“I can’t help thinking of that poor man they are after,” she answered in a low tone. “It seems so awful to hunt human beings with dogs.”
“Don’t worry,” Miss Imogene consoled her. “I don’t think they will catch this prisoner from Andersonville.”
“But the dogs, Miss Imogene, they were on the track,” Dorothea replied.
“On the wrong track, my dear,” the elder lady answered, with a nervous little chuckle. “The wrong track.”
“But how do you know?” demanded Dorothea, turning to look up into the face of Miss Imogene alight in the now blazing fire.
“For a woman’s reason, ‘because,’” the other answered evasively but with a bright smile as she stood up. “I must go back to bed, honey, and I advise you to stop thinking about runaway Yankees and get your beauty sleep.”
Without another word Dorothea accompanied her visitor to the door.
“Good-night, honey,” said Miss Imogene, kissing the girl with a genuine warmth. “We are going to be good friends, for I love you already, my child.”
Dorothea closed the door behind her without a word. Once more her thoughts flew back to the matters that had been puzzling her all the evening. Miss Imogene wore a red band of velvet around her throat. Was she a “Red String”? The girl went back to the fire and seated herself once more in front of it, her eyes gazing into the flames leaping up the chimney, and her thoughts going over and over again the experiences of this first night in her new home.
But not yet had she come to the end of her perplexities. She heard voices whispering in the hall and then there came again a soft tapping on her door.