Finally, she felt lifted up and carried, and, when she could realize the situation, she found herself lying on a pile of shingles at an old wharf, and the man, beside her, was weeping, as he watched the boat receding down a moonlit aisle of wave.
"My boy, my poor ole woman," she heard her conductor mutter, "I never can come back to you no mo'!"
"Why?" spoke Virgie, hardly realizing what she said.
"Because—because—you did it!" the man exclaimed, with ardent eyes, seen through his streaming tears.
"Oh, tell me where I am!" Virgie said. "Is it far to freedom now?"
She looked at the sky, all agitated with clouds and stars moving across each other, and it seemed the nearest world of all.
"Is my father there?" thought Virgie, "my dear white father? Can he see me here, sick and lonely, and hate me?"
"We're at de Shingle landing; yonder is St. Martin's," said the negro, cautiously; "there's two roads nigh whar we air, goin' to the North, dear Virgie; one is the stage-road, and t'other is the shingle-trail through the Cypress Swamp.
"Take the road that's the safest to Freedom," Virgie sighed.
In a few moments, walking over the ground, they came to a place where the cart-trail crossed a sandy road, and went beyond it, along the edge of a small stream. The man walked a few steps up the better road undecidedly, and suddenly drew Virgie back into the bushes, but not quick enough to be unobserved by two men coming on in an old, rattling wagon.