The Battle Ground | Page 9

asleep.
She was still waiting when the door softly opened and her mother came in, a lighted candle in her hand, the pale flame shining through her profile as through delicate porcelain, and illumining her worn and fragile figure. She moved with a slow step, as if her white limbs were a burden, and her head, with its smoothly parted bright brown hair, bent like a lily that has begun to fade.
She sat down upon the bedside and laid her hand on the child's forehead. "Poor little firebrand," she said gently. "How the world will hurt you!" Then she knelt down and prayed beside her, and went out again with the white light streaming upon her bosom. An hour later Betty heard her soft, slow step on the gravelled drive and knew that she was starting on a ministering errand to the quarters. Of all the souls on the great plantation, the mistress alone had never rested from her labours.
The child tossed restlessly, beat her pillow, and fell back to wait more patiently. At last the yellow strip under the door grew dark, and from the other trundle bed there came a muffled breathing. With a sigh, Betty sat up and listened; then she drew the frog's skin from beneath her pillow and crept on bare feet to the door. It was black there, and black all down the wide, old staircase. The great hall below was like a cavern underground. Trembling when a board creaked under her, she cautiously felt her way with her hands on the balustrade. The front door was fastened with an iron chain that rattled as she touched it, so she stole into the dining room, unbarred one of the long windows, and slipped noiselessly out. It was almost like sliding into sunshine, the moon was so large and bright.
From the wide stone portico, the great white columns, looking grim and ghostly, went upward to the roof, and beyond the steps the gravelled drive shone hard as silver. As the child went between the lilac bushes, the moving shadows crawled under her bare feet like living things.
At the foot of the drive ran the big road, and when she came out upon it her trailing gown caught in a fallen branch, and she fell on her face. Picking herself up again, she sat on a loosened rock and looked about her.
The strong night wind blew on her flesh, and she shivered in the moonlight, which felt cold and brazen. Before her stretched the turnpike, darkened by shadows that bore no likeness to the objects from which they borrowed shape. Far as eye could see, they stirred ceaselessly back and forth like an encamped army of grotesques.
She got up from the rock and slipped the frog's skin into the earth beneath it. As she settled it in place, her pulses gave a startled leap, and she stood terror-stricken beside the stone. A thud of footsteps was coming along the road.
For an instant she trembled in silence; then her sturdy little heart took courage, and she held up her hand.
"If you'll wait a minute, Mr. Devil, I'm goin' in," she cried.
From the shadows a voice laughed at her, and a boy came forward into the light--a half-starved boy, with a white, pinched face and a dusty bundle swinging from the stick upon his shoulder.
"What are you doing here?" he snapped out.
Betty gave back a defiant stare. She might have been a tiny ghost in the moonlight, with her trailing gown and her flaming curls.
"I live here," she answered simply. "Where do you live?"
"Nowhere." He looked her over with a laugh.
"Nowhere?"
"I did live somewhere, but I ran away a week ago."
"Did they beat you? Old Rainy-day Jones beat one of his servants and he ran away."
"There wasn't anybody," said the boy. "My mother died, and my father went off--I hope he'll stay off. I hate him!"
He sent the words out so sharply that Betty's lids flinched.
"Why did you come by here?" she questioned. "Are you looking for the devil, too?"
The boy laughed again. "I am looking for my grandfather. He lives somewhere on this road, at a place named Chericoke. It has a lot of elms in the yard; I'll know it by that."
Betty caught his arm and drew him nearer. "Why, that's where Champe lives!" she cried. "I don't like Champe much, do you?"
"I never saw him," replied the boy; "but I don't like him--"
"He's mighty good," said Betty, honestly; then, as she looked at the boy again, she caught her breath quickly. "You do look terribly hungry," she added.
"I haven't had anything since--since yesterday."
The little girl thoughtfully tapped her toes on the road. "There's a currant pie in the safe," she said. "I saw Uncle Shadrach put it there. Are you fond of currant pie?--then you just