“Brother Henry bid me take care of you, and I mean to, dearest father. Since you have sent five sons to this cruel war, it seems as if it might be that you and I were left at peace.”
“Yes, yes, daughter. I do but pray that I may live to see all my brave boys come home to me once more.” With bowed head Mr. Langston took his way to the small chamber opening off the living-room.
“Now,” thought Dicey, “must I plan and act. First must I write a few lines to father, lest he think that I too have followed brother Henry.”
She hunted about for a fragment of paper,—a thing not too common in a frontier farmhouse,—then she dashed some water into the dried-up ink-horn, and mended a pen as well as she could.
Will you think any the less of her if I tell you that poor Dicey was a wretched penman? Her days at school had been very few, since the nearest one was at Ninety-six, and her father could ill spare his little housekeeper. Yet he had taught her a bit, and as she sat and wrote by the flaring rushlight, I am afraid that her tongue was put through as much action as her pen. Poor Dicey! the little billet which caused her so much labour was intended to allay her father’s anxiety as well as to let him know where she had gone. Of the object of her mission there was never a word. That she would tell him on her return. The little scrawl was set on the table with one end beneath the candlestick, where he would be sure to see it in the morning.
“Dear Father,” it began. “I go to carry a message to brother Tom. I leave early in the morning, and will return as soon as might be. There is naught to fear for me. Your loving Dicey.”
“’Tis better,” she mused, half aloud, “to say ‘morning’ than to have him think that I was forced to go at night, lest I fall into the hands of some of these bandits on their way here. But I must not think of that, for I must be off as soon as I can get ready, and the faster I work the less afraid I am.”
She hurriedly put some food in a packet, and then crept up the stairs to her own tiny room under the eaves. You would hardly have known her when she came softly down a few moments later. Her hair was bound and knotted close to her head, for well she knew how the bushes and trees would catch the flowing curls. Her stuff gown was kilted high and held securely in place, while on her feet she had drawn a pair of boots which were her brother Batty’s, and, though large, they were stout and strong and came nigh to her knees. A heavy shawl covered her shoulders and was tied behind, and into the front of it she thrust the packet of food.
As she went softly out of the door, she gave a last look toward her father’s room and then hastened on, anxious to give her warning and then hurry home. Dicey knew the way well, having been to visit her brother a number of times. But in her haste and excitement she had not thought that a path by day with company is a very different thing from the same path by night and alone.
Yet this did not daunt her, even though there were strange noises in the forest and elfin fingers seemed to reach out from the bushes and pluck at her as she tried to hurry on. Each twig which snapped as she trod on it brought her heart uncomfortably to her mouth, in a way she did not like at all. The woods were bad enough, but infinitely worse were the marshes where there was not even a foot-log, much less a bridge to take her over the worst places, and but for Batty’s boots she would have suffered cruelly from roots and stones.