“Where on earth did you come from?” asked George, breathlessly, dragging the boy into the cabin. As the light of the fire and the candles fell upon him he looked as if he might have come three hundred miles instead of less than a hundred and fifty, he was so thin, so hollow-eyed, and gaunt. His shoes were quite gone except the uppers, and he was in rags and tatters; yet nothing could dim the joy shining in his beady black eyes, while his mouth came open as if it were on hinges. Lord Fairfax, turning in his chair, was struck by the look of rapturous delight on poor Billy’s face. The boy, still grinning, answered:
“F’um Fredericksburg, I tooken de horse mos’ ter de ferry, and den I tu’n him loose, kase he had sense ’nough fer ter git ter de boat by hisse’f. So arter I seen him mos’ up ter de boat, me an’ Rattler, we all lights out arter de kerriage fo’ Black Sam an’ Gumbo have time fer ter hunt fer me, an’ we foller de track clean f’um Fredericksburg ter dis heah place.” Billy told this as if it were the commonest thing in the world for a boy and a dog to follow a coach more than a hundred miles from home. George was so astonished he could only stare at Billy and gasp out:
“How did you manage to keep the track?”
“Dunno, suh,” replied Billy, calmly. “Rattler, he know de way better ’n me. When de rains come an’ I los’ de wheel tracks, I say ter dat ar’ dog, ‘Lookee heah, dog, we is follerin’ Marse George’—he know dat jes as well as a human; an’ I say, ‘You got ter fin’ dat trail an’ dem tracks,’ an’ dat dog he know what I was talkin’ ’bout, an’ he wag he tail, an’ den he lay he nose to de groun’, an’ heah we is.”
The earl had laid down his book and was listening intently to Billy’s story. “And what did you live on—what did you have to eat on the way—let me see—nearly eight days?”
“We didn’t have nuttin much,” Billy admitted. “De mornin’ we lef’ home I tooken a big hoe-cake an’ put it in my sh’ut when warn’ nobody lookin’. De fus’ day I eat some, an’ gin some ter de dog. Arter dat I foun’ chinquapins an’ ches’nuts an’ some tu’nips ’long de road-side, an’ I could eat dem, but de dog couldn’, so I kep’ dat hoe-cake fur Rattler, an’ give him de las’ piece yistiddy.”
“Billy,” asked George, with tears in his eyes, “were you very hungry?”
For the first time a distressed look came into the boy’s face. He was at his journey’s end, he was with Marse George, he had nothing more on earth to wish for; but the recollection of the hunger of those eight days—the cold, the weariness, the agonies of terror that sometimes attacked him overcame him.
“Yes, suh, I was hongry,” he said, with a sob, “dat’s Gord’s truf; an’ ef it hadn’ been fur dis heah dog you neber would ha’ seed Billy no mo’. But dat dog, he go ’long snuffin’, an’ he were hongry too, I speck, dough he had some hoe-cake ’twell yistiddy; an’ if de dog coul’ hol’ out, dis nigger could.”
“I’ll never, never forget it, Billy, as long as I live,” said George, half crying.