"Dat's too dam dismal fer de 'casion!" Then addressing the mule, he reproachfully asked:
"What for you done let me sing dat? Don' you know Sam's a-gwine to de wah wid Mas' Baillie?"
As the mule made no reply, the conversation ceased at this point, and the remainder of the homeward journey was made in complete silence.
XV
Agatha's venture
After a month or two of cautious correspondence with friends and others who were to aid her in carrying out her purpose, Agatha Ronald set out one day, and drove with Martha, her maid, to Winchester, where she had friends. After a week's stay there, she made her way to a little town on the Potomac, again taking up quarters with friends.
From this point, she communicated through her friends with intimates of theirs who lived in Maryland. Finally she had arrangements made by which a succession of houses was open to her, all of them the homes of people strongly in sympathy with the South. But she must first manage to get through the Federal lines unobserved, and in this a Federal commander unwittingly aided her. He threw a small force one day into the little town in which she was staying, meaning to hold possession of it as a part of the loosely drawn lines on the upper river. This left Agatha within Federal domain—a young gentlewoman visiting friends, and in no way attracting attention to herself. Presently she moved on into Maryland, and by short stages made her way to the house of a very ardent Southern family, near the Pennsylvania border. From there it was easy for her to go to Harrisburg, and thence by rail to Baltimore.
The chief purpose of her journey was now practically accomplished. She had established what she called her "underground railroad," with a multitude of stations, and a very roundabout route. But it would serve its purpose all the better for that, she thought, as the chief condition of its successful operation was that its existence should at no time be suspected.
In Baltimore, proceeding with the utmost caution, she put herself into indirect communication with a large number of "Dixie girls"—as young women in that city whose hearts were with the South were called. It would not do for her to meet these young women personally. That might excite suspicion, especially as most of them had brothers in the Southern army. But through others she succeeded in organising them secretly into a band prepared to do her work.