A SURPRISE
When the third day passed without Mollie appearing at the Arnolds’
cabin Mrs. Arnold gave Berry permission to go and find out the reason.
There were not to be any lessons that morning, as Mr. Arnold had not
been well for several days, and it was Lily who cared for the cow,
brought the milk to the cabin, the wood from the shed, and did all the
chores that Berry’s father usually did about the cabin.
“Isn’t it lucky I found Lily?” Berry asked soberly, as she made ready
for her tramp over the ridge to the Braggs’ cabin.
“Lily is a great help,” Mrs. Arnold replied, but she did not tell
Berry that the fact of having the fugitive slave girl in the house
might prove a great danger to the Yankee household on the Tennessee
mountain ridge.
“Do not say a word about Lily to Mollie or to Mr. and Mrs. Bragg,”
Mrs. Arnold added, and Berry promised, thinking that whatever
Mollie’s secret was it could not be more wonderful than the discovery
of Lily.
“It’s like spring,” thought Berry as she strode along the leaf-covered
path. “I smell it in the air.” For it was one of the days of late
January when, among the ravines and valleys of the Tennessee
mountains, spring seems close at hand. The sun shone warmly down, and
wrens, nuthatches and cardinals flitted about the forest. “It won’t
be long before the sap begins to run and we can make maple-sugar,”
thought Berry. For there was a grove of sugar maples not two miles
distant from the cabin, and Berry recalled the previous spring when
she and her father had tapped the trees, boiled down the sap and
made maple-sugar. “And that’s what we’ll do this year,” she decided
happily, as she left the path for a moment to watch a scurrying
partridge as it fluttered over the rough ground.
Berry had not gone far from home, however, before she was sure that
she was being followed; that someone, keeping well out of sight behind
trees and underbrush, was not far behind her; and she wondered if it
might not be the man who, only a week earlier, had spoken to her at
the brook crossing, and mistaken her for a boy; and at this thought
Berry’s hand sought the silver whistle.
“But the whistle wouldn’t help to-day; Father is too ill to come,” she
thought; “but it might frighten anyone who was hiding,” she decided.
But Berry did not use the whistle. She was a fleet runner, and off
she went at her best pace, sure that she could outrun any would-be
pursuer. Nevertheless, by the breaking of twigs and the crashing
noises in the undergrowth, the little girl knew that her unseen
pursuer still kept her in view; and not until she reached the highway,
along which she must go for a short distance before reaching the rough
lane leading to the Braggs’ cabin, did she believe that she was at
last out of reach of her pursuer.
“I’ll ask Mr. Bragg to go home with me,” Berry resolved as she hurried
up the lane, for she recalled the stranger’s threats if she told of
having seen him, and did not wish to encounter him again.
As Berry came in sight of Mollie’s home she noticed that there was no
thread of smoke rising from the chimney of the cabin; it had a lonely
and deserted look, but Berry did not stop to think of this. She was
sure that in a moment the door would open wide, and Mollie, smiling
with pleasure at the sight of her friend, would give her a warm
welcome.
Berry rapped on the door, and then gave it a little push. But the
door did not open, there was no response to her knock, and Berry now
noticed that the cabin windows on each side of the door were evidently
boarded up on the inside.
“They’ve gone away! And Mollie did not tell me!” she exclaimed aloud,
with a sense of angry resentment against poor Mollie.
“That was her old secret! All the time I was making her doll, and
her dress, and when she was pretending to want to come to school she
knew she was going off,” thought Berry, tears of angry resentment and
disappointment coming to her eyes.
It was to be many weeks before Berry was to hear the true story of the
Braggs’ sudden disappearance, and learn that poor little Mollie had
not been given time to tell her great secret, or to say good-bye to
the friends who had given her such a happy birthday.
For a few moments Berry stood on the worn stone that formed the
threshold to the dilapidated cabin, wondering where the Braggs had
gone, and if they meant to return. The boarded windows made her feel
sure that they had no intention of coming back, and, with a mournful
sigh, Berry at last turned from the cabin and started on her tramp
back through the forest.
Her thoughts were so filled by Mollie’s disappearance that she had
entirely forgotten the possibility of again encountering the man who
had called her “Berry Nees,” and not until she had left the main road
and chanced to see a crouching figure lurking behind an old stump near
the path did she realize that whoever it was that had followed her
from home was still watching her every step.
Almost without thinking Berry drew the silver whistle from her pocket
and its sharp call sounded clearly through the silence of the woodland
path, and came echoing back as if repeated by a dozen whistles, and
instantly the crouching figure sprang upright and leaped toward the
little girl, exclaiming:
“Don’, Missie! Fer de lawd sakes, don’ blow no whissel!” and Berry
found herself clasped tightly by the thin arms of Lily, who whispered
fearfully:
“Yo’ don’ know w’at a whissel might fotch, Missie. ’Deed yo’ don’!”
and her big, frightened eyes stared at Berry as if they were both
facing some great peril.
Berry pulled herself angrily away from the girl’s clutching fingers.
“Was it you who followed me all the way from home?” she demanded.
“Yas, Missie,” came the faltering response.
“And you were hiding behind that stump to follow me home, I suppose?”
she continued.
“Yas, Missie,” replied Lily in a whisper.
Berry was now feeling herself a much abused person. To have Mollie,
her only friend and playmate, disappear without a word of explanation
or good-bye had been a bitter experience; to have felt herself pursued
all along the forest trail by a possible enemy, and now to discover
that she had been needlessly afraid because of this stupid negro girl,
made her angry and resentful. Berry did not stop to ask why Lily had
followed her, or to remember that the girl was still afraid of every
sound, and felt herself safe only when near to the little girl who had
befriended her, and angry words rushed to her lips.
“Don’t you dare follow me another step! I don’t want to see you
again, ever!” she declared, and without another glance at the cowering
figure, Berry hurried on up the trail. She no longer noticed the calls
of the forest birds, or the sunshine that sent flickering shadows
across the woodland path. Mollie was gone, she was sure she would
never see her again, and that stupid negro girl had made her run all
that distance down the ridge as if pursued by a mountain lion, she
thought resentfully.
“I wish Francis was home,” she half sobbed, as she drew near the
cabin. “Everything was all right when he was here. I hate war!” For
Berry realized that it was the war that had taken her brother from
home to unknown perils and to certain danger, and left her alone with
her mother and father in the cabin, remote from friends.
She ran into the kitchen and, almost ready to cry, exclaimed:
“Mother! Mother! Mollie’s gone! The Braggs are all gone, and the cabin
fastened up! And Mollie never let us know!”
“Perhaps Mollie did not have a chance, my dear,” said Mrs. Arnold
quietly. “I am sure she would have told us if she could. But the
Braggs are not the only ones who have disappeared. Lily has run
away from us. She disappeared just after you left the cabin. I don’t
understand her going, for she seemed to think herself safe with us.”
Berry stood silent for a moment, and then said slowly, “Lily will come
back. Of course she will.”
“I hope she will; she was a great help; if your father has to stay
indoors for a time I do not know how we will manage without her help,”
rejoined Mrs. Arnold.
Berry stepped back to the porch and looked anxiously down the path,
but there was no sign of Lily.
“Come in, dear; it is no use to look for her. Something must have
frightened her, and so she has started off, or else she is dishonest
and ungrateful,” said Mrs. Arnold.
When Berry told her father of the disappearance of the entire Bragg
family, he declared that he was not surprised.
“Very likely Steve Bragg has heard that Commodore Foote’s gunboats are
ready to come up the Tennessee, and that General Grant is preparing
to advance upon the river forts, or that the Confederate forces may
move toward Corinth. For Bragg is as much afraid of one army as of
the other, and he has probably taken his family to some place farther
from the river, and from the road to Corinth,” he said, adding, “Poor
little Mollie; her one day at school is likely to be her last.”
“Perhaps they will come back?” Berry suggested, wishing she had not
been so quick to blame Mollie for what it was plainly evident the
little girl could not help.
“I do not think so,” said Mr. Arnold; “but what do you suppose has
become of your black Lily?” and her father’s eyes rested questioningly
on the sober face of his little daughter. Berry made no reply. She was
beginning to be ashamed of her anger toward Lily, and to be sorry for
her hasty words.