aunt Parthenia,” Dorothea demurred; “I never take naps.”

“Neither do I!” Harriot put in with a note of triumph; decidedly this new cousin was to her taste.

“And I always do,” Miss Imogene remarked placidly. “It keeps the roses blooming longer in our cheeks.”

With a light laugh she went off with April, followed by the reluctant Harriot, who seemed very averse to leaving Dorothea even for a moment.

“I shall wait and see that you obey me,” Mrs. May said as she closed the door behind her daughter. “Come, my dear, put on a wrapper and rest, even if you don’t sleep.”

Dorothea set about doing as Mrs. May suggested, glad to have the elder lady to herself for a little. It was more than just a visit to her relatives in Georgia that had brought her there, though the chief reason lay very deep in her heart.

“Aunt Parthenia,” she began as she sat in a comfortable chair beside her aunt, “you are glad to see me, aren’t you?”

Mrs. May guessed what was in her mind, indeed she had stayed behind the others on purpose to have a little talk with her niece. So she reached out and took the girl’s hand gently in her own.

“My dearest child,” she said warmly, “I am more than glad to see you. Your mother was my only sister, and I can’t tell you how I have longed to know the little girl she left behind. Do you remember her at all, honey?”

“A little,” Dorothea answered. “Of course I was very small when she died, but I can still recollect a dear face that bent over me before I went to sleep at night. Even now I see it sometimes, just as I am going off. One of the things I want most was to have you tell me about her. Father says hardly anything—it hurts him to think about it, I know, because I can always see a shadow come over his face when I mention my mother. So I do not like to make his heart ache. But, oh, Aunt Parthenia, I have longed for some one to talk to who remembers her. She was very pretty, wasn’t she? Does this look like her?”

On her wrist Dorothea wore a gold clasp mounted on a red velvet ribbon, and opening this case she showed it to her aunt.

Mrs. May gazed at the picture, her eyes growing soft in her recollection of the girlish face she saw, and for a moment or two there was silence in the room.

“It is very like her, dear,” she said finally. “Very like her, indeed. She was just as sweet and pretty as this painting shows her to be.”

“That is how I think of her,” Dorothea remarked. “And that is the face I see sometimes in my dreams. But I am never sure whether it is my real mother or the remembrance of the picture that I see. Yet, somehow, I have felt sure she was like that and it is a comfort to me to have the picture with me. It makes her seem nearer to me.”

“Do you always wear it on your wrist?” asked Mrs. May.

“Always,” answered Dorothea. “Father told me red was her favorite color, so I have a supply of red ribbons to mount it on. And, you know, Aunt Parthenia, except for father, who gave it to me, you are the only one who has seen it. At school lots of the girls wondered what was in the locket, but, somehow, I never wanted to tell them. It was as if mother and I had that little picture between us and it wasn’t a thing you could show to strangers. You think I’m right, don’t you?”

“I am sure you are, dear, if it gives you any comfort,” Mrs. May answered earnestly.

“Well, it does,” Dorothea went on. “You see, for a while I was at boarding-school and father was all alone. Then he wanted me with him, for mother’s sake mostly, I think, and ever since we have been living first in one place and then in another, all over the world. It’s been very interesting, but it has never been like home; for of course I rarely stayed anywhere long enough to make any real friends. That is one of the reasons why I wanted so much to see you and my cousins. That, and to talk to you of mother.”

“And to find a real home, Dorothea,” Mrs. May murmured, patting the girl’s hand. “Hereafter, no matter what happens, there is always a place for you here, and the girls will soon be like your sisters.”

“April is wonderful,” Dorothea said warmly; “and Harriot is so funny and dear. I know I shall love them. Indeed I loved you all just as soon as I saw you. You were all so good and kind and made me feel welcome right away. In England, now, it would have taken weeks and weeks before I should have been able to talk to you like this.”

“I understand,” Mrs. May agreed, nodding. “In the South you will find that every one is very friendly. In one way or another most of the people down here are kin to each other or else they are friends of our friends, so it is just like one big family. If it wasn’t for this terrible war you would see how happily we live.”

There was a pause for a moment, Dorothea looking out of the window with her face very thoughtful.

“You know, Aunt Parthenia,” she said, after a little, “I saw the soldiers on both sides as I came through.”

“Yes, I know,” Mrs. May replied, “and I thought there was something you didn’t want to talk about.”

“There was,” Dorothea confessed; “I’m sure you’ll understand, Aunt Parthenia, but I didn’t know what the others might think. You see I don’t believe the South can win the war—though I’m awfully for it.”

“What makes you say that, Dorothea?” Mrs. May asked earnestly.

“Because, when I came through the Northern army,” Dorothea explained, “all the men I saw looked well-fed and strong; everything they wanted was at hand to make them comfortable; and they were cheery and joked with each other; they were like boys on a holiday. But when I came through the Confederate lines it was awful, Aunt Parthenia. The men looked half starved. They were in rags and they looked so haggard and drawn, as if they actually suffered. It isn’t fair that they should be expected to fight against those strong men of the North. It isn’t fair, Aunt Parthenia!”

“No, my dear, it isn’t fair,” her aunt agreed. “I wish this war had never come. There are those who still doubt my loyalty to the Confederacy, for I am not afraid to say we should never have seceded, yet I am loyal to the South. It is my home, and the home of all my friends and relatives. I love it, but I have seen for a long time that there is only more suffering and misery in store for us—and, in the end, defeat. You will soon find to what shifts we have already been put to manage to live. And here in Georgia we are very well off. You are right that it isn’t fair to ask our men to go on fighting against overwhelming odds; but, my dear, don’t talk about that here. The feeling against the North is very bitter and any one who does not proclaim perfect confidence that the South will win is treated like a traitor.”

“Of course, I’ve always wanted you to win,” Dorothea affirmed once more.

“You will hear only that side of the matter in this house, honey,” Mrs. May cautioned. “We all want the South to win, now war is here; but some of us are very sorry that it was ever brought about. It was the politicians did it, and you will do well to remember that there are two sides to the story.”

“Of course I don’t know very much about it,” Dorothea confessed. “Father, you know, doesn’t talk about the war at all, even to me. But it’s so different in the North. They have so much, and somehow it’s natural to want the weaker side to win. But, Aunt Parthenia, it is hard to believe that Mr. Lincoln is the cruel man they say he is down here. Once you’ve seen him and talked to him, you just can’t believe that.”

“I am sure he is the best friend the South has, my dear,” Mrs. May half whispered; “but that is quite between ourselves. I shouldn’t dare say it to any one else I know. Particularly to April. Remember, honey, she is a very staunch Rebel.”

“I always think that mother would have been a Rebel, too,” Dorothea said softly. “I fancy that’s the reason I am one.”

“You seem a very mild Rebel,” Mrs. May laughed, getting to her feet; “and you’ll be a very tired one if you don’t rest a little. Remember you have a lot of people to meet to-night and I want my Susie’s baby to do her mother justice.” She rose to her feet and, leaning down, kissed the girl again. “I am glad to have you here, dear, for your own sake as well as for your mother’s.”

Dorothea’s heart was too full to make a reply, but she hugged her aunt, who understood, and a moment later left the girl alone.

CHAPTER VI

RED STRINGS

One of those most deeply interested in the arrival of Dorothea was Lucy, the colored girl whom Mrs. May had appointed to attend upon her niece. Her mistress’s pretty clothes set the little maid in an ecstasy of delight and she would have liked nothing better than to dress Dorothea in all of them, one after the other, to see how they looked. She was ready for all sorts of gossip, and while she combed and braided her young lady’s hair she talked at a great rate of the quality folks in the neighborhood, of “Ol’ Miss,” as she called Mrs. May, and “Young Miss,” meaning April. A good deal of the talk Dorothea could make neither head nor tail of, but she liked to listen to the soft Southern accents and smiled more than once at the unfamiliar expressions, of which she comprehended but half the meaning.

She was almost dressed when there was a knock at the door and Miss Imogene floated into the room with her bright, bird-like air. She cocked her head on one side as she surveyed Dorothea and then nodded as if satisfied.

“You may run along now, Lucy,” she told the maid; “I’ll finish Miss Dorothea.”

“Yes’m,” Lucy replied, but she went reluctantly, with many backward glances.

“I couldn’t resist the temptation to look at you in your finery before any one else, my dear,” Miss Imogene began. “I wanted to see how far behind the times our patterns are—and things look so different in the hand.”

She, herself, was dressed with care, and, though there were wanting touches here and there to show the very latest whim of fashion, her hoops were as wide as Dorothea’s and she looked as dainty as a picture.

She put the finishing touches to Dorothea’s toilet and then sat down with a little gesture of invitation to the girl to occupy a chair near her.

“We’ve a few minutes before all is ready downstairs, and I thought you’d like to know something of the people you are to meet,” Miss Imogene suggested.

“Indeed I should,” Dorothea agreed, making herself comfortable. “It’s awfully awkward if you don’t know who is related to you and all about them. And I have lived so far from my American relatives, haven’t I?”

Miss Imogene nodded understandingly, at the same moment slipping a dainty finger inside a red velvet band she wore about her neck as if it might be a little tight. As she did this she glanced at Dorothea rather keenly and a few moments later made a gesture as if to brush back the hair from her forehead.

“First of all there’s your Cousin Hal,” Miss Imogene began. “The dearest boy I know. He’s fighting, of course.”

She named over half a dozen others of those who were living for the time being at the Mays. Two or three ladies “refugeeing,” or on their way to other points and breaking the journey at Washington; a number of officers in the Confederate Army, busy all day with duties of one sort or another, consisting mainly of gathering food or horses wherever they could be found.

“Then there’s Val Tracy,” she went on. “You’ll like him. He’s Irish and has a gay, blarneying tongue. Compliments flow from him like water down hill. He’s in the Army, though I think it is more for the fun of fighting than for any faith he has in the cause of the South.”

Miss Imogene continued with her description of the people Dorothea was soon to meet, and then quite suddenly changed the subject.

“Dorothea dear,” she asked abruptly, again slipping her finger under the red band around her neck, “have you heard any mention up North of the Confederate prison at Andersonville?”

“It was talked of a little, I think,” the girl answered hesitatingly. “At least I don’t remember whether that was the name, but there was something in the papers about how badly the Union soldiers were treated in the prisons here. I hope it isn’t true.”

“I am afraid there is more than a little truth in what is being said,” Miss Imogene acknowledged. “It isn’t all our fault, you know. We haven’t enough to eat ourselves, so of course the prisoners suffer like the rest of us. It is very hard on them, poor souls. Many of them try to escape by coming through Georgia. But there are few who get away.”

A little later as they descended the broad stairs, Dorothea heard so much talking and laughter that she concluded there must be a special cause for rejoicing, and was a little surprised to find that there was no great news, no particular occasion for merriment, other than the natural gayety of spirit that she was to find universal among these Southerners among whom she had come to live.

She was introduced to the assembly one after the other, and each had a pleasant and characteristic word to say to her. Val Tracy, true to his reputation, at once paid her a compliment, but in such a bright laughing spirit that his extravagance of expression was robbed of any offense.

“I have heard it is your way to say flattering things,” Dorothea answered his little speech.

“And to mean them, Miss Drummond,” he returned with a bow. “Faith, the man would be dumb who could fail to have a pretty speech on his tongue’s tip when he sees so inspiring a subject.”

“Don’t mind his blarney, Cousin Dorothea,” Hal May laughed. “It’s notorious. After a while, you won’t notice it any more. It’s only at first that it makes an impression.”

“’Tis better to make a first impression than none at all,” Val laughed.

“You’re right, young man,” Miss Imogene said gently; “and do not fear that even the oldest of us resent your compliments. We like them, don’t we, April?”

“Indeed we do, Val,” April replied. “Hal is too stupid to appreciate us.”

“It takes an Irishman to do that, April,” Val protested.

So the bantering went on through the supper and Dorothea, sitting quietly looking from one to the other about the table, thought it was strange indeed that this company of young people should be so gay and care-free with all the evidences of war about them. Everything they saw must have reminded them of the conflict. The young officers wore tattered uniforms, stained and patched; the girls made-over finery; the very food was so limited in variety that Aunt Decent grumbled from morning till night. And yet there was no faltering of the confidence these charming Southerners had in the outcome. They made light of their make-shifts; they laughed at the privations they were forced to endure; they faced with courage what might be in store for them, predicting victory at the end.

Dorothea was in two minds whether to admire them for their fortitude or to question whether they had any realization of the seriousness of the times in which they were living. It seemed as if they gloried in scorning the thought that they might lose. That contingency they put away from them, as they did all other unpleasant facts. The English girl’s first sight of these care-free people set her to wondering if they could ever be serious. She could not help but contrast this lightness with the different view of the matter held in the North, where a universal anxiety was met with on every hand. With their gay laughter all about her she had a remembrance of the sad face of Mr. Lincoln, who seemed to grieve for all the suffering, no matter on whom it fell.

“How can they win?” Dorothea asked herself.

“I tell you it’s getting downright serious,” she heard Val Tracy saying, as she brought her thoughts back to her surroundings. “The Yankees seem to know just what we mean to do and to prepare for it. There have been a dozen plans that have had to be abandoned. The South is full of spies!”

“And some of them are worse than that,” April broke out passionately. “They are traitors!”

“Yes, that’s right,” her brother Hal put in. “We’ve just learned that there’s a society all through the South that is growing more powerful every day. It’s called the Red Strings.”

“The Red Strings?” cried a half dozen voices at once.

“Where did you hear of them?” demanded Val Tracy.

“No matter,” said Hal shortly; “but I’ll tell you how they came to be organized. You all know that ever since the war began there have been a lot of cowards in this state, up in the North and East. There are more in Tennessee and some in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Blackguards who voted for the Union, all of them! Well, when war was declared, you may be sure the first people our conscript officers went for were these half-Yankees; but they were mighty clever and took to the mountains. When the officers went away, back they came to their homes. They arranged it so that they were warned in ample time of any attempt to draft them, and pretty soon an organization grew up among them. This developed until it occurred to some one that here was a good crowd to help the Yankees and the Abolitionists. To-day they’re scattered all over the South, and it’s said there are a number of them in our army itself.”

“The traitors!” cried April. “They should all be hung!”

“Maybe,” said her brother, with a laugh, “but first you have to catch them. They’re mighty slippery.”

“But why are they called ‘Red Strings’?” asked Miss Ivory, in her gentle voice.

“Because in the beginning,” Hal explained, “they used to wear a piece of red, white and blue cord somewhere about them so they would know each other. But this was conspicuous and not easy to get, so they adopted just a piece of red ribbon—anything so it was red. A red string dyed with pine roots would do. And they took their name from that. They have passwords and signs, so they say; but anyhow this society, which began among the poor mountaineers, has come to be mighty powerful and is making all sorts of trouble for us. They are helping prisoners to escape from Andersonville and the other camps. They are doing all they can for the regular spies, and any information they get is sure to be sent North to the Yankees sooner or later. It’s a bad business.”

“Then we’ll have to watch out for suspicious people who wear red strings,” cried Val Tracy with a chuckle. “Ah, ha! I see one already. Miss Ivory has one about her neck.”

There was a fine laugh at this.

“You had better keep an eye on me after this,” said that gentle lady with a serious face.

“Ah, Miss Imogene,” cried Val contritely, “’Twould give me joy—but I should as soon believe Mr. Davis a traitor as you.”

Dorothea, suddenly conscious of some one staring at her, raised her eyes to find April’s gaze fixed on the red velvet ribbon around her wrist, but at the same moment she noticed with a start of surprise that her beautiful cousin wore a thin red girdle about her waist.

CHAPTER VII

THE BAYING OF THE HOUNDS

For a moment or two Dorothea lost all track of the animated conversation on all sides of her, then she became aware that the company were getting up from the table.

“I do hope,” she heard Mrs. May saying, “that we are not going to begin to see spies wherever we look. All this silly talk of Red Strings is the product of some one’s imagination. I don’t believe there is any such society. It’s absurd.”

“I shall not cease to wear a red band about my throat, yet,” Miss Imogene remarked lightly.

“Of course it’s foolish to think that everybody who wears a red ribbon is a Red String,” Hal laughed; “but all the same there is such an organization.”

That seemed to end the matter for the time being. The whole gay party assembled in the great parlors and presently, one after another, near neighbors began to drop in. Among these was a Colonel Ransome of the Confederate Army and he brought news of another prisoner escaped from Andersonville.

“They say the fellow is working north through Georgia,” he ended. “They sent me word to be on the lookout for him, so you boys can keep your eyes open.”

“I don’t blame any one for escaping from Andersonville!” exclaimed a Miss Perrine, a pretty Creole from Baton Rouge, “We passed the prison in the train. There’s a gibbet at the gate of the stockade and they haven’t even a roof over their poor heads. I say it isn’t right! The creatures are more like animals than men. You could see that they were half starved.”

“My dear young lady,” Colonel Ransome demurred politely, “sympathy for our enemies does your heart much credit; but our prisoners are being treated as well as they deserve.”

“You wouldn’t like it if our own men were crowded together in the North as these are here,” Miss Perrine maintained stoutly.

“Faith, these are Yankees!” Val Tracy said with a laugh. “Can it be that there is any young lady in the South who is sorry for a Yank under any circumstances?”

“There are some who are not,” April cut in.

“All the same I don’t think it’s fair,” Miss Perrine insisted. “We don’t have to treat our prisoners that way. It was pitiful to see their hungry looks. We threw them some of our lunch, but it fell short and I suppose they will think we did it on purpose to tantalize them. I don’t care what anybody says, they’re human, even if they are hateful Yanks!”

“They are as well fed as our own soldiers,” April insisted.

“And that isn’t all of it, either,” Colonel Ransome explained. “The North has refused to exchange prisoners, saying that Morgan’s Raiders are criminals. So it’s really their own fault.”

“I say,” Hal cut in, “let’s stop talking and sing a bit. I near enough of war all day.”

They gathered about the piano at this suggestion and soon were shouting lustily the old songs so dear to all the South in those days. They began with “My Maryland,” then came “The Bonny Blue Flag”; one favorite after another, and Dorothea, seated near the door, listened with great interest, impressed by the fervor of the singing. But it was not till some one called for “Dixie” that she had a real thrill.

“April must sing it, and we’ll join in the chorus,” cried Val Tracy, and the beautiful girl stood straight beside the piano and sang with all her heart in her voice:

“Southrons, hear your country call you!

Up, lest worse than death befall you!

To arms! To arms! To arms in Dixie!

Lo! All the beacon fires are lighted.

Let all hearts be now united.

To arms! To arms! To arms in Dixie!

Advance the flag in Dixie

Hurrah! Hurrah!

For Dixie’s land we take our stand

And live and die for Dixie.

To arms! To arms!

And conquer peace for Dixie.

To arms! To arms!

And conquer peace for Dixie!”

The chorus rang strong and true at the end of each verse and when the last note sounded Val Tracy cried impetuously:

“If only the rascally Yankees could hear you, Miss April! They’d give up, knowing that we had such fair ones to spur us on to victory.”

Meanwhile Dorothea watched April with a growing admiration, but not knowing the words of the song she could not join in the singing and her thoughts wandered. Unconsciously she turned toward a side window, for she had had the vague sensation of some one looking in; indeed as she glanced that way a face was pressed against the pane for an instant. It was the countenance of a man, and so pale, so haggard was it, that Dorothea nearly cried out with the sudden sympathy she felt. That the man, whoever he was, was suffering she had no doubt. The sunken cheeks and the shock of dark hair hanging down over the brow, threw into relief the thin white features appearing, as if out of a mist, against the blackness of the night. Only for a second did she see it, and then it vanished.

Instantly Dorothea’s thoughts flew to Colonel Ransome’s news of the Yankee prisoner escaped from the dreadful prison at Andersonville. Her first impulse had been to call Harriot’s attention, but she curbed her tongue. The man did not appear to be in uniform, but when she stopped to think of the matter, she could not be sure of that. So momentary had been her glimpse of him that, had she not known herself to be awake, she might have convinced herself that she dreamed. She looked about her to note whether any one else had seen the intruder. But the others were still shouting at the top of their lungs, unmindful of all else, carried away with the fervor of their patriotism and love for the cause in which they believed with their whole hearts. None had seen the face at the window. At least, so far, the man was safe; and surely, if he was an escaped prisoner, as Dorothea was now convinced, he would know from the singing at what sort of a house he had stopped.

She then began to speculate upon the poor fellow’s chances. She wondered if he were hungry and felt sure, from his face, that he was. She could do nothing to get him food, but perhaps some money might help him.

“Oh, if I could only do something for the poor soul,” she thought to herself and, on the impulse, rose to her feet and slipped out into the hall unnoticed.

She had no very clear idea of just what she wanted to do. Her action was wholly governed by the sympathy aroused by the man’s evident suffering. She opened the front door and ran lightly along the gallery until she came to the end of it, then peered round the corner toward the window where she had seen the face. The illumination inside had not been so bright that her eyes did not quickly accustom themselves to the darkness without, but she rubbed them to be sure that she was not mistaken, for there was no one in sight. In reality the time that had passed between her first glimpse of the mysterious man and her search for him was so very short that it was hard to believe that the stranger had vanished so quickly; however he was nowhere to be seen and, for his own sake, Dorothea dared not go farther.

Instead she turned swiftly to slip back into the house, but in so doing she ran into a figure hurrying along the gallery.

“Oh!” she cried involuntarily, stepping aside. For an instant she could not see who it was. “Is it you, April?” she asked, dimly making out her cousin’s figure.

“Yes,” came the answer, after a moment’s hesitation. “I—I—what are you doing here, Dorothea?”

The English girl was not minded to explain, yet she disliked concealing the truth. On the other hand to tell this fanatical Southern girl that she believed an escaped prisoner had been there would be to put the man in jeopardy at once. A hue and cry after the poor fellow would be started, and Dorothea would do a good deal to avoid that. In the end she was not forced to answer.

“Dorothea,” April said breathlessly, coming nearer and lowering her voice, “please go in, and don’t tell any one that I am out here. Please go.”

Without a word Dorothea went, slipped back into her place unnoticed, but she was vastly puzzled over April’s mysterious action, for it was impossible to believe that her Rebel cousin could have anything to do with an escaping Yankee prisoner. She shook her head as other explanations crowded in upon her, finding no satisfactory solution to the puzzle.

When at last her good-nights were said and Dorothea was back in her room making ready for bed, she quickly dismissed Lucy and sat down in front of the fire, her thoughts filled with the day’s experiences.

That her welcome had been a hearty and a loving one she had no doubt. For her own part she felt a growing affection for these American relatives; but she was still greatly perplexed to find herself in the midst of so much gayety and laughter during a fiercely fought war. The face she had seen at the window was so filled with misery that the cheerfulness of her surroundings seemed, not quite right and brought back to her mind a vivid recollection of the wretchedness she had witnessed on her brief passage through the Confederate Army. Could it be that those behind the Southern fighting line did not care what was happening to their soldiers?

She shook her head in denial of this possibility and was still puzzling the matter when there came a gentle knock at her door.

“Come in,” she whispered, and Harriot tiptoed into the room with a plate of goober pralines in her hand.

“April would say we should be in bed,” she announced in an undertone with a glance at the wall between the two rooms; “but when she has girls staying with her, she thinks it’s all right if they sit up half the night, gossiping and giggling and eating pralines. She thinks we’re children,” she ended in a tone of disgust.

“Well, we’re growing up,” said Dorothea philosophically. “I’m nearly as tall as she is.”

“And I had to have a band put around my skirts I’ve grown so,” Harriot declared with a hint of pride. “They’ve been let down till there isn’t any more material left to let!”

While Harriot was speaking Dorothea had become aware of a strange and menacing sound afar off.

“Listen, Harriot,” she murmured, “what is that queer noise?”

“It’s the hounds!” Harriot answered after a moment. “They’re out after some one, and they seem to be getting nearer.” She jumped up and, putting out the light, ran to the window.

“Hounds?” questioned Dorothea, going quickly to her side. “Do you mean dogs?”

“Yes, of course,” Harriot replied. “They’re out after some one. They use the hounds to track servants who run away.”

“Would they use them to find that Yankee prisoner who had escaped?” Dorothea asked a little breathlessly.

“Oh, they’re sure to. Maybe that’s who they are after. Listen! They are coming nearer—I think I can hear horses galloping.”

Undoubtedly the noises of the man-hunt were louder and Dorothea felt a clutch of pain at her heart. Was the poor man she saw at the window that night to be caught by hounds? She shuddered at the thought.

CHAPTER VIII

INCREASING MYSTERY

The baying of hounds and at length the rapid tread of horses’ hoofs reached their ears, growing more distinct each instant.

“They are coming this way,” Harriot murmured under her breath.

“Why should they come here?” Dorothea demanded, beginning to feel more and more apprehensive.

“I suppose somebody’s servant has run away,” Harriot answered, a little reluctantly. “Not ours,” she hastened to add. “Our people wouldn’t run away for anything. They’re too well treated.”

“Then there are some that aren’t well treated?” Dorothea’s tone was more coldly judicial than she knew.

“Oh, of course there are mean men everywhere,” Harriot explained. “Father says the worst treated servants are those that are owned by other negroes.”

“By other negroes,” Dorothea echoed in amazement. “You mean that there are blacks who have slaves?”

Harriot nodded indifferently. This was no new idea to her and she could not quite understand Dorothea’s surprise.

“Why, there isn’t anything a negro would rather have than a slave of his own,” she remarked. “Father says there are African tribes that were slave-owners long before—”

“Yes, but they are savages and don’t know any better,” Dorothea interrupted.

Both girls entirely lost the significance of this remark, for by this time a company of horsemen had galloped into the May place and were pulling up on the drive.

The cousins, looking out of the window, could see the forms of mounted men and huge dogs moving here and there across the lawns below them. The low whines of the eager hounds as they snuffed about could be heard above the murmured talk among the men and the restless trampling of the horses. Whether these great beasts, trained for man-hunting, were after a slave or an escaping Union soldier she as yet did not know; but in either case it seemed a very horrible proceeding to Dorothea, and by so much her sympathy for the Southern cause was weakened.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a thundering knock at the front door, which echoed through the house, and in a moment there was a murmur of voices growing increasingly distinct. Hal May and Val Tracy could be heard talking earnestly to a stranger, but in so low a tone that the girls could not make out what it was all about. On either side of them, however, windows were opening and they knew that all the other members of the household were on the alert.

“Oh, I wish I were dressed!” Harriot cried, fidgeting about impatiently. “I wonder what they want here, anyway? They know we wouldn’t help to run off anybody’s servants. I’m going to slip something on and go down.” She ran out of the room, leaving Dorothea alone at the window.

“Ladies,” came the voice of Val Tracy as he stepped out on the lawn and called up to those at the windows above the gallery, “these gentlemen are out after a Yankee officer who has escaped from Andersonville. We have assured them that none of us has seen any one lurking about the place, but they insist that the fugitive was traced here and that they will feel more content if we inquire of you ladies whether or not you have seen anything out of the ordinary to-night?”

There was silence for a moment and in that short space of time Dorothea’s mind was busy. She had no intention of volunteering any information as to what she had seen. She was convinced now of the correctness of her first impression—that the face she had beheld for a moment was that of the escaping officer. But instantly her thoughts flew again to April: Her cousin’s distinct surprise at finding her out on the porch; her evident confusion and her final injunction to Dorothea not to say anything to the others of having seen her; all these things pointed to one explanation.

April knew as well as she that there was some one outside the house that night.

“But why,” Dorothea speculated to herself, “should April shield a Yankee officer who was escaping?” and instantly she remembered the thin band of red in her cousin’s girdle and the “Red Strings” of whom Hal had told them that night.

“Can April be a ‘Red String’?” she asked herself. “Impossible!” she answered. April never lost an opportunity to proclaim her loyalty or to condemn the Yankees whom she apparently hated. Yet to seem excessively loyal would be the best way to keep her secret if she had one, was the next conclusion Dorothea reached—and this thought seemed to her an explanation of many things.

“At least I shan’t tell anything, if I don’t have to,” she concluded and so waited for the next words from out of the darkness.

“No one saw anybody, I’m sure,” she heard Mrs. May calling down to those on the lawn. “The hounds must have followed the wrong scent, and—”

“Were any of you ladies outside the house during the evening?” asked Val Tracy.

Here was a direct question that seemed to Dorothea aimed at her. Still, she held her tongue. April, as well as she, had been out and she waited for her cousin to answer.

“I saw Miss Drummond go out on the gallery,” came the gentle voice of Miss Perrine. “Of course I don’t say she saw anything, and probably she has forgotten she went out, but—”

“I was on the porch with Dorothea,” April cut in, “and I saw no one.”

“But did Dorothea see any one?” Hal demanded out of the darkness.

It seemed to her that the time had come when she must answer and she could not bring herself to lie deliberately. She hoped that the man she had seen was now far enough away to escape; but, whatever came of the matter, she could not deny that she had seen him if the direct question was put to her. Greatly to her surprise a voice beside her answered the question for her.

“Dorothea may have seen the same face at the window I saw.” Dorothea turned and found beside her the figure of Miss Imogene, who had come into the room so silently that she had not noticed her till that minute.

“Then there was somebody!” cried a strange voice. “Where did he go?”

“Back to the quarters, I reckon,” Miss Imogene answered calmly.

“Back to the quarters!” was the disappointed murmur from below.

“We were singing and the negroes are always attracted by music,” Miss Imogene explained; but at the same moment she put an arm about Dorothea’s waist and drew her close to her. The girl felt instinctively an effort on the part of both Miss Imogene and April to intervene before she was forced to speak. She could not see the reasons for this. She was perplexed and puzzled at such evasion, but it satisfied her to remain silent, though why either of them should wish to shield an escaping Yankee was a mystery.

At that moment one of the great hounds lifted up its head and bayed dismally and in an instant the others, their noses close to the ground, made for the spot and joined in a chorus.

“They’ve found the scent again,” some one cried. “Come on, men. If our bird was here he’s gone on!”

There was a hurried beat of horses’ hoofs as their riders wheeled and started at a gallop behind the dogs.

“Sorry to have disturbed you, ladies,” came the voice of the leader out of the darkness, “but we have to catch this Yankee!”

The sounds of their rapid movements grew fainter and fainter and finally ceased as the men drew away.

At last all was silent again. And all the while Dorothea had stood beside Miss Imogene, wondering if the man she had seen would be taken, puzzled by the strange conflict and mystery which she felt surrounded her, getting no reasonable explanation for this obvious intervention by April and Miss Imogene to keep her in the background.

The woman beside her shivered a little and a long sigh escaped her lips.

“I’m cold, child,” she murmured, and releasing Dorothea went to the fire and held her tiny hands to the dying blaze.

The girl herself felt a chill in the air and, closing the window, went to the hearth for warmth.

“Shall I put on another log, Miss Imogene?” she asked.

“Do, honey,” said the elder woman; “I don’t know whether it’s my nerves or the night air, but I haven’t felt so chilly for a long time.”

Dorothea put on another stick of wood and sat down at Miss Imogene’s feet, watching while the fire kindled. It was plain that her companion was overwrought and she herself had no desire to talk. Her brain kept going over and over again the puzzling points in the night’s experience and she could make neither head nor tail out of it all. Nor could she rid herself of the horror of these great dogs tearing across the country while the vision of the haggard face she had seen at the window still haunted her. Would they catch him at last? Would these mouthing hounds surround the poor fellow, perhaps in some swamp where he had fled, half dead with privations and hunger, to escape them? She, too, shivered at the thought.

“What is it, dear?” asked Miss Imogene, bending down to the girl at her feet.

“I can’t help thinking of that poor man they are after,” she answered in a low tone. “It seems so awful to hunt human beings with dogs.”

“Don’t worry,” Miss Imogene consoled her. “I don’t think they will catch this prisoner from Andersonville.”

“But the dogs, Miss Imogene, they were on the track,” Dorothea replied.

“On the wrong track, my dear,” the elder lady answered, with a nervous little chuckle. “The wrong track.”

“But how do you know?” demanded Dorothea, turning to look up into the face of Miss Imogene alight in the now blazing fire.

“For a woman’s reason, ‘because,’” the other answered evasively but with a bright smile as she stood up. “I must go back to bed, honey, and I advise you to stop thinking about runaway Yankees and get your beauty sleep.”

Without another word Dorothea accompanied her visitor to the door.

“Good-night, honey,” said Miss Imogene, kissing the girl with a genuine warmth. “We are going to be good friends, for I love you already, my child.”

Dorothea closed the door behind her without a word. Once more her thoughts flew back to the matters that had been puzzling her all the evening. Miss Imogene wore a red band of velvet around her throat. Was she a “Red String”? The girl went back to the fire and seated herself once more in front of it, her eyes gazing into the flames leaping up the chimney, and her thoughts going over and over again the experiences of this first night in her new home.

But not yet had she come to the end of her perplexities. She heard voices whispering in the hall and then there came again a soft tapping on her door.

Dorothea guessed that it was April, and was not surprised when her beautiful cousin came in.

“I must talk to you a moment, Dorothea,” April said, sitting down by the fire. There was something antagonistic in her manner, though Dorothea could not say wherein it was displayed. “I did not hear you say to-night that you had or had not seen anybody outside the house. Did you see any one?” The question was direct and, as she asked it, her eyes fell upon the red band of velvet about Dorothea’s wrist.

Dorothea was at a loss what to reply. She believed that April was demanding an answer to something she knew already and could see no motive for it.

“I had rather not talk about that, April,” she answered at last, with a smile. “Can’t we forget all about it?”

“No,” answered April, “no, we can’t. You must remember, Dorothea, that we are at war. You say your sympathies are with the South. We believe you, but you seem to have evaded a direct question and—and—well, I want to know, so that there will be no doubt in my mind. Did you see someone?”

“Yes, I did,” Dorothea answered. She felt that under any circumstances it would do no harm to the escaping officer if April knew. It was out of her hands now either to help or hinder the poor prisoner.

April’s eyes widened.

“Why did you not tell them?” she demanded.

“Because,” Dorothea replied firmly, “I did not have a chance, in the first place, and, in the second, I was in no hurry to be the means of setting dogs on a man, whoever he might be.”

“You do not understand these things,” April replied. “We have no other way of finding prisoners. But Cousin Imogene said it was one of the negroes.”

“The man I saw was a white man,” Dorothea answered.

“Then he was the one who escaped from Andersonville,” April said, her voice rising a little. “You have helped a Yankee to escape! That is not the action or one who is in sympathy with the South.” Again her eyes sought the red velvet band about Dorothea’s wrist.

“It may have been a Yankee,” Dorothea confessed, calmly. “I certainly thought so.”

“And you were deliberately silent?” April spoke angrily. “You let one of our enemies get away when you might have helped to catch him? I tell you, Dorothea, we can’t stand that. I shall tell Hal; it may not be too late to get word to the men who are searching.” She rose to her feet.

“You are not fair, April,” the other protested, rising also. “What were you doing on the porch? You said nothing of seeing any one any more than I did, and you must have—”

April’s eyes widened in surprise for an instant and then, going close to her cousin, she whispered:

“What was the man like, Dorothea?”

“I only saw his face for a moment but it was very pale and haggard,” Dorothea answered. “His hair was dark and there was a long lock that came down over his forehead. I think, too, that there was a small mole on his cheek, but that might have been a spot of mud. I can’t tell you—”

She stopped abruptly, seeing a great change in her cousin’s face. April had lost her look of anger and in its place there was an expression of profound sorrow, and her beautiful eyes filled with tears.

“I was mistaken, Dorothea,” she faltered, half choking with some hidden emotion. “Forgive me.”

She turned away and hurried out of the room, while Dorothea stood for a moment, gazing at the shut door and wondering what would happen next to deepen the mystery.

CHAPTER IX

THE NEXT MORNING

Dorothea awoke next morning to find Harriot creeping into her bed.

“Good morning,” she murmured, opening one sleepy eye.

“I hoped I wouldn’t wake you,” said Harriot briskly, “but, now that you are awake, we might just as well talk. I wanted to get you first to-day before the others. You’re going to be mighty popular, I can see that, and you’re my cousin just as much as you are April’s.”

She was under the covers by this time and snuggled down with a series of comfortable wiggles.

The mention of April brought back to Dorothea’s mind the last glimpse she had had of her beautiful cousin the night before, and the events leading up to it.

“I wonder if they caught that poor man,” she said, all sleep gone from her eyes by this time.

“Oh, I don’t know. I hope not, though you mustn’t say so to April,” Harriot answered. “She’s so patriotic and loyal that it hurts her. I hope I’ll never have any love affairs.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Dorothea.

“I’m thinking of April,” Harriot went on. “She used to be the nicest, sweetest girl you ever knew and now—she’s a perfect idiot. Yes, she is, a perfect idiot. You just be warned by April and never have a love affair if you can help it.”

“But perhaps you can’t help it,” Dorothea suggested with a smile.

“Well, I mean to,” Harriot insisted. “I shall never fall in love. I’ve had my warning. It’s awful! And I like Lee Hendon, too; even if he is a coward—though some people say he isn’t at all.”

“Who is he? Tell me about him, won’t you?” asked Dorothea, thinking perhaps to find an explanation of April’s actions.

“There isn’t much to tell,” Harriot replied. “April’s so terribly pretty that of course she’s had lots and lots of beaux, and I don’t think any one noticed much about Lee Hendon—at least I didn’t, ’cause he’s been like a brother to us all his life and—well, when all the fuss came, there just couldn’t be any other explanation except that April liked him better than the others.”

“What fuss?” asked Dorothea.

“Because he didn’t enlist when the war broke out,” Harriot explained.

“Is he an Abolitionist?” Dorothea questioned.

“Oh, my, no! It would be almost better if he were. That would be a good reason for the way he’s acting—not just ’cause he’s afraid, as ’most everybody says. No, it isn’t because he’s an Abolitionist. He and his mother have three plantations and lots and lots of servants. At first, you know, a man who had twenty slaves didn’t have to enlist—though of course gentlemen didn’t wait to be made. My father and Hal went, right off; and so did ’most every one else. Then after a while the news went ’round that Lee Hendon hadn’t gone and wasn’t going. Oh, there was a lot of talk, and he sort of kept away as much as he could, till finally the girls sent him a Secession bonnet and a crinoline and skirt.”

“And then what did he do?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Harriot answered. “Nothing, I reckon. But Dr. Hardesty told everybody that it was Lee’s mother who kept him at home. That she was mighty sick and if he went away she’d surely die. The doctor said we ought to admire Lee for not deserting his mother.”

“I should have thought that would have satisfied April,” Dorothea suggested.

“Nothing would satisfy her except that he should go and fight,” answered Harriot. “But he wouldn’t, and we heard he had paid a substitute three hundred dollars. That was the last straw. It’s that sort of thing makes people say this is a ‘Rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight,’ and April cut him, on the steps of the church one Sunday morning, and she hasn’t spoken of him since. All the same she keeps thinking about him, or else why is she so queer?”

“I didn’t think she was queer,” Dorothea remarked after a moment’s pause.

“That’s because you don’t know how she used to be,” Harriot replied. “Before, she used to laugh all the time and—oh, I don’t know, but she wasn’t so dreadfully grown-up and we had lots of fun together. Now she acts just like she loved going to Mothers’ Meetings and sewing and all that kind of thing. You wouldn’t understand, ’cause you didn’t know her before, but I tell you she’s mighty changed.”

As if she had exhausted the topic of conversation Harriot snuggled down further under the covers and the first thing Dorothea knew her young cousin was fast asleep. Soon Dorothea herself drifted off into another nap, to be aroused a little later by hearing a soft puffing sound and a low-voiced humming in the room.

She lifted her head and there, before the fire, blowing it gently, was Lucy, her maid, singing softly to herself.

“Mary and Marthy feed ma lambs,

Feed ma lambs, feed ma lambs.

Mary and Marthy feed ma lambs,

Sittin’ on the golden stair.”

The verse finished, the colored girl turned her head and met Dorothea’s glance, whereupon she smiled broadly and getting to her feet came to the side of the bed. Dorothea’s sleepy eyes opened wide as she caught sight of a band of cheap red ribbon tying back Lucy’s frizzy hair.

“Does my little missy want I shall bring her she’s breakfus’ in baid?” the smiling maid asked. “I’ve been wrastlin’ with that pesky fire, tryin’ to kindle it without wakin’ you-all, but I ’spects that wood done come from a tree what was lightnin’ struck, it ac’ so contrary.”

“Don’t wake Miss Harriot,” Dorothea cautioned in a whisper.

“Nothin’ don’t wake Miss Harry till she’s ready to be woked,” Lucy assured her. “Her old mammy always done said she was the sleepin’est and the eatin’est baby she ever set her two eyes on—and Miss Harry ain’t outgrow it none.”

“But hadn’t I better go down to breakfast with my aunt?” Dorothea asked.

“Land sakes, honey,” Lucy replied with a wide grin. “Ol’ Miss had she’s breakfus’ hours and hours ago. She don’t spressify what you must do. But ev’ybody pleases they’ se’f heah, and that please Ol’ Miss.”

And then Harriot suddenly woke up. To Dorothea’s mind she did this, not like a person rousing from a deep sleep, but rather like a wax doll whose eyes come open with a snap and who is suddenly wide awake.

Something of this she expressed to Harriot, who seemed rather annoyed thereby.

“I don’t see anything in that to make a fuss about,” she said, with a pout. “When I’m done sleeping, I’m done, and so I stop. When you’ve done eating no one expects you to go on chewing for an hour, do they? Now I want breakfast right away. We’ve lots to do this morning.”

Lucy was at once dispatched for plenty of food for two, and then Dorothea inquired what was the pressing business a-foot.

“First thing, I must show you to my Cousin Corinne,” Harriot explained. “You’ll be a terrible disappointment to her. She thinks she’s the only cousin I have handy, and she’s always bragging to me about the Polks and the Morgans, who are kin to her but not to me. So I want you to put on a very pretty dress and I’ll make Uncle Jastrow harness up and drive us over there in style, just like you were too proud to walk.”

At this juncture the breakfast arrived and as Lucy set the tray upon the bed she implored the girls to be careful and not spill the salt.

“Is it so precious?” asked Dorothea.

“No, missy, ’tain’t that,” Lucy explained, “but land sakes, honey, it’s most powerful bad luck.”

Dorothea laughed.

“I don’t believe in bad luck,” she insisted, at which Lucy threw up her hands in horror.

Even in this time of scarcity Aunt Decent had sent up food enough for three or four girls, though Harriot grumbled because there were no beaten biscuits, and brought the announcement from Lucy that white flour was so scarce that they were saving what was left for sick folks.

“An’ youh ma she say if ever again she see the full of a bar’l of white flour at one time she’s gwin’ to give a party. Youh ma’s mammy she took mighty good care to open up she’s hands an put somepin’ in ’em when she was a baby. So, nach’ly you ma she ain’t close-fisted, nohow. What she’s got, she shares.”

Notwithstanding this lack of white biscuits the girls managed to make a very satisfactory meal, after which Harriot slipped into her dressing-gown to go back to her own room. But Dorothea stopped her.

“I’ve a lovely idea,” she cried suddenly. “Why don’t you wear one of my dresses and hats when we go to call on Corinne?”

Harriot seized on this suggestion with avidity.

“She might think we were strangers and give us fruit cake,” she suggested. “No one can make fruit cake like Aunt Dilsey, even now she has nothing to make it of.”

Dorothea’s dress being long for Harriot gave her a more mature look, which led naturally to rearranging her hair and she was very shortly a quite grown-up Harriot who at once assumed airs to fit her fine raiment. Lucy, vastly entertained by these plans, lent her quick fingers to the task and when it was finished expressed herself satisfied.

“Foh de land’s sake, Miss Harry!” she cried, stepping back to view her handiwork, “yoh sure is prettier than I eveh thought yoh could be. Lil’ Miss betteh look out for she’s beaux when you done come along dressed up.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Harriot retorted, but she was pleased, nevertheless. The fact was that her dress of green cashmere with a sacque and hat of deeper hue were most becoming and she made a charming picture.

“Come,” said Dorothea, “I want to show you off to Aunt Parthenia.”

But at this Harriot demurred.

“Mother’s apt to be mighty busy,” she objected. “Wait till we come back.”

She sent Lucy off with an order that Uncle Jastrow should harness up the carriage and drive them himself to go calling in state. Then they went down stairs to await their chariot. But when it came, Simeon was handling the reins. He was quite embarrassed and very apologetic for his lack of magnificence.

“Where is Uncle Jastrow?” demanded Harriot, bristling.

“Please, Miss Harry,” Simeon answered, “I knows I ain’t got no style, but Uncle Jastrow done say I was ’bliged to drive.”

“But why?” Harriot insisted. “Is Uncle Jastrow sick?”

“No’m, he ain’t sick ezackly,” Simeon replied, “but he say, please, Miss Harry, won’t you kindly be so good as not to blame him; but what with the horses quality company has rid off with to-day, and the horses Ol’ Miss done sent on errants, not to speak of the horses General Wheeler’s men pressed, they ain’t nothin’ lef’ in the stables ’ceptin ’tis ole Mose; An’ Uncle Jastrow he say he done kep’ his moanin’s to hisself when he come down f’om the granjure of four horses to drivin’ only two, knowin’ the war was makin’ us all sort of equinomical; but he can’t no way bemean hisself to one. He say yoh pa hisself wouldn’t ask him to hol’ the reins over only ole Mose, an’ he ain’t gwine’ disgrace the fambly that a-way.”

“Of course,” said Harriot, turning to Dorothea, “it does seem sort of humiliating for Uncle Jastrow, seeing what he’s used to driving. And I reckon he’s right about father. But he’s too proud of himself for all that. You would think that if we’re not too grand to ride behind old Mose he might be able to drive him. But come along. We’ll never get there if we don’t start pretty soon. I haven’t time to argue with Uncle Jastrow till we get back.”

The girls entered the carriage and Simeon, summoning all the style of which he was possessed, whipped up old Mose and they drove off.

“Is Uncle Jastrow a slave?” asked Dorothea, considerably puzzled by what she had seen and heard.

“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘slave’ as if you expected our people to walk about loaded with chains,” Harriot remarked judicially. “That’s what comes of reading ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ Mother says the horrid Yankees call their servants ‘help’ just to be different from us. Of course Uncle Jastrow is one of our servants, but he’s so spoiled that he does just exactly what he wants. He bosses me and he bosses mother, and father just laughs at him. April’s the only one can manage him. You know it’s difficult to be dignified with an old man who knew you when you were a baby and can tell you just how fat you were.”

As they rolled along through the sunshine a more peaceful scene could hardly be imagined. No one seeing these two pretty girls in fashionable attire, driven along the quiet road by a neat black coachman, even though it was behind the despised ‘Ole Mose,’ would ever have thought they were living in a country engaged in a deadly war.

It was not a long journey, and soon they came to the home of Mr. Charles Stewart, where Simeon, with his best imitation of Uncle Jastrow’s grand manner, encouraged old Mose till he trotted up the driveway like a skittish colt. A little darky, on the watch for just such arrivals, sprang to the carriage and placed a cover over the wheel, and the two girls descended in state, spreading their gowns and preening themselves like peacocks.

But they had little chance to make an impression, for the front door was thrown hastily open and Corinne appeared, much excited.

“What do you think, Harriot?” she cried, taking no notice of either Dorothea or their finery; “Pa has just sent us word that the hateful English have repudiated the South. Whatever do you suppose we are going to do now?”

CHAPTER X

A VISIT

Afterward Dorothea thought how curious it was that Corinne’s complaint of the “hateful English” had annoyed her so little. At the time she only felt abashed that the plans to surprise Harriot’s cousin with their finery seemed to have fallen flat. Indeed, Corinne’s announcement was a good deal like a dash of cold water in her guests’ faces; but she was evidently so much impressed by this latest war news that she could think of nothing else. It was as if she did not see Dorothea at all, and was for going on excitedly when Harriot cut her short rather tartly.

“Corinne, this is my cousin, Dorothea Drummond,” she explained. “Her father is English, but she’s for the South no matter what their Government may do. And anyway it is our duty to be polite to the stranger within our gates.”

Corinne smiled on Dorothea and for the first time seemed to realize that the girls before her deserved a more careful scrutiny. “I’m so glad you’ve come to visit us,” she said, pleasantly enough, but quite formally. “I’m afraid you will find us very much upset since the war and quite behind the fashion.”

“I hadn’t noticed it,” Dorothea answered with a glance at Harriot, who switched her wide skirt so that her cousin could not fail to observe it.

Corinne, by this time, had begun to realize that this was no ordinary visit and her eyes widened as she grasped the magnificence of Harriot’s apparel.

“I see Miss Drummond has been running the blockade,” she remarked by no means cordially. “And you seem to have grown up very fast, Harriot. You know,” she went on, turning to Dorothea with her most patronizing air, “we always think of Harriot as a little girl who cares more for cakes and candy than anything else.”

If this was said to embarrass her cousin it had quite the opposite effect.

“Oh, that reminds me. Where is Aunt Cora?” she asked with an eager tone in her voice. “I think she wants to see us.”

“My mother is much upset over this news from England,” Corinne replied rather severely, making no move to invite them into the house. “You don’t seem to comprehend the importance of it, Harriot. What we are going to do now that the British have refused to let us fit out vessels in their ports I don’t see. You understand, don’t you, Miss Drummond?” She asked the question as if it was hardly to be expected that the youthful Harriot could appreciate so mature a matter.

“Of course she understands and so do I,” Harriot answered promptly. “But we’ll get on somehow. England is not the only country in the world. You don’t suppose our great Confederacy is so easy to defeat as that, do you?”

“‘Our great Confederacy!’” Corinne wailed. “They’ve insulted us by calling it the ‘so-called Confederacy,’ as if it was nothing and we hadn’t any right to it.”

“I don’t think it matters what they call it,” Dorothea remarked, trying to seem sympathetic. She could not help feeling that Corinne lacked sincerity and that she was just repeating, parrot-like, what she had heard others say.

“Come on, let’s go in,” Harriot said, moving toward the door.

“Yes, do come in.” Corinne’s invitation was not enthusiastic, but Harriot, at least, cared nothing for that. “Ma will want to see you. She’s having a trying time making up her mind what things she ought to take with her.”

“Take with her?” echoed Harriot, standing in the doorway. “Where’s she going?”

“She doesn’t quite know,” Corinne returned. “Either to Mexico or Brazil. She hasn’t decided yet, but now that the South is beaten there isn’t any place in this country for ladies and gentlemen to live. At least that’s what Ma says.”

“Fiddlesticks!” Harriot muttered, and marched into the house.

They found Mrs. Stewart in the parlor, sewing as if her life depended upon her speed.

“Harriot, my love, I’m overjoyed to see you,” she greeted her niece in a tearful voice, hardly looking up from her work. “I’m making a running bag to tie inside my hoops. I shall put my diamonds in it when I go to Mexico. I suppose your mother has everything ready to leave?”

“Why, no, Aunt Cora,” Harriot replied, going over and kissing the cheek upturned for her salute. “We hadn’t heard of this English insult, but I don’t think it will make any difference to us. I’ve brought my cousin, Dorothea Drummond, to call on you.”

“How do you do, my dear,” Mrs. Stewart murmured, stopping long enough to look up at Dorothea and hold out a couple of fingers. “You come among us in sad days. I don’t know when we shall start, but it can’t be long now. Do you know anything about Brazil, by any chance?”

Dorothea confessed that she did not.

“It seems very hard to find anybody that does,” Mrs. Stewart went on, in the same melancholy way. “And yet Brazil is quite a well-known place, I’m told. And it certainly sounds more interesting than Mexico. It makes me think of birds, though I don’t know why. However, we shall soon be flitting somewhere like the birds. And there’s so much to be done. I was going to bury the silver yesterday; but then it occurred to me that I would have to dig up the whole garden to hide the spot from the negroes, and I really didn’t feel equal to it last night.”

“Aunt Cora,” Harriot cried, “how can you say such things? You’ll give Dorothea such a wrong impression. You know our servants are all loyal.”

Mrs. Stewart wagged her head doubtfully over her sewing.

“I’m not so certain, honey,” she insisted. “They have grown very insolent of late—but what’s the difference now? My only trouble is that I can’t make sure where we shall find the best society, in Brazil or in Mexico. I had made up my mind to London, but of course that’s out of the question now.”

“I should think it was!” Corinne cut in sharply.

“I don’t fancy you’d find the society in London much changed,” Dorothea could not refrain from remarking.

“Perhaps not,” Mrs. Stewart replied doubtfully, “but it would never be the same to me. Under the circumstances I should not care to grace the London drawing rooms—not after the news we have just received. But let us forget our troubles for a while if we can. Ring the bell, honey,” she went on to her daughter, “and order cake and wine. There is just one comfort I shall get out of this. I shall not hoard any longer. When I leave Washington I don’t intend to leave anything behind me for the beggarly Yankees to eat or drink.”

Harriot nudged Dorothea.

“Fruit cake,” she whispered as Corinne pulled the bell rope. Aloud she said, “I don’t see, Aunt Cora, what difference this English news makes. We all know that one Southerner is worth ten Yankees.”

“Do you really think so, my dear?” her Aunt asked anxiously. “In that case perhaps I’d better not be so lavish. Corinne, you might go with Alice. Give her a glass of scuppernong wine for each of us and some seed cakes. I’ll save the fruit cake a little longer.”

She handed her daughter the keys to the store-room and Dorothea could scarcely contain her laughter at the sight of Harriot’s disgusted face as she watched Corinne hurry out of the room.

“Did you ever think, Mrs. Stewart,” Dorothea began mischievously, “of quilting gold coins into a petticoat? They say you can carry a great deal of money that way and never be suspected.”

At once Mrs. Stewart’s fears were revived.

“That is a very good idea, my dear,” she commented. “Harriot, my love, run and tell Corinne to bring us the fruit cake after all. We had much better enjoy it than have the Yankees gobbling it up.”

Harriot did not wait to hear the end of the sentence. She was not minded to tarry and give her aunt an opportunity to change her mind once more.

“Honey,” Mrs. Stewart began at once, the moment they were alone, “I sent Harriot away with Corinne on purpose. I have had some news that I am at a loss to know how to break to the family, and perhaps you can make some suggestion. It is not a matter to be gossiped about. Mrs. Hendon was buried yesterday afternoon!”

She stopped and looked at Dorothea as if she expected some demonstration of overwhelming surprise on the part of the young girl.

“Is that Mr. Lee Hendon’s mother?” Dorothea asked calmly.

“Yes, my dear,” came the hurried answer. “You’ve heard of the situation with April, of course? You couldn’t be in the town five minutes without hearing of it, I’m sure.”

“Yes, I have heard of it,” said Dorothea. “Now that his poor mother is dead, everything will be all right, won’t it?”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Mrs. Stewart hurried on, “but that’s the awkward part of it. President Davis has passed a law that every white man of proper age who doesn’t report for military duty is liable to death as a deserter. You see what that means?”

“No, I don’t,” Dorothea confessed.

“Well, my love, it’s plain enough,” Mrs. Stewart explained, as if to a very stupid child. “Lee Hendon never went back home from his mother’s grave after the funeral yesterday afternoon. He has disappeared completely. No one knows where he is—and there can be only one explanation.”

“You mean he has disappeared in order not to fight for the South?” Dorothea asked earnestly. She remembered the face she had seen at the window the night before and now realized the reason for the agony it expressed. He was alone, this poor Lee Hendon, with whom she had instinctively sympathized when first she had heard of him. He had stopped to see his sweetheart for the last time and then— But here her thoughts came to a sudden stop. April had been on the porch, too, last night. Of a sudden Dorothea thought she saw a clear explanation of all that had seemed mysterious to her. April was not a “Red String” after all. The lovers had met and parted.

“April must be told,” she heard Mrs. Stewart saying, “and I don’t know how the news is to be broken to her.”

It was on the tip of Dorothea’s tongue to say that Mrs. Stewart need not worry about April’s knowing it; but instead she suggested speaking to Mrs. May as soon as she returned to the house.

“I think we had better go back as soon as possible,” she ended. “Aunt Parthenia will know exactly what to do.”

“You have an old head on young shoulders,” Mrs. Stewart said approvingly. “Call me ‘Aunt Cora,’ dear—though I shan’t be here long. I knew I should love you the moment I saw you.” On the instant she seemed to have forgotten April’s affairs and was back again on her own perplexities. “Do you think I might manage two running bags?” she went on, looking up with a wrinkled forehead as if the decision was a most momentous one. “Perhaps two would be too heavy. Still my hoops are good and wide and I’ve just had them repaired.”

Dorothea gravely advised her about the bags.

“If I go to Brazil,” Mrs. Stewart continued fretfully, “perhaps I’d better leave my diamonds and take my other jewelry instead. Diamonds are very common in Brazil, they tell me. Every one has them. They grow them there, I think; but I’m not sure of that. And then there’s the matter of the climate. No one seems to know what it’s really like. I wonder if Lee Hendon could possibly have gone there?”

Dorothea held up a warning finger. She heard the voices of the girls returning, and Mrs. Stewart, understanding, changed the subject at once without in the least changing the note of her complaining voice.

“Of course, war is war,” she rambled on; “but what I always said from the first was that no one had any right to begin it unless they were sure they could win, and at the least they should have shown enough foresight to investigate the best places for us to go if we lost. A wise government would have let us all know whether Brazil or Mexico was the right place. But no! Nothing of that sort has been done, and the matter is left to the ladies to settle. However, whichever way I decide, your father, Corinne, will think we had better go to the other place.”

“I don’t believe Uncle Charlie will want to go away at all,” Harriot remarked placidly, munching a piece of cake. “I don’t see why he shouldn’t stay right here the same as before.”

“And do his own work like a common Yankee?” cried Corinne scornfully. “You forget that all the servants will be gone. I’d rather go to Brazil.”

“You might pay the servants as we do in England,” Dorothea suggested. “Papa says it is much cheaper in the end.”

“My dear, how original!” Mrs. Stewart remarked, sewing at top speed. “Children, I hope you will give heed to your cousin. She has quite a mind, quite a mind indeed. Of course I don’t see how we can house the servants and clothe them and feed them and pay them, too; but I’ll certainly mention it to your Uncle Charles.”

She stopped abruptly to thread her needle and it was as if a river had suddenly ceased its soothing murmur.

A little later, Harriot having consumed the last piece of cake, the girls took their departure with promises to see each other soon again.

“What do you think,” Harriot said under her breath, when they were well away from the house, “Lee Hendon’s mother is dead and he’s run away!”

“Why, how did you know that?” demanded Dorothea, thinking or Mrs. Stewart’s secrecy in the matter.

“Corinne told me,” Harriot explained. “Aunt Cora doesn’t know and I didn’t want to tell her, because she’ll blab to everybody she sees, and—”

“Yes, she told me,” Dorothea said, calmly. “She didn’t want you to know till I had told Aunt Parthenia.”

“Well!” cried the outraged Harriot. “I like that! As if I couldn’t keep a secret better than Aunt Cora. At any rate, I don’t see why it should be made such a mystery. April will be the last person in the town to find it out. No one will tell her, of course.”

Dorothea turned and looked out across the country through which they were slowly driving. She was quite sure in her own mind that there would be no need of any one’s telling April about Lee Hendon.

CHAPTER XI

A KNOCK ON THE WINDOW

By the time the girls had arrived at the May house once more they had reached the conclusion that Harriot should speak to her mother about Mrs. Hendon’s death. Mrs. May could then determine whether she wanted to tell April or not.

“Of course, if she learns about it,” Harriot said thoughtfully, “it’ll spoil April’s good time at the party to-night, though you would never guess it. She’d just be gayer than ever. But mother will know what’s best to do about that.”

Dorothea agreed that this was the wisest procedure and kept her own thoughts on the matter to herself. She had no wish to complicate an already delicate situation.

“But the news from England won’t help to make the party a very gay one, I’m afraid,” she remarked a little later.

“Oh, don’t notice Corinne’s foolishness; we wouldn’t let any one think we cared about that,” Harriot replied scornfully. “If it is true that England won’t recognize us any more, we can’t help it; but we won’t stop fighting. We’ll fight all the harder. We aren’t going to sit down and cry over it.”

Dorothea, having grown up among people who took particular note of the more serious happenings in the world, had an adequate idea of the seriousness of this decision of the land of her birth. She did not believe that Harriot had any comprehension of how great a difference it would make to the Confederacy to have the British Government withhold all help and sympathy from the Southern cause. She appreciated that while the English people might still, and probably did, retain the same views upon the rights and wrongs of this war in America, and no doubt would continue to wish the South to win, that would not help rebel ships to refit in English ports—and where else was the South to go to replenish her fast disappearing resources?

“It must make a difference,” Dorothea thought. “We shall have a pretty doleful party, in spite of what Harriot says.” But she let her cousin talk on about the prospective gayety uncontradicted.

“Of course,” said Harriot, “it won’t be anything like our parties were before this war began, but we’ll have a good time all the same and you needn’t worry about partners.”

Dorothea had heard a great deal about entertainments since her arrival the day before and it had set her wondering. There had been continual talk of dances to come, and references to balls at this or that place, until she had realized that nearly every night was an occasion for some sort of gayety that continued in spite of the fact that the country was suffering from want of food and clothing and that the brave fellows with whom the beautiful girls danced might lose their lives in battle the next day. She had not begun to think seriously over this phase of her new life, but after this news from England she expected some sign of a depressed spirit and would not have been surprised to find the evening’s plans abandoned.

The May household did not dress till after supper, which, in consequence, was a rather scrambled affair. The men had returned as usual, and there was the customary banter among them as they sat about the long table. In the center of this whirl was April, the leader in all the laughter, and Dorothea looked at her wonderingly, thinking of Lee Hendon. Could this bright girl keep up so courageous a spirit, knowing that her lover was suffering? Dorothea could scarcely believe it. Either her cousin did not care for Lee Hendon as was reported, or else she had met him and had given him the consolation he stood so much in need of, if he could be judged from the glimpse she had had of him through the window.

But on her way upstairs to dress she caught sight of April’s face when her cousin was off her guard, and it wore a look of misery. Dorothea went straight to her room, assailed with new doubts, finding now no explanation that would satisfy against this evidence of a hidden sorrow.

Lucy was on her knees before the fire, setting slippers and silk stockings to warm. The pretty colored girl was vastly proud of her new young lady’s magnificent possessions. At the moment, however, she had a grievance.

“Missy, honey,” she began complainingly, “when yoh comes in, cain’t yoh ring for Lucy, please, to take youh hat and sacque?”

“But I don’t always need you, Lucy,” Dorothea replied with a smile.

“’Deed, missy, yoh needs me more’n yoh knows of,” the girl went on. “When I comes up here what does I find? Youh hat on the baid!”

“I thought I could put it away later,” Dorothea said, not at all understanding Lucy’s complaint.

“’Deed, missy, ’at’s what Lucy’s for—to put away youh pretties,” the girl replied, evidently still more distressed. “Don’t yoh know yoh must never put youh hat on the baid?”

“I don’t think it will hurt the bed,” Dorothea laughed back.

“I ain’t thinking of the baid, Missy,” Lucy explained. “It’s you, you’self, what’s gwine to have a big disappointment if you-all puts youh hat on the baid. Don’t ever forget that, missy, and please ring for Lucy nex’ time,”

“All right, Lucy,” Dorothea answered mock-seriously. “Next time I’ll put my hat on the floor if I don’t ring for you.”

“Thank yoh, missy, I sho’ will be grateful,” answered Lucy so earnestly that Dorothea looked at her, surprised at her tone.

“Do you really believe in luck, Lucy?” Dorothea asked idly, as the girl was brushing her hair.

“Does I believes in luck!” exclaimed Lucy. She held up her hands in amazement. “Does I believes in luck? No’m, I don’t believes in it, I knows it! Didn’t I see the new moon over my right shoulder and nex’ day didn’t Ole Miss send me for to take care of yoh?”

“I’m not sure that was luck, Lucy,” Dorothea could not help saying. “At any rate, I can’t see what the moon had to do with it.”

“The moon’s got a lot to do with luck, baby!” Lucy insisted. “Yoh kills a hog when the moon’s dwindlin’ and the meat’s gwine to dwine away to ’mos’ nothin’ when yoh puts it in the pot. Now nobody won’t say a rabbit’s foot off ’en a rabbit what was shot runnin’ ’cross a man’s grave of a Friday in the dark of the moon ain’t boun’ to be lucky. ’Cept ’tis foh that one thing, Friday’s a mighty unlucky day. You don’t want to start nothin’ on a Friday, honey.”

“I’ll try to remember,” said Dorothea, much amused, but keeping a sober face. “What else mustn’t I do, Lucy?”

“Well, missy, thehe’s lots o’ things it ain’t ’zackly good to do,” the girl, launched on a favorite subject, went on, brushing vigorously the while. “Yoh mustn’t get out of the wrong side of the baid in the mornin’. An’ if yoh puts on a stockin’ wrong side out yoh mus’ wear it awhile befoh yoh change it—but then, you’he boun’ to change it befoh eleven o’clock, less ’en yoh wants somethin’ bad to happen.”

“If that’s all, I’ll try to remember,” Dorothea answered lightly.

“Land sakes! Is that all, says you?” Lucy cried. “No’m, they’s heaps and heaps more, but I’ll tell ’em to yoh as they comes along. Yoh sho’ly would forget some of ’em if I told all of ’em to oncet.”

Her hair finished, Dorothea held out a foot for a satin slipper.

“Lef’ foot first, missy,” Lucy said pleadingly. “It’s luckier that a way somehow.”

So it went on till Dorothea was dressed, but she was in no hurry to go down till the music told her the dancing had begun, and seated herself near the candle. Taking up a book, she accidentally brushed the paper knife off the table.

“That means a gem’man’ comin’ to see yoh,” Lucy remarked as she picked it up.

“We’ll not bother over him till he’s here,” Dorothea replied with a laugh. “You needn’t wait, Lucy. I’ll not need you again.”

“I’ll be on the landin’, missy, to shake out youh ruffles an’ spread youh ribbons befoh yoh go down staihs. But they’s somethin’ on my mind, honey, I wants to ask yoh about.”

“What is it?” Dorothea asked. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, do you?”

“I isn’t ’zackly afeared,” Lucy explained. “I knows I ain’t stylish, lak Merry, but I’ve been a house gal wearin’ shoes fouh years now.”

She interrupted herself, a new thought striking her.

“Please, missy, what is it mannehs foh Lucy to call you? Ol’ Miss is Ol’ Miss and Lil’ Miss is Lil’ Miss, and Miss Harriot is Miss Harry, but foh a fac’ I don’t know what yoh is, and I been a studyin’ about it a heap.”

“I’m Miss Dorothea, I suppose,” Dorothea suggested.

Lucy shook her head.

“That’s a high bo’n quality name,” she replied doubtfully, “but they ain’t none of us can say it lak it should be said. I laid awake half the night a-practicin’ and a-practicin’, an’ I ain’t got up the courage yet. It’s too much granjure for my tongue, I reckon.”

“What would you like to call me?” Dorothea questioned. “I should like you to call me whatever you please.”

Lucy heaved a great sigh of relief.

“Then I’ll say Miss Dee, honey,” she announced, “jes’ lak I’d knowed yoh f’om a baby.”

She stopped and Dorothea expected her to go away, but she still lingered.

“Is there something more, Lucy?” she asked.

“Yes’m, Miss Dee, there is,” the girl confessed with marked hesitation, but in a moment it came out with a rush. “Miss Dee, is you-all some sort of a Yankee?”

“No, not any kind,” Dorothea answered with a smile. “My mother was your Old Miss’s sister, but my father is a Scot and we live in England, or at least we have always called England our home.”

Lucy was evidently disappointed.

“Then you can’t tell me what the Yankees is gwine to do with we-all when we’s free,” she murmured half to herself.

Dorothea shook her head.

“The North has first to win the war, Lucy,” she answered. “If they do, you will have to take care of yourselves and earn your own livings like white people, I suppose.”

“An’ how’s we-all gwine to do that without any white-folks learnin’?” demanded the girl.

“Oh, you could do it by taking care of some one as you do of me,” Dorothea explained.

Lucy’s eyes widened.

“Do they pay real money up No’th just for brushin’ hair and foldin’ up youh pretties?” she asked excitedly. “An’ could I be free too? But I guess you must mean Confedrit money, Miss Dee. You don’t know there’s a sayin’ that a whole bahrel full of it won’t pay foh the bunghole.”

“My father pays a maid at home to take care of me,” Dorothea pointed out, with a laugh. “But I don’t think she’s any better off than you are.”

“That’s what Merry’s always a-sayin’,” Lucy agreed.

“I would be quite satisfied if I were you,” said Dorothea. “You are as comfortable now as you are ever likely to be.”

“Yes’m, that’s what I think—but what’s I gwine to do if some of ’em meddlin’ Yankees come along and set me free? That’s what I’m askin’ yoh.”

Lucy was still grumbling to herself as she moved out of the room. Dorothea watched her go, realizing another of the problems of the South for the first time, and getting a hint of the state of mind of the slaves, who had so vague an idea of what their future was to be.

She sat for a moment, but the flapping of the curtain in front of the window annoyed her and, going to it, she closed the sash so that the wind might not blow in. Then she went back to her book by the table and tried to read.

She had scarcely turned a page, however, when she was startled by three short raps upon the window pane and, turning toward it, she saw a hand reaching up from below ready to tap again.

For an instant Dorothea’s heart jumped with apprehension, and then she thought of Lee Hendon and all fear left her. She ran to the window and, lifting it again, leaned out. As she expected, the dark form of a man cowered on the gallery roof below the window ledge.

A pale face looked up at her in the darkness.

Lucy’s prophecy as a result of the falling knife had come true. Here indeed was a stranger come to see her.

“Water!” came a croaking sound from the figure. “Water!”

Dorothea ran back to the stand and poured out a glassful, carrying it to the window. The up-stretched hand grasped it, and the man gulped the contents.

“More,” he muttered hoarsely and again she filled the glass.

“Have you any food?” the man questioned after he had drunk the second measure.

Dorothea shook her head. Then her face brightened.

“Yes, I have, too,” she whispered. “I’ve some chocolate. It’s a part of the French soldier’s rations, so I fancy it won’t hurt you. I’ll get it for you.”

The man consumed what she gave him ravenously and showed an immediate improvement in his condition.

“Food puts life into a man,” he said. “I’ve had nothing to eat since yesterday, and only a little parched corn then. Now, young lady, how am I to get away from here?”

“Really I don’t know,” Dorothea answered hesitatingly. “After all, isn’t that your own affair?”

“They told me I should find some one to help me at this house,” he answered. “When I saw your hand as you opened the window just now I knew where to ask. I’ve been lying here since the hounds chased me yesterday evening.”

“Then you’re not Lee Hendon,” Dorothea whispered half to herself. “Oh,” she went on a little louder, “are you escaping from the prison?”

“Yes,” the man answered. “Didn’t you know that? They told me I could expect help here. You must be the one. I saw the band on your wrist.”

His voice was weak and faint in the darkness as he crouched against the wall, and it came up to her only in jerks as if it was difficult for him to speak.

Dorothea started, here was prompt confirmation of Hal’s story. Evidently there was a “Red String” in the house somewhere, but who could it be? The place was full almost to overflowing with Confederate sympathizers, among whom were many Rebel officers. Yet the man must be saved, even if she had to do it herself.

“Wait a moment,” she whispered into the darkness. “You shall be helped to freedom if it is possible.”

CHAPTER XII

THE MAN ON THE ROOF

Dorothea was about to leave the window but she was by no means certain what she could do, although she was fully determined to help this poor soldier to his freedom. It was quite plain that he had expected assistance from some one in the house; but who could it be, this Red String in whom she, herself, would now be glad to confide? She had strongly suspected April when she had first heard of this mysterious band of Northern sympathizers, but her cousin’s action which had led to this conclusion could all be explained by Lee Hendon’s presence outside the house on the previous night. Dorothea decided then and there that April was not a Red String.

Miss Imogene wore a velvet band about her neck, but Dorothea, like Val Tracy, felt that here was one above suspicion. Yet there was some one who would give her the help she needed to save the wretched man upon the roof if she could but divine who it was.

While she still debated the matter in her mind, his voice came to her out of the darkness.

“If you could get me some food it would be the best thing that could happen to me,” it said.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” Dorothea answered. “You see, they are having a ball down stairs, and probably all the servants are busy, and—”

She was halted by the first strains of the music coming up to them from the parlors below.

“Have you nothing in your room?” the man asked, weakly.

“Nothing but the chocolate I gave you—which you have eaten,” Dorothea answered, and at that moment there came a knock at the door.

Dorothea closed the window softly and crossed the room.

“Who is it?” she asked, controlling her voice as well as she could.

“Please, Miss Dee, Ol’ Miss is askin’ where yoh-all is?” came Lucy’s voice.

Instantly Dorothea remembered the bright red ribbon in the girl’s hair. That there were negroes in this band of Red Strings was certain, seeing how necessary their assistance would be if anything secret was to be done in the South. She was on the point of taking the maid into her confidence when a doubt assailed her. Could she be sure of Lucy? Reluctantly she shook her head. She dared not make a mistake; the freedom, perhaps the life, of the man on the roof depended upon her and she could leave nothing to chance.

“I’ll be down shortly,” she called softly through the door, “and, Lucy,” she went on, with a sudden inspiration, “can’t you get me some sandwiches and a glass of wine? I didn’t eat much supper and—”

“And yoh is faint wif excitement,” Lucy finished for her. “Yes’m, yoh jes’ stay there and I’ll have somefin’ up foh yoh in a jiffy,” and Dorothea heard the girl hurry away.

Going back to the window she opened it again and whispered what she had done.

“It’s the best I can manage at present,” she ended.

“It will be a great help,” the man replied. “If I could just have a bit of sleep and a chance to dress a wound I received getting out of Andersonville, I wouldn’t have to bother you further. I’m sorry to give you so much trouble.”

Perhaps the prospect of food gave the man hope but, whatever the reason, he spoke in a stronger voice and in the unmistakable accents of a gentleman.

Evidently he was an officer, and Dorothea peered down in the darkness trying to catch a glimpse of his features, but it was too dark to see more than a darker shadow crouched against the wall.

“Listen,” she elaborated her plans as she talked, “as soon as my maid comes back I shall put out the candle and go down stairs. My aunt has sent for me and if I don’t appear shortly she or my cousins will come after me. When the light is out you can slip into the room, and for some hours you will be safe here. I shall not come back till the dance is over, which I suppose will be nearly morning. Can you manage this, do you think?”

“Easily,” came the quiet answer. “You couldn’t have arranged it better. With a little more strength I can get on, now that the dogs are off the trail.

“Tell me,” he added, “which of the rooms with windows opening on this roof belong to men?”

“The one at the very end,” Dorothea answered. “That’s Hal May’s room.”

“That will do very well, thank you,” came the whispered answer. “I shall make that my resting place so you’ll have no cause to worry about coming back to your room whenever you want to. I will take the food, then be off. Thank you a thousand times.”

“Is there nothing else I can do for you?” Dorothea asked hurriedly. Somehow she had grown to have something of a personal interest in this man on the roof. She hadn’t seen his face, and she was by no means sympathetic with his cause. But he was wounded and in danger of going back to Andersonville Prison, which she had heard Southerners themselves acknowledge was far from a cheerful place. She would do what she could to help him escape.

“No, not a thing,” he answered back.

“Very well then,” she went on. “I shall leave some handkerchiefs on the washstand for your wound. That’s the best linen I have. You can come in and warm up by the fire, where I’ll put the sandwiches and wine. I hope you get—”

She did not finish the sentence, for again a knock came at the door and Lucy’s voice reached her.

“Miss Dee, please—”

She ran across the room and, opening the door a crack, took the plate and glass out of the astonished girl’s hands.

“Wait for me on the stairs,” Dorothea ordered. “I shall be going down in a moment.”

She saw Lucy’s eyes widen with surprise, but there was no time to invent excuses. She knew that if she did not shortly make an appearance some of the family would be up looking for her, so she hurried back to the hearth and placed the plate and wine in the fire-light. Then, tiptoeing to the window, she opened it full.

“I’m going,” she whispered; and the next moment she had blown out the candle and closed the door behind her with some little noise.

Lucy was not far away and as Dorothea submitted to the final fluffing of her ruffles she assured her anxious maid that she was quite well and that it would not be necessary for Lucy to take the tray till morning.

“I didn’t eat everything,” she remarked. “Perhaps I shall want a sandwich before I go to bed.”

She did her best to conceal her anxiety for the man on the roof. If he held to his plan to stay but a few moments in her room and then make his way to Hal’s to rest, she felt he had a good chance to escape undetected; but she would be on pins and needles for a while. However she did not mean to show that she was not entirely herself, and sailed down the stairs and into the parlor with as composed a face as she could muster. And she made a pretty picture in her wide Suisse dress and fresh crisp ruffles, conscious that, although her clothes were not excessively magnificent they would appear rich in comparison with the other girls’, who were forced by the war to wear gowns which had been turned and remade again and again.

Lucy, standing with the other servants on the outskirts of the hall, voiced her pride loudly.

“Ain’t Miss Dee the prettiest an’ the sweetest little lady heah?” she demanded of Merry beside her. “I jes lak to set her up on a pedistool and let yoh-all have a look at her. She’s little foots got a arch on ’em yoh could let water run under and never wet the sole. ’Tain’t no field-han’s foot I’m tellin’ yoh, and her waist’s that tenchy I don’t have to pull her laces while she hol’s her bref. An’ eve’y las’ one of her clo’s is jes’ kivered wif real lace! That’s right! I ain’t sayin’ a word but the truf.”

“Fine feathehs make fine birds,” Merry sniffed scornfully. She was jealous of any one who might dare to hint at rivaling her young mistress. “Yoh can talk all yoh’s a-mind to about she’s clo’s, but what I’s looking at is she’s hair. Jes’ common black, ’tain’t sure enough gold lak Lil’ Miss’!”

Dorothea slipped into the parlor, to be captured at once by Mrs. Stewart who was talking to Val Tracy. The elder woman held out a compelling hand to her, without stopping the steady flow of her conversation.

“It may be as you say,” she was complaining in her usual tone. “I’ll certainly ask Colonel Stewart to inquire into it, and if you are right perhaps Peru is the best place for us to go, after all. But it’s strange I never heard of the Incas if they are as old a family as the Polks. Probably they are just nouveaux riches.... Kiss your Aunt Cora, dear,” she went on to Dorothea with scarcely a break in the easy flow of her words. “That dress is too sweet and lovely. I think I’ll have to copy it for Corinne. She has been complaining that she hasn’t anything fit to wear, but I tell her, ‘what’s the use if we are going to Mexico?’ And now it may be Peru and that’s further still, isn’t it, Val?”

“I believe it is,” Tracy remarked, with a twinkling glance toward Dorothea; “but you might stop at Mexico on the way and see how you liked it. Mayn’t I have this dance, Miss Drummond?” he ended, turning to the girl whose feet were already in motion to the gallop the negro musicians from the quarter had struck up.

Dorothea nodded and in a moment they were off together.

“I think you like to dance,” Tracy murmured after they had gone half round the room.

“I do like it,” Dorothea answered; “but I haven’t had much practice, and perhaps I don’t do it very well. You see at home, in England, they think I’m too young to go to dances yet.”

“You’re a very fairy on your toes,” Val assured her.

Dorothea laughed joyously.

“I should like to believe so,” she answered, “but I’m afraid I can’t take your word for it, can I?”

“Oh, Miss Drummond,” Val replied with mock despair. “Could you doubt me?”

“I can hardly be expected to have much faith in what you say after what I heard you telling Mrs. Stewart about the Incas of Peru,” Dorothea replied.

“Faith, I but told her the truth,” he grinned. “They are the oldest family I know of in this hemisphere; and as for your dancing, save one dance I have with Miss Imogene, I’ll be pleased to dance with you all night.”

“That would hardly please Miss Imogene,” Dorothea replied, shaking her head.

“Aye, and there’s something in that,” Tracy agreed. “Is she not a wonder now? On the other side she’d be wearin’ a cap and spectacles and sittin’ by the chimney corner knittin’. But here—faith, she’s the light of every party! Were I a little younger I’d be askin’ her to marry me, this night; but seein’ I’m all of twenty-three I’ve grave fears I’d age too fast for her.”

Val Tracy with his raillery kept Dorothea’s mind off the man upstairs for the time being, but when the music stopped her thoughts flew back to him with a sudden thump at her heart.

“He must have gone to Hal’s room by this time,” she said to herself, not knowing whether to be glad or more anxious on that account. A moment later she was claimed by another partner and for a while was so busy trying to remember the names of all the new people to whom she was introduced that she had little time for anything else.

April, more radiant and beautiful than ever, had an eye upon her cousin and saw to it that she did not lack partners.

“I hope you are having a good time, Dorothea,” she said, upon one occasion, with one of her most beaming smiles.

Dorothea thanked her and smiled back, with an open admiration that she could not have concealed if she had been so minded. April needed no imported finery to set off her charms and no one at the party had any doubt about who was the belle of it. But as she watched her dancing with the Confederate officers and heard her leading all the most patriotic songs of the South; when she saw her cousin’s eyes kindle with enthusiasm at the mention of the Cause for which a rebel army was fighting, it was impossible to believe April a member of this band of Red Strings of which she had become so intimately aware. The thought that it was Lee Hendon who was the mainspring of her actions grew to a conviction.

Time for such reflections came to Dorothea only now and then. She was never left to herself, but Val Tracy came for another dance which she was ready enough to give. She liked the young Irishman as did every one, apparently, and it occurred to her that he might help her solve some of the puzzling questions that had begun to throw a shadow of doubt upon her loyalty to the Southern cause.

“Tell me, Mr. Tracy,” she asked quietly, “do they always set bloodhounds on escaping prisoners down here?”

He looked at her a moment quizzically.

“You didn’t like it, eh?” he said finally. “Well, to tell you the truth, Miss Drummond, I’m not what you’d call keen about it meself. Faith, this catchin’ man with dogs—!” He shook his head vigorously.

“It’s very cruel,” Dorothea murmured, half to herself.

“Ah, but, Miss Drummond,” Tracy answered, “you must remember that they have been doing it in this country for years and years and they don’t see any harm in it. You must take things as you find them, I suppose; though I confess this huntin’ men with hounds goes against the grain with me.”

“Will they catch him, do you think?” she questioned, more anxiously than he could possibly know.

“There aren’t many escape safely from Andersonville,” he answered. “Some of them do get out; but they’re brought back sooner or later, poor creatures.”

“Why do you have such prisons?” Dorothea demanded almost angrily.

“Nay, Miss Drummond,” he returned quickly, “don’t blame me for these prisons. They’re none of mine. I’m only a small cog in a very big wheel; but to tell the truth the problem isn’t as easy a one to solve as you’d think. We can’t give our own men enough food and clothes, so you’d hardly expect the prisoners to fare better.”

Dorothea was about to reply when Hal May came hurriedly across the dancing floor and stopped beside them.

“Val,” he said, under his breath, “you’ll have to excuse yourself to Dorothea. You’ll let him go, won’t you?” he went on directly to the girl. “Fielding, who was out last night after that escaped officer, is back again and wants to see us. I told him we’d talk to him in my bed chamber, upstairs. It was the only private spot I could think of. Take Dorothea to mother, and join us as quickly as you can.” Hal went away hurriedly and Tracy started across the room toward where Mrs. May was sitting with some of the elder ladies.

Dorothea walked beside him mechanically. The man upstairs was lost. They would come upon him, sleeping in Hal’s room, and the poor fellow would have to go back to the prison horrors from which he had tried, so desperately, to escape. And there was nothing she could do. Already, she supposed, Hal and the man Fielding were upstairs. She shrank from contact with these chattering people. She wanted to be alone, to think of some way of escape for the poor man if she could.

“I don’t wish to go to Aunt ’Thenia for a moment,” she whispered, when they were half way across the room. “I would rather go out on the gallery for a breath of air.”

He looked at her sharply, and noted that her face had suddenly grown pale.

“Aren’t you feeling well?” he asked with a touch of anxiety in his voice.

For an instant it occurred to her that by saying “yes” she could keep him at her side. Then she realized the uselessness of this. Tracy was only one. No doubt Hal had summoned other officers to the conference and probably the man was already taken.

“It’s the heat I’m unused to; I shall be all right in a moment,” she answered, and with that he left her and she took her way unnoticed out on to the broad porch.

CHAPTER XIII

A FRIEND IN NEED

Dorothea had no definite plan in her mind when she went out on the long dark gallery. Her only desire was to be alone for a while to try to think of some way to aid the poor prisoner upstairs. But it required no reflection to show her that she was quite powerless. The case, as she saw it, was hopeless. The man was, in all probability a prisoner already and would be justified in thinking that she herself had taken a hand in his recapture.

She could see only one possibility of his escaping. If he was wakened in time he might be able to get out on the roof again and continue in hiding. She halted suddenly, an impulse coming to her to run upstairs and try to warn him, but she shook her head. Common sense told her it was too late to do anything.

She turned a corner of the house and looked out upon the lawn. There, dim shadows in the darkness, she could see the forms of several horses, and walking slowly up and down, with his gaze fixed upon the piazza roof, was a soldierly figure, intently watching. She stopped, half hidden by the turn in the house, and waited.

In a moment or two she heard a window raised in one of the rooms above.

“Are you down there, Mason?” It was Hal’s voice, pitched low.

“Yes, sir,” came the answer from the man pacing slowly across the lawn.

“Keep your eye open,” Hal called down. “I’m going to take a look along the roof here.”

Dorothea heard her cousin clamber out of the window and, a moment later, the creaking of the tin as he tiptoed over her head. She held her hand to her heart, tense with excitement, and dreading the outcome. From this move on Hal’s part she argued that the Confederate officers had not yet found their man. Perhaps he had gotten away, after all.

Her rising hope that this was true was confirmed by her cousin who called softly that there was no one on the roof. The girl’s spirits rose with a bound. The man was gone and she was more glad than she would have thought possible. He was an enemy of those with whom her sympathy lay. She still believed in the cause the South was fighting for. Yet for all that she could not help rejoicing that this man had escaped; indeed she felt like dancing. The music in the parlors called her and she turned to go back.

“It’s because they send hounds after them,” she thought to herself, trying to explain her perplexing state of mind. She would have denied with perfect sincerity that she wished the North to win the war, but she could not hide from herself the fact that she had seen things that had dulled the keen edge of her enthusiasm for the Confederate Cause.

As she was about to step through the doorway into the house she ran sharply into April coming out hurriedly. Both girls drew back and for an instant eyed each other in silence.

“I am sorry if you are not having a good time,” April said at length, with a touch of asperity in her tone. “I missed you and was wondering where you were.”

“Oh, but I was enjoying myself,” Dorothea strove to put enthusiasm in her words. “I just came out for a little air.”

April turned to go back into the parlor.

“You seem fond of the porch in the evenings,” she remarked over her shoulder, but there was no accompanying smile and Dorothea felt that a barrier of some sort had sprung up between them. For all that she was not convinced that her cousin’s errand was to seek her. She wondered at once if April knew what was going on upstairs. Perhaps, after all, this beautiful cousin had had a hand in the prisoner’s escape and was coming out to see if all were well. She could not be sure and again felt herself to be in the midst of affairs which she could not explain.

Then, as she was about to make her way into the parlors her heart gave a great thump with a realization of the possibility that the Union soldier might still be in her room. In that case he must be warned before a search of the whole house was made.

With this in mind she hurried up the stairs, crossed the hall, and closed her door softly behind her. She heard the murmur of men’s voices coming from Hal’s quarters, but knew no one had seen her.

Inside, the window was open, a dull fire still burned in the hearth, but she noted that the sandwiches and wine remained as she had left them, untouched. Evidently, she thought, the man had not had time to eat before he was forced to leave. She crossed the room, intending to shut the window but, ere she reached it, her eyes fell upon a dark heap on the floor beside her bed. She halted, looking down with a sudden fear in her heart and then breathed a sigh of relief.

“He took a disguise and left his clothes here,” she half murmured to herself. But, when she stooped down to examine the meager bundle more closely, she saw that there was a man still in the shabby uniform, a man so thin and wasted as to be little more than a skeleton.

She thought at first that he was dead, but, snatching her hand-glass, she held it in front of his parched lips and found it clouded. The man was alive, how long he could remain so she dared not think. In the half light from the fire, to her inexperienced eyes, he looked as if each succeeding minute might easily be his last.

But what was she to do now? Whom could she trust? Certainly none of the servants, who would probably scream in terror and alarm the entire household at the first sight of the poor, huddled body. Her mind was busy with this problem, but instinctively she had taken the glass of wine and was trying to force a little of it through the pale lips, when there came a knock at her door.

Instantly she was on her feet, her nerves taut; but by no means ready to give up without a fight. So far her part had been passive, now that the man could no longer help himself she meant to try her utmost to save him. That it was Hal or Val Tracy coming on a search of the house, she had no doubt. However they would not enter so long as she was there, and she vowed to herself that she would remain in the room till Doomsday rather than let either of them in.

“Who is it?” she asked, and expected to hear the deep voice of one of the men, but greatly to her consternation the door was opened and in walked Miss Imogene.

“It is I, honey,” said the dainty little lady, closing the door behind her and advancing into the room. “What are you doing here in the dark?”

“I just came up for a moment,” Dorothea replied, without a tremor in her voice. Here was a more dangerous situation even than she had anticipated and her wits were working fast to meet it. “I will go down with you at once.” She made a motion as if to start for the door, hoping that Miss Ivory would take the hint and go out too; but the latter evidently had no such intention for she stood before the fireplace, placing a dainty foot upon the fender to warm it before the fitful blaze.

“Do put another log on the fire, child,” she requested. “My toes are icy and—my dear, I want a little chat with you. I don’t think you can be enjoying your party—hiding alone up here.”

“Oh, but really I have been—indeed I have been,” Dorothea protested. “I just came up—”

“For the same reason you went out on the porch,” Miss Imogene interrupted, with a swift upward glance. “Come, child, put on a fresh log and let your old cousin have five minutes with you. The evening is not half over.”

There was a new tone in the pretty voice that surprised Dorothea. She had thought of Miss Imogene as a sweet and gentle spinster who spent most of her life in social gayety or in doing some pleasant task out of the hurry and bustle of the world. Now she felt that under the sweet manner there was a will that might prove stubborn if the cause arose. Moreover there was nothing to do but comply with the request unless she chose to be deliberately rude. That she could not be, even though she could find no excuse ready to her tongue.

Dorothea placed a fresh log on the fire and then stood beside her visitor, the two looking down in silence as the wood caught and flamed up in a cheerful blaze. Then, quite suddenly, so that Dorothea was surprised, Miss Imogene turned and glanced about the room.

Dorothea’s heart sank. She saw no possibility of the shrunken figure on the floor escaping Miss Imogene’s sharp eyes. Nor was she mistaken.

“It’s quite a pretty room by fire-light,” said the little lady and took a step toward the bed. A moment later she was beside the prostrate man, looking down at him.

“What’s this, child?” she asked in a whisper.

Dorothea hurried to her side.

“Oh, Cousin Imogene, it is a Union officer escaped from Andersonville,” Dorothea whispered. “They are hunting for him now. They think he’s here, and—”

“Why didn’t you tell one of the men, Hal or Val Tracy?” demanded the elder woman with a trace of severity in her tone.

“Because I wouldn’t give him up,” Dorothea maintained stoutly. “I’m not a real Rebel. I’m British; and though I do believe the South is right I don’t think they should hunt men with dogs. And, Cousin Imogene, I mean to do all I can to help him.”

“Do you know who he is?” was the next question. Dorothea’s plea did not seem to have made any impression on the little lady, who suddenly had grown rather imperious and whose gentleness had dropped from her like a cloak.

“No, of course not,” Dorothea answered, surprised. “But he’s a Federal officer and he’s been on the porch roof all night without anything to eat and—”

“Light a candle and bring it here,” her cousin commanded, dropping to her knees as Dorothea obeyed.

With a deft hand Miss Imogene turned the face of the shrunken figure to the light. As she looked at it she gave a smothered cry.

“It’s Larry Stanchfield!” she exclaimed and at the name the man opened his eyes and looked up at the two leaning over him.

For an instant there was silence, and then Miss Imogene spoke in a strained voice.

“I’ll help you, Dorothea,” she said. “Go lock the door.”

CHAPTER XIV

MISS IMOGENE TAKES CHARGE

When Dorothea hurried back after locking the door she found that Miss Imogene was holding up the young man’s head and had managed to force some of the wine down his throat. A minute later a little color came into his cheek and he smiled up at them in a weak, embarrassed way.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured; “I’m an utter idiot to do this—but how did you know I was Larry Stanchfield?”

“I knew your father when he was about your age,” Miss Imogene replied gently. “For the moment I was silly enough to take you for him. But we haven’t time to talk of that.”

Young Stanchfield struggled to sit up.

“This is really unpardonable,” he stammered. “I should not be here at all. I’ll go at once.”

“You’ll go as far as the fire,” Miss Imogene pointed out in a tone that admitted of no argument. “For the present you are safe here.”

“But I never intended to stay in this room,” he protested, “and it isn’t of my own safety I’m thinking.”

“It is what I am thinking of,” Miss Imogene replied. “Although we must get rid of you, or we shall be suspected of not being the staunch Rebels we are. Come over by the fire now and warm yourself.”

Miss Imogene spoke lightly, but there was a serious undertone in her voice and the young man, looking first at her and then at Dorothea, nodded his head as if he understood more than her words implied.

“You are very good,” he murmured.

But he had noted the band of red velvet about Miss Imogene’s throat and Dorothea had caught the expression of comprehension that had passed over his face.

“He, thinks Cousin Imogene’s a Red String, too,” she thought, and then, “How do I know that she isn’t?”

With an effort Stanchfield rose and staggered toward the fireplace; but when Miss Ivory would have steadied him with a hand on his arm he winced.

“Not that arm,” he muttered; “it’s—it’s scratched a bit.”

“I’m sorry,” Miss Imogene said; “I shall have a look at it presently, but first of all we must get you some strengthening food.” They seated him in front of the fire, and he leaned back with a sigh of relief; but he seemed so weak that Miss Imogene looked at him anxiously.

“There is a flask in my room and glass of milk,” Miss Imogene spoke half to herself.

“Oh, pray don’t trouble,” Stanchfield faltered; and then, before their eyes, he fainted straight away.

In the silence that followed they could hear the low-toned murmur of men’s voices and, suddenly, the sound of a closing door far down the hall. Miss Imogene and Dorothea looked at each other apprehensively, for a moment.

“Lock it, after me, child,” Miss Imogene whispered, starting toward the door with an air of determination, “and don’t let any one in till I come back. I’ll only be a minute.”

She left the room swiftly, after a glance up and down the hall, and Dorothea turned the key and waited.

A little later there came a knock and, expecting Miss Imogene’s return, she opened noiselessly. Before her stood Val Tracy.

“Oh, you’re in here,” he said, with some embarrassment; “I didn’t know. You see we’re looking for that escaped man. We haven’t found him yet and we’re searching the house. Of course, as you’re here, we can take for granted a Union officer isn’t in this room.”

His eyes wandered over the girl’s head for a moment and then, with a bow, he drew back into the semi-darkness of the hall. Dorothea, without a word closed the door, her breath coming in short, quick gasps. It was so narrow an escape that she had all the sensations of having been caught. A few minutes later Miss Imogene came back with milk and brandy.

Dorothea in a few quick words told of Tracy’s visit and Miss Imogene shook her head doubtfully at the girl’s assurance that he had seen nothing.

“I hope not,” she replied, “but we can’t speculate about that. We must bring this boy around as quickly as we can.”

She forced some of the brandy between Stanchfield’s lips and presently he came to himself. A stiff punch and the sandwiches seemed to restore his strength like magic, and Miss Imogene turned her attention to his injured arm.

“Oh, please don’t bother with it,” Stanchfield insisted. “I can fix it myself now. That’s what I was trying to do when I fainted like the silly idiot that I am. An old darky dressed it for me the second day I was out of Andersonville. It’s nothing but a flesh wound, and it was doing pretty well, considering, till I climbed up the vines to the porch roof to get away from the hounds. Then it opened again, and I’m afraid it’s rather a mess. But please don’t bother.”

“Dorothea, hold the candle over here,” Miss Imogene said calmly, utterly ignoring this plea. “I’ll slit the sleeve. We’ll have to get you other clothes from somewhere, anyhow. Did that hurt?”

Her delicate fingers that seemed not to be made for such things, deftly separated the stained shirt from the clotted blood, and Dorothea, unused to such sights, felt herself growing sick and faint at this wound which the young man had called a scratch. But she summoned her courage and, although she was rather white about the lips, managed to give Miss Imogene all the help that lady needed, so that very shortly the washing and bandaging was over.

“I feel like a new man,” Stanchfield declared in a little while. “Now I must go. I can’t be here at daybreak.”

He started to his feet, but was still so weak that in spite of his determination he fell back into his chair.

“The truth is,” Miss Imogene remarked with a wrinkled brow, “you must have rest to recuperate. But what to do with you, my boy, I don’t know.”

“In a little I shall be myself again,” Stanchfield insisted. “At the worst I can get back on the roof and wait till my strength returns. Whatever happens I cannot involve you ladies in my troubles.”

“My dear boy,” Miss Imogene spoke softly, “I knew your father so well that anything I might do for you would but repay in a slight measure much that I owe him. There must be some way found to start you out again with a chance of escape.”

She spoke so earnestly that it would have seemed rudeness to protest further. Stanchfield bowed his head as if in assent to her assumption of the responsibility.

“Is your father still alive?” Miss Imogene asked after a moment’s silence.

“He was, the last time I heard of him,” Stanchfield answered. “He is a Major in our army now, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Miss Imogene said, looking down into the fire with a return of her old manner. “I didn’t know. I haven’t heard of him for many years, but some day I might meet him. Could I face him, knowing that I might have helped his son and did not try? No, no. For the sake of a dear friendship I am doubly bound.” She paused and then, lifting her head with a determined air, spoke directly to Dorothea.

“May I share your room to-night, honey?”

“Of course,” answered Dorothea readily.

“Then Lieutenant Stanchfield shall have one good night’s rest at least,” Miss Imogene spoke determinedly; but she was interrupted.

“My dear lady,” Stanchfield broke in, seeing the drift of her words. “It is impossible. You have no idea what the conditions are in Andersonville. I am not fit to inhabit a decent place.”

“I will see to that,” Miss Imogene replied with a smile. “There’s a huge brass pitcher filled with water in the fireplace and a tub under the bed. Hot water and China-berry soap is what I prescribe. You will have strength enough to manage that. After, you will sleep the better and in the meantime I’ll find some other clothes for you somewhere.”

“I must stick to the rags of my uniform,” Stanchfield said. “So long as I wear that, I am at least not in danger of my life as a spy.”

“Then tie it in a towel and place it outside your door,” Miss Imogene instructed him. “I’ll have my maid clean it. I think I can trust her. At least I can scare her, for I have done it before.”

“You are the most thoughtful person in the world,” Stanchfield murmured gratefully. “I’d rather have clean clothes than food, even!”

“You shall have both,” Miss Imogene promised. “And you need not fear interruption. Even my maid is instructed not to enter my room without leave. I am sure you will be safe there. There is a large screen in the room and a huge wardrobe. If worst comes to worst you can hide.”

As she finished speaking they all became aware of the murmur of voices on the lawn below. Quick as a flash Miss Imogene blew out the candle and hurried to the window. A moment later there came a low-toned exchange of farewells and the soft thuds of horses moving away.

“They are gone without their prisoner,” Miss Imogene whispered as she came back to the fire. “All is safe now. The music down stairs will drown the noise of anything we do up here. But we have no more time to waste, for we shall both be missed if we do not return to the dance. Dorothea, go into my room and light the candle. We will wait till you come back to tell us if all is clear.”

Dorothea went off and found time to pull out the tub from under the bed and place it before the fire. She feared that Mr. Stanchfield might not be able to do that for himself. Also she found two eggs, one of which she brought back with her.

“Ah,” exclaimed the little lady, as she saw the egg in Dorothea’s hand. “That is my morning dose and the very thing you will need this evening, Mr. Stanchfield.”

She mixed the egg with a little milk and brandy and made the young man swallow it, after which he declared himself ready for anything. But even yet he was very, very weak and both Miss Imogene and Dorothea hovered about him as he tottered along the hall. However he reached his goal safely and within the doorway he turned and, seizing a hand of each of his rescuers, pressed them to his lips.

“It will be like Heaven here,” he said brokenly, then he closed the door softly behind him.

“Poor lad,” whispered Miss Imogene. Then gently, “To think I should meet his son here.”

So far there had not been the slightest hitch in their plans. The music below was loud and they thought that no one had seen them, but as they turned to take their way below they heard the door of Val Tracy’s room softly close.

CHAPTER XV

UNCERTAINTY

Instead of going down stairs directly, both Miss Imogene and Dorothea turned into the latter’s room and looked at each other in consternation.

“Do you suppose Lieutenant Tracy saw us?” Dorothea asked, under her breath.

“I’m afraid he did, honey,” Miss Imogene said, shaking her head disconsolately so that her curls quivered delicately. “Poor Larry! He’ll have to go back to that place of torture, and he won’t last long from the looks of him.”

“But we must do something,” Dorothea insisted vehemently. “There must be something we can do. We must think. Why didn’t Mr. Tracy take him at once instead of going back to his own room? Perhaps he’s giving us a chance to get the poor fellow away.”

Miss Imogene shook her head.

“No, he wouldn’t do that, my dear,” she answered. “But he knows that a man who can’t cross the hall without the help of two females to keep him from falling, isn’t going to run far.”

“Then let us warn Mr. Stanchfield and he can go out on the roof again and hide,” Dorothea suggested. “It’s been searched, you know.”

“They would find him,” Miss Imogene said. “No, there is only one thing we can do. I’m going to appeal to Val himself to parole the lad in my care until he is stronger. I’ll promise to turn him over some time. That’s our best chance now.”

She did not wait to consider the matter further but ran into the hall and knocked at Tracy’s door. Dorothea, watching, saw her stand a moment listening, then knock again and, receiving no response, open the door and look into the room. Then she hurried back.

“He’s not there, honey,” she whispered. “In that second we were talking he must have gone to lay an information.”

“Perhaps Lieutenant Tracy wasn’t there at all,” Dorothea whispered, hopefully. “It might have been a breath of air that closed the door, mightn’t it?”

“That’s possible,” Miss Imogene agreed, and paused a moment in deep thought. “At any rate, honey, we must act as if no one knew what we had been doing. I shall make it my business to find out if Val does know. Come, we must go down now. I’ve no doubt we’ve been missed already, so I shall say we’ve been having a little talk together. Don’t lose your courage, dear. After all we’re not sure Val saw us. Come!”