People crowded about General McClellan, decking “Dan,” the fine horse he rode, with wreaths and flowers, and the Union flag floated everywhere.
But the people on the hillside farms above Sharpsburg did not know of this for days afterward—not until a terrible battle had raged almost at their very doors; and while General Jackson moved down the south side of the Potomac toward Harper’s Ferry the farmers harvested their grain in the fields along the Antietam and waited for news that might tell them of the movement of Lee’s troops.
Roxy did not mean to go to sleep that first day of her watch and when, in mid-afternoon, she awakened suddenly, to find both of the gray squirrels had settled themselves in her hat, that she had put down beside her lunch basket, she wondered at herself, and looked anxiously toward the road, fearful lest by sleeping she had risked her father’s safety.
But the road lay quiet and untraveled, and now a new question came into Roxy’s thoughts. “Nights.” Perhaps the army might advance under cover of the night, she thought. But the little girl finally decided there was nothing she could do in that case.
“I’ll just watch days; that’s all I can do,” she thought, and shared the remainder of her luncheon with “Lee” and “Jackson.”
It had seemed a very long day to Roxy, and when the sun began to approach the western horizon she was glad to scramble down the ledge and start for home.
“I’ll bring ‘Dinah’ to-morrow,” she thought, as she ran down the slope toward the sycamore.
As Roxy came in sight of the big yard near the house she gave a sudden exclamation.
“It’s a gray pony!” she said, as if she could hardly believe it, and as she entered the yard she again exclaimed: “It really is a gray pony,” and she ran to where the pony was nibbling at the thick grass beside the fence.
“It looks just like one of the Hinhams’ ponies,” she said aloud, as she stopped to look at it and wonder how it came to be in Grandma Miller’s yard; and seeing Dulcie in the kitchen doorway she called: