Roxy gave her promise promptly, and the young man urged her to bring him food as soon as possible, cautioning her not to let anyone know that she had taken it, and telling her to leave whatever she brought under the thicket of tangled vines and bushes behind which he had hidden.
“Remember not to let any human being suspect that you have seen a 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.”