“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.”