A Yankee Girl at Antietam

								

stranger,” he pleaded. “I haven’t strength to keep on without food!”
“I won’t tell! Truly I won’t!” Roxy promised; “and I’ll come back as
soon as I can,” and before the young man could reply she had darted off
up the slope. For a moment the young man gazed after her, and then
crawled back to his hiding-place.
Roxy slipped through the opening in the wall, and then stopped for a
moment and looked back.
“I wonder what he is running away from?” she thought, and then
remembering the thin face and the pleading voice that had told her of
hunger and fear the little girl hurried on. “I’ll take him some of those
cakes Dulcie made this morning, and some milk, and some eggs, and
everything I can find, poor fellow,” she thought pitifully. “I know my
grandma would want me to take the things if she had seen him.”
As Roxy ran across the yard Dulcie appeared in the kitchen door and
called out:
“How be it you’s home so soon, missie? You ain’ been ter Sharpsburg, hab
you?”
Roxy stopped and looked at Dulcie with so sober an expression that the
stout negro woman became alarmed.
“Wha’s de matter?” she demanded. “You look’s if you’d seen a ghos’!
Wha’s happen’ to you, missie?”
“Nothing!” Roxy replied sharply. “I thought you were taking a nap,
Dulcie.”
Dulcie chuckled and nodded her turbaned head.
“Dat’s so! Dat’s w’ot I plan ter do dis minit. I’se jes’ on de way!” and
with another nod she ambled down the path toward her own cabin, and Roxy
entered the kitchen.

                               CHAPTER II



                             POLLY’S RETURN

There was not a sound in the quiet kitchen as Roxy entered. For a moment
the little girl stood still, listening intently, but the house itself
seemed to be taking a nap in the mid-afternoon quiet of the June day.
“Mother and Grandma will be in their rooms now,” thought Roxy; “they
won’t expect me home before the last of the afternoon. I’ll have plenty
of time,” and she tiptoed across the well-scrubbed floor toward the
pantry. Before she tried the door she again looked about the room
cautiously, remembering her promise to the half-starved man who had
trusted her, and fearful that someone might enter the kitchen before she
could secure food and escape. Roxy knew that if her mother heard her
Mrs. Delfield would at once want to know why she had not gone to
Sharpsburg with Polly Lawrence, and even in the excitement of seeing the
Confederate soldiers, and of discovering the runaway, Roxy had resolved
not to mention her disagreement with Polly. Already she felt a little
ashamed, since the soldier had said her father would be proud to be
called a Yankee, that she had been so ready to be angry at Polly.
But as she carefully opened the pantry door Roxy was thinking only of
the poor fellow hidden behind the dogwood, and of what she could take