SIGNALS
“Dat Yankee sojer took de chicken, _an’_ de bread, _an’_ de eggs; an’
I’m right shuh dat some ob dose cakes were tuk!” declared Dulcie, as
Mrs. Delfield handed her the basket.
“No, Dulcie! No, he didn’t!” exclaimed Roxy, who with Polly beside her
had followed Mrs. Delfield to the open door of the kitchen.
Dulcie shook her head solemnly. “Den you tells me how cum dat basket
whar he hides hisse’f? An’ you tells me likewise who did make off wid
all my food?” and Dulcie gazed so sternly at Roxy that the little girl
began to feel sure that her secret had been discovered.
“Of course the poor fellow must have been half starved,” said Grandma
Miller, “but if he had only asked we would have gladly befriended him. I
don’t like to think of any soldier slinking into a house in this
fashion!”
“He didn’t! He didn’t!” again declared Roxy nearly ready to cry; for the
little girl realized that the young soldier need not have been so
hungry, so nearly starved, as he had declared, if he had been willing to
steal food; and Roxy felt it was unfair that he should be thought a
thief when she herself had taken the things. She well knew that she
would be praised for carrying him the food, but her promise to the
fleeing stranger that she would never tell anyone that she had seen him
now prevented her from protecting his honesty.
“Why, Roxy, dear! Who else could have taken the food? He must have crept
in when Dulcie was in her cabin, and when you were riding with Polly,”
said Mrs. Delfield, putting her arm about her little daughter and
thinking Roxy had not yet wholly recovered from her fright.
Roxy looking up met Polly’s questioning glance. “Oh! Polly looks as if
she knew all about it,” she thought, wondering if it could be possible;
but neither of the girls said a word as to the fact of their
disagreement or that Roxy had not, after all, gone to Sharpsburg that
afternoon. Dulcie had apparently forgotten Roxy’s early return, and now
reminded her mistress that suppertime was well past.
“Yo’ suppah am ready. Dar ain’ so much as dar ought ter be ’count ob dat
Yankee a-stealin’ ob it; but I reckons you’ll make out,” she said
soberly, and Grandma Miller led the way to the dining-room.
Polly declared that she had had her supper before leaving home, but she
sat at the table beside Roxy and nibbled at one of Dulcie’s cakes.
Grandma Miller spoke again of the young soldier who had caused so much
excitement in her quiet home.
“He is in safety by this time; with two good horses he can soon reach
Washington. I wonder if it was the Richmond prison from which he
escaped?” she said thoughtfully.
“My father thought the Confederates very brave to ride on so near to
Sharpsburg in search of him,” said Polly; “he says they might easily
have been captured themselves by some body of Union troops on the
march.”
“Oh, no one ever questions the courage of the Southern soldiers; I
should not be surprised to see an army of them, with General Robert Lee
at their head, come riding into Maryland any day,” said Mrs. Delfield,
but little imagining that before many months her prediction was to be
fulfilled, and the courageous Lee lead his brave troops to raise the
standard of revolt on Northern soil, and that along those peaceful
slopes and in the valley bordering the Antietam River would rage one of
the fiercest and most decisive battles of the Civil War.
Nor could any one of the little group gathered that June evening about
the table in the peaceful room whose windows looked off toward South
Mountain imagine that the young Yankee soldier who Roxy had that day
helped on his way to safety would be one of the conquering army under
General McClellan.
Now and then Roxy and Polly exchanged a friendly smile, both well
pleased that their disagreement of the early afternoon was forgotten,
and when they left the dining-room and sauntered from the porch to the
shade of a big butternut tree that stood a short distance from the
house, leaving Grandma Miller and Roxy’s mother, Mrs. Delfield said:
“I am so glad Polly and Roxy are such good friends. Polly is such a
sweet-tempered, good girl.”
“Indeed she is,” agreed Grandma Miller, “and just the right companion
for our impulsive Roxy who has not yet learned to think first before
acting on an impulse.”
“But the child’s impulses are all good ones,” replied Mrs. Delfield,
“and I believe in letting her follow them.”
Grandma Miller smiled wisely. “All the more reason, my dear, for being
glad that Roxy has Polly for her friend,” she said.
While this conversation went on the two girls under the butternut tree
were making pleasant plans for the next day. Polly had made a wonderful
discovery and was eager to share it with Roxy.
“Roxy, you know that from the end window in your chamber you can look
straight across the fields and see the end windows of our attic,” she
began. But Roxy shook her head.
“I can see the top of your house, but I don’t remember about windows,”
she said thoughtfully.
“I’m sure you can,” Polly insisted, “because I looked out from our attic
and I could see your window just as plain as could be; and the muslin
curtain blew out, back and forth, while I was looking, just as if
somebody was waving it,” and Polly smiled and nodded as if expecting
Roxy to discover some particular meaning in the waving curtain, but
Roxy’s gray eyes were fixed questioningly on her companion and she made
no response.
“Oh, Roxy! What a little owl you are!” said Polly laughingly. “Don’t you
understand what the waving curtain means? Signals!” and at the last
word, Polly’s voice dropped to a whisper. But Roxy had sprung up, a
little angry flush showing on her brown cheeks.
“I am not an ‘owl,’ Polly Lawrence,” but before Polly could say a word
Roxy had clasped the older girl’s arm, and was saying: “Oh, Polly, I’ll
be an owl if you want me to. I don’t know why I get mad so quickly!”
Polly put her arm about the little girl and said smilingly: “An owl is
the wisest bird of all the birds, even if he can’t see in the daytime!”
“Can’t an owl see in daytime?” questioned Roxy. “Why can’t he?”
But at this question Polly shook her head.
“You’ll have to ask Grandma Miller; she knows all about birds,” she
answered. “What I meant, Roxy-poxy, was that you did not see what I was
driving at about windows and curtains; if I can see your window-curtain
from my attic windows, why can’t we have signals? If, for instance, I
promise to come over here and can’t come I could fasten a white towel in
my attic window; you would see it from your window and then you wouldn’t
expect me.”
Roxy’s face brightened with delight. “Oh, Polly! you think of the nicest
things! Why, we can have a lot of signals, can’t we?”
“Of course we can,” Polly agreed; “we can have signals that mean ‘come
over this afternoon’ and a signal that means a ride or a walk.”
Roxy was now all eagerness to carry out Polly’s plan; and before Polly
started for home the two girls had written out a set of “signals,” to be
carried out by white cloths fluttering from the upper windows of the
Miller and Lawrence houses. Beside this Polly had suggested that on the
following day they should go for a walk up the pasture slope beyond the
Lawrence house.
“Maybe we can find a few late strawberries,” said Polly; “and young
wintergreen leaves are just right to gather now. Your grandma would like
you to bring her home some of those.”
“Yes, indeed! Will we meet by the big sycamore?” rejoined Roxy.
“Yes, I’ll be there at ten o’clock,” said Polly, and Roxy, sure that
nothing would prevent her being there at the time, agreed promptly.
The big sycamore was on the further slope from the Miller house that led
up toward the Lawrence farm. It was a huge tree, that leaned
protectively over a clear little brook that ran down the hills to empty
into the Antietam, or as Dulcie called it, the “Anti-eatem” River. This
tree was about half-way distant between the two places, and was a
favorite meeting place for the two girls. There was a little hollow
among the big roots well cushioned with soft, green moss where they
often rested, and from this pleasant seat they could see two of the
stone bridges that spanned the river.
After a few more words about their “signals,” and deciding that they
would keep it a secret, Polly said good-night and ran down the path,
while Roxy walked slowly toward the house, thinking over all the
wonderful events of the day.
The long June day had come to an end; the sun had set, and long
rose-colored clouds lay along the western horizon; one faint star shone
in the evening sky, and the fragrance of the white roses that grew about
the porch filled the air with sweetness. Mrs. Delfield was on the porch
steps and as Roxy came toward her she heard her mother singing:
“For life or death, for woe or weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland, my Maryland.”
As Roxy heard the words of the song she exclaimed:
“Oh, Mother! The soldiers in gray were singing that very tune.”
“Were they, dear? Well, perhaps all the South is singing it by this
time,” said Mrs. Delfield, a little sorrowfully, for her Virginia
cousins were in the Confederate Army while her husband and friends
fought for the Union. The song “Maryland, my Maryland,” by James R.
Randall, had been published the previous year, and its haunting cadences
appealed to all.
“Mother! I hope the Yankee soldier is safe, don’t you?” said Roxy, as
they went indoors.
“If he is he ought to be grateful to you, my dear,” replied Mrs.
Delfield, and a little smile came over Roxy’s face. She thought it was a
fine thing if she had really helped a Yankee soldier to win his freedom
and reach safety. But Roxy was not altogether happy as she remembered
that she had permitted the young soldier to be thought a thief.
“I know he’d want me to tell now,” she thought. “It isn’t fair not to,”
and in a moment she was telling her mother the story of the afternoon:
her anger toward Polly, the first meeting with the mounted soldiers on
the bridge, and the hungry runaway’s plea for help.
Mrs. Delfield listened in amazement.
“I had to tell, didn’t I, Mother?” and her mother promptly agreed.
“Of course you did, dear child; and I think Grandma and Dulcie must be
told at once so that they may know the young man did not take the food.
You did just right, Roxy,” and Mrs. Delfield smiled so approvingly that
the little girl was no longer troubled, and went happily to bed with
thoughts of all she would have to tell to Polly on the following day.