A Yankee Girl at Shiloh

								




       XV. SOLDIERS ON SHILOH RIDGE          169



      XVI. BERRY IS TAKEN PRISONER           177



     XVII. THE EVENING BEFORE SHILOH         185



    XVIII. AFTER THE BATTLE                  194



      XIX. GENERAL GRANT                     204

                      Illustrations



                                                     PAGE
“Now Let’s Play It’s a Real Party”       Frontispiece


Without a Word Berry Pointed to the Heavy Rock      119


“Here Is the Little Messenger of Whom I Told You”   209

                       A Yankee Girl at Shiloh

                              CHAPTER I



                               “BERRY”

There had been a light fall of snow during the night, and the tall
oak trees that grew near the Arnolds’ log cabin, which stood on the
slope of a wooded ridge overlooking the Tennessee River, were still
sprinkled with clinging white flakes when the heavy door of the cabin
was pushed open and a slender little figure appeared on the rough
porch.
If a stranger had been passing along the trail that led near this
secluded cabin he would perhaps have decided that it was a boy who
darted out and jumped up and down exclaiming, “Snow! Snow! Just like
Vermont snow!” for the curling brown hair was cut short, and the blue
flannel blouse, the baggy knickerbockers of blue corduroy, as well as
the stout leather shoes, were all in keeping as a suitable costume for
a ten-year-old lad whose home was a log cabin in the rough region
on the westerly bank of the Tennessee River, over two hundred miles
from its mouth. And when some casual stranger, failing to see the blue
corduroys, so mistook Berenice Arnold, and called her “my lad,” she
was very well pleased.
On this January morning, in 1862, Berenice had been awakened at an
unusually early hour by a call from her father, telling her to dress
quickly and hasten down in time to see the snow, that lay like a white
veil over the wooded slopes, before the sun came out from behind the
distant mountains and swept it away.
“Snow! Berry! Not enough for a sleigh ride, but enough to make you
think of Vermont,” he had called, as if announcing an unexpected
delight. For the Arnolds had only lived in Tennessee for two years.
Berry was nine years old when, with her father and mother and her
older brother Francis, she had left the big white house in the
pleasant Vermont village near Montpelier and come to this hillside
cabin where Mr. Arnold hoped to regain something of his former health
and strength. This was the second winter, and this fall of snow in
early January was the first real snowfall since their arrival. There
had been many “flurries,” but, until this January morning, not enough
had fallen to whiten wood and trail; and the Arnolds ran to door
and windows exclaiming over the new beauty of the slopes and forest
beneath their white coverlets.