Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Or, Great Times in the Land of Cotton

CHAPTER X—AN ADVENTURE IN NORFOLK

Ruth and Helen were having a good time. Everybody about the hotel treated them like grown-up young ladies—and of course such deferential attentions delighted two schoolgirls just set free from the scholastic yoke.

They went across the bay on the ferry and landed at Norfolk. A trip to the Navy Yard was the first thing, and as Mrs. Parsons knew some of the officers there, the party was very courteously treated. They might have visited the war vessels lying in Hampton Roads; but it seemed so hot on the water that the chums from the North voted for a trip by surface car to Norfolk’s City Park.

The lawns had not yet been burned brown and the trees were beautifully leaved out. The park was a pleasant place and in it is one of the best small zoölogical parks in the East. The deer herd was particularly fine—such pretty, graceful creatures! All would have gone well had not Helen received an unexpected fright as they were watching the beautiful beasts.

“You would better not stand so near that grating, Helen,” Nettie told her, as they were in front of the fence of the deer range.

“How am I going to feed this pretty, soft-nosed thing with grass if I don’t stand near?” demanded Helen.

“But you don’t have to feed the deer,” laughed Nettie.

“No. But there’s no sign that says you sha’n’t,” complained Helen. “And I don’t see——”

Just then there was a fierce whistle and a big stag charged. Helen looked all around—save in the right direction—for the sound. She was leaning against the wire fence, but with her head turned so that she did not see the gentle little doe bound away as her master came savagely down the slope.

The next instant the brute crashed against the fence and the shock of his collision sent Helen to the ground. Although the angry stag was on the other side of the woven-wire fence, so savage did he appear that other people standing about ran screaming away.

The stag was tearing up the sod with his forefeet and throwing himself against the shaking fence as though determined to get at the prostrate Helen.

The latter was really hurt a little, and so badly frightened that she could not arise instantly. Nettie was the nearest of her party; but she was trembling and crying. Ruth was too far away, as was Mrs. Parsons, to help her chum immediately, though she started running in her direction.

But there was a rescuer at hand. A boy in a faded suit of overalls, who must have been working near, ran down to drag the frightened girl away from the fence. As he passed an old gentleman on the walk he seized the latter’s cane and darting between Helen and the fence, dealt the angry stag a heavy blow upon the nose.

Although the wire-fence saved the beast from serious injury, the blow was heavy enough to make him fall back and cease his charges against the wire netting. Then the boy helped Helen to her feet.

“Oh!” shrieked the frightened girl. And after that, although the boy quickly slipped away through the gathering crowd, and out of sight, Helen said no other word.

“Oh, my dear!” gasped Ruth, reaching her. “You did not even thank him.”

“I know it,” whispered Helen.

“Are—are you hurt, dear?”

“Only my dignity is hurt,” confessed her chum, beginning to laugh hysterically.

“But that boy——”

“Hush, Ruthie!” begged Helen, her lips close to her chum’s ear. “Do you know who he was?”

“Why—I——Of course not! I did not see his face.”

“It was Curly. Don’t say a word,” breathed Helen. “Here comes a policeman.”

Ruth was as much amazed as Helen at the unexpected appearance of Henry Smith. He was constantly bobbing up before them just like an imp in a pantomime.

Their friends hurried the chums away from the caged deer and the crowd that had gathered. Helen had a few bruises but was not, fortunately, really injured. But she confessed that she had seen all the deer she cared to see for the time.

“And I thought they were such gentle, affectionate creatures,” she sighed. “Why, that one was as savage as a bear!”

They returned to the water-front and went aboard the Richmond boat in good season for dinner. Ruth and Helen were rather used to boat travel they thought by this time, and they found this smaller craft quite as pleasant as the big steamer on which they had come down the coast.

While they were at table in the saloon the boat started, and so nicely was it eased off, and so quiet was the water, that the girls had no idea the vessel had started.

The girls ran out on deck, arranged a comfortable place for Mrs. Parsons, and there watched the panoramic view of the roads and the shores until darkness fell.

“We shall miss many of the beauties of the James River plantations and towns,” Mrs. Parsons said; “by taking this night boat; but we shall have a good night’s sleep and see more of Richmond to-morrow than we otherwise could.”

The chums did not have quite as much freedom on the river trip as they did coming down on the New Union Line boat; for Mrs. Parsons insisted upon an early bedtime. She would not have liked their sitting out on the deck alone at a late hour. She did not believe in too much freedom for young girls of her niece’s age.

However, she was very pleasant to travel with. Ruth and Helen marveled at the attention Mrs. Parsons received from all the employees of the boat, both white and black.

“And she doesn’t have to tip extravagantly to get service,” Ruth pointed out to Helen. “You see, these darkeys consider it an honor to attend Mrs. Parsons. We Northerners are interlopers, after all; they sell us their servile attentions at a high price; but they are glad to serve the descendants of their old masters. There is a bond between the whites and blacks of the South that we cannot quite understand.”

“I guess we’re too independent and want to help ourselves too much,” Helen said. “You let me alone, Ruth Fielding, and I’ll loll around just like Nettie does and let the colored people fetch and carry for me.”

“You lazy little thing!” Ruth threw at her, laughing. “It doesn’t become your father’s daughter to long for such methods and habits. Goodness! the negroes themselves are so slow they give me the fidgets.”

In the morning they awoke from sleep as the boat was being docked. It was another beautiful, sunshiny day. The negro dockhands lolled upon the wharves. Up the river they could see the bridge to Manchester and the rapids, up which no boat could sail.

They ate their breakfast in a leisurely manner on the boat, and then took an open carriage on Main Street, where the sickish odor of the tobacco factories was all that spoiled the ride.

They rode east and passed the site of the old Libby tobacco warehouse—execrated by the prisoners during the Civil War as “Libby Prison”—and saw, too, Libby Hill Park, Marshall’s Park and the beautiful Chimborazo reservation.

Coming back they climbed the Broad Street hill and stopped at the hotel, remaining there for rest and luncheon. Then the girls walked on Broad Street and saw the shops and bought a few souvenirs and some needfuls, while Mrs. Parsons remained in the hotel. The sun was hot, but the air was dry and invigorating.

Later in the afternoon the whole party went down into Capitol Square—a very beautiful park, in which are located the state-house, the library, and the Washington Monument.

“Besides,” declared Helen, “’most a million squirrels. Did you ever see so many of the little dears? And see how tame they are.”

The squirrels and the children with their black nurses in Capitol Square are among the pleasantest sights of Richmond. There was the old bell tower, too, near the North Twelfth Street side, which interested the girls, and they walked back to the hotel by way of Franklin Street and saw the old home of General Robert E. Lee and some other famous dwellings.

The party was to remain one night in Richmond, and in the morning the girls went alone to the Confederate Museum on Clay Street, which during the Civil War was the “White House of the Confederacy.”

“I leave you young people to do the rest of the sightseeing,” Mrs. Parsons said, and took her breakfast in bed, waited on by a colored maid.

But at noon she appeared, trim and fresh again, in time for luncheon and the ride to the railway station where they took the train for the South.

“Now we’re off for the Land of Cotton!” cried Helen. “This dip into Dixie so far has only been a taste. What adventures are before us now, do you suppose, Ruth?”

Her chum could not tell her. Indeed, neither of them could have imagined quite what was to happen to them before they again turned their faces north for the return journey.

CHAPTER XI—AT THE MERREDITH PLANTATION

Despite the moisture and the heat, the girls from the North were enjoying themselves hugely. The week that had passed since they had met Nettie and her aunt at Old Point Comfort had been a most delightful one for the chums.

The long railroad journey south from Richmond had been broken by stops at points of interest, including New Bern, Wilmington, Pee Dee, and finally Charleston. The latter city had interested the girls immensely—quite as much as Richmond.

After two days there, the party had come back as far as Lanes and had there taken the branch road for Georgetown, at the mouth of the Pee Dee River, one of the oldest towns in the South, and around which linger many memories of Revolutionary days. The guests would not see this old town until a later date, however.

Leaving the train at a small station in the forest, they were met by this handsome equipage and were now approaching the Merredith plantation. Ruth, as silent as her companions, was contrasting in her own mind this beautiful carriage and pair with the old Grogan barouche, the knock-kneed horse, and Unc’ Simmy.

“Two phases of the new South,” she thought, for Ruth was rather prone to a kind of mental problem that does not usually interest young folk of her age. “Here is the progressive, up-to-date, money-making class represented by Mrs. Parsons, reviving the ancient fortunes of her house. While poor Miss Catalpa and her single faithful servant represent the helpless and hopeless class, ruined by the war and—probably—ruined before the war, only they had not found it out!

“The Southern families who are reviving will, in time, be wealthier than they were under the old regime. But how many poor people like Miss Catalpa there must be scattered through this Dixieland!”

The party soon came to where two huge oaks, scarred deeply by the axe, intermingled their branches over the roadway.

“This is our gateway,” said Mrs. Parsons. “Here is the beginning of the Merredith plantation.”

“Oh, Mrs. Parsons!” cried Helen, pointing to one side. “What is that pole there? Or is it a dead tree?”

“A dead pine. And it has been dead more than a hundred years, yet it still stands,” explained the lady. “They say that to its lowest branch was hung a British spy in Revolutionary times—‘as high as Haman’; but re’lly, how they ever climbed so high to affix the rope over the limb, I cannot say.”

She spoke to the coachman in a minute: “Jeffreys!”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the black man.

“Drive by the quarters.” She said “quahtahs.” “It will give the children a chance to see us, and Dilsey and Patrick Henry won’t want them coming to the Big House and littering up the lawn.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the coachman and swung the horses into a by-road.

All the drives were beautifully kept. If there chanced to be a piece of grass in a forest opening, it was clipped like a lawn. This end of the great plantation was kept as well as an English park. Occasionally they saw men at work amid the groves of lovely shade trees.

Suddenly there burst upon their view a sloping upland, dotted here and there with groups of outbuildings and stables, checkered by fenced pastures in which sleek cattle and horses grazed. There were truck patches, too, belonging to the quarters, where the negroes lived.

These whitewashed cabins, with their attendant chicken-runs and pig-pens—all whitewashed, too—were near at hand. As the carriage swung out of the forest, the hum of a busy village broke upon the ears of the girls, as the sight of all this rich and rolling upland burst upon their view.

The green trees and the green grass contrasted with the white cots made a delightfully cool picture for the eye.

The mistress’ equipage was sighted immediately and there boiled out of the cabins a seemingly never-ending army of children and dogs. The dogs were all of the hound breed, and the children were of one variety, too—brown, bare-legged pickaninnies, about all of a size, and most of them bow-legged.

But they were a laughing, happy crowd as they came tearing along the lane to meet the carriage. The hullabaloo of the dogs and children brought the mothers to the cabin doors, or around from their washtubs at the rear of the cabins. They, too, were smiling and—many of them—in clean frocks and new bandanas, prepared to meet “de quality.”

And there were so many of them, bowing and smiling at “Mistis,” as they called Mrs. Parsons, and bidding her welcome! It was like a village turning out to greet the feudal owner of the property. Mrs. Parsons seemed to know all of them by name, and she shook hands with the older women, and spoke particularly to some of the young women with babies in their arms. Noticeably there were no children over seven or eight years old at home; nor were there any young men or women, save the few married girls with infants. Everybody else was at work in the fields, Ruth learned. And she learned, too, in time, that the Merredith plantation was one of the largest cotton farms in the state, and one of the most productive.

A little later, however, as they rode on, the visitors learned that there was something beside cotton grown on the estate. On the upland they came to a field of corn. It extended farther than their eyes could see—a waving, black-green, waist-high sea, its blades clashing like a forest of green swords.

“How many acres in this piece, Jeffreys?” asked Mrs. Parsons, of the coachman, seeing that the two Northern girls were interested.

“Four hundred acres, ma’am. I hear Mistah Lomaine say so.”

“We passed huge corn and grain fields when we went West to Silver Ranch,” Ruth said. “But mostly in the night, I believe; and the corn was not in the same stage of growth as this.”

“Cotton is still king in the South,” laughed Mrs. Parsons; “but Corn has become his prime-minister. I believe some of our bottom lands will raise even better corn than this.”

They rode steadily on, having taken a considerable sweep around to see the “quarters,” and now approached the Big House. And it was big! Ruth and Helen never heard it called anything but the “Big House” by anybody on the plantation.

It was set upon a low mound in a grove of whispering trees. The lawns about it were like velvet; the grass was of that old-fashioned, short, “door-yard” kind which finds root in many door-yards of the South and spreads slowly and surely where the land is strong enough to sustain it. It needs little attention from the lawnmower, but makes a thick, velvety carpet.

The roots of some of the old trees had been exposed so many years that their upper surface had rotted away, and in the rich mold thus made the grass had taken root, upholstering low, inviting seats with its green velvet.

The house itself—mansion it had better be called—was painted white, of course, even to its brick foundation. The massive roof of the veranda which sheltered the second-floor windows as well as those of the first floor on the front of the main building, was upheld by six great fluted pillars as sound now as when cut from an equal number of forest monarchs and raised into place, a hundred years before.

On either side wings were built on to the main house, each big enough for the largest family Ruth Fielding had ever known! What could possibly be done with all those bedrooms upstairs was a mystery to her inquiring mind until Nettie told her that, in the old slavery days, long before the war, and when people traveled only on horseback and by coach, a house party at the Merredith plantation meant the inviting for a week or two of twenty-five ladies and as many gentlemen, and each had his or her black attendant—valet, or maid—that had to be sheltered in the Big House at night, although coachmen and footmen, and other “outriders” could find room in the cabins, or stables.

Both wings were closed now; but the windows remained dressed, for Mrs. Parsons would not allow any part of the old house to look ugly and forlorn. Twice a year an army of colored women went through the empty rooms and cleaned and scoured, just as though again a vast company were expected.

The small retinue of house servants met the carriage at the foot of the broad steps. They were mostly smiling young negroes, the men in livery and the girls in cotton gowns, stiffly starched aprons, and white caps. There was a broad, unctuous looking, mahogany colored “Mammy” on the top step, and a gray-wooled, bent, old negro at the door of the carriage when it stopped.

“Good day, ma’am! Good-day!” said the old man to Mrs. Parsons. “My duty to you.”

He waved away the officious footman and insisted upon helping the mistress of the Merredith plantation down with all the pompous service of a major-domo.

“We are all well, Patrick Henry,” said Aunt Rachel. “Is everything right on the plantation?”

“Yes’m; yes’m. I’ll be proud to make my report at any time, ma’am.”

“Oh, to-morrow, I pray, Patrick Henry,” cried Mrs. Parsons. She ran lightly up the steps and the big colored woman, waiting there with smiling lips but overflowing eyes, gathered the lady to her broad bosom in a bearlike hug.

“Ma honey-gal! Ma little mistis!” she crooned, rocking the white woman’s head to and fro upon her bosom. “Dilsey don’t reckon she’ll welcome yo’ here so bery many mo’ times; but she’s sho’ glad of dishyer one!”

“You are good for many years more, you know it, Mammy Dilsey!” laughed Mrs. Parsons, breathlessly.

“Here’s Miss Nettie,” she said, “and two of her school friends—Miss Ruth and Miss Helen. Of course, there is no need to ask you, Mammy Dilsey, if everything is ready for them?”

“Sho’, chile!” chuckled the old negress. “Yo’ knows I wouldn’t fo’git nottin’ like dat. De quality allus is treated proper at Mer’dith. Come along, honeys; dere’s time t’ res’ yo’selfs an’ dress fo’ dinner. We gwine t’ gib yo’ sech anudder dinner as yo’ ain’ seen, Miss Rachel, since yo’ was yere airly in de spring. I know bery well yo’ been stahvin’ ob yo’self in dem hotels in de Norf all dishyer w’ile.”

CHAPTER XII—THE BOY AT THE WAREHOUSE

“It takes several generations of familiarity, I reckon,” said Nettie, with some gravity, “to breed the feeling we Southerners have for the children of our old slaves. Slavery seems to have been a terrible institution to you Northern girls; but we feel that the vast majority of the negroes were better off in those days than they are now.

“Slavery after all is a condition of the mind,” Nettie said. “Those blacks who were intelligent in the old days perhaps should have had their freedom. But few slaves went with empty stomachs in the old days, or had to worry about shelter.

“It is different now. Whites as well as blacks throughout the South often go hungry. Aunt Rachel keeps many more people on the Merredith plantation than she really needs to work it, so that there shall be fewer starving families on the outskirts of the estate.”

“Your aunt is a dear, good woman,” Ruth said warmly. “I am sure whatever she does is right.”

The girls were sitting in comfortable rocking chairs on the broad veranda in the cool of the evening. A mocking-bird began to sing in a tree near by and the three friends broke off their conversation to listen to him.

“I’d have loved to see one of those grand companies of ladies and gentlemen who used to visit here,” said Helen, after a little. “Such a weekend party as that must have been worth while.”

“And you don’t like darkeys!” cried Nettie, laughing merrily. “Why, in those times the place was alive with them. This piece of gravel before the house was haunted by every darkey from the quarters. The gravel was worked like a regular silver-mine. No gentleman mounted his horse before the door here without scattering a handful of silver to the darkeys. Even now, the men working for Aunt Rachel, sometimes find tarnished old silver pieces as they rake over the gravel.”

“Dear me! let’s go silver-mining, Ruthie,” cried Helen. “I need to have my purse replenished already.”

“And if you found any money here you would give it to that bright little girl who waited on us so nicely upstairs,” laughed Ruth.

“Of course. That’s what I want it for,” confessed Helen.

“Your mind is perfectly adjusted to a system of slavery, my dear,” Nettie said to Helen Cameron. “Here is my father’s picture of what slavery meant to the South. He says he was walking along a street in New Orleans years ago and saw an old gentleman grubbing in the mud of a gutter with his cane. The old gentleman finally turned up a half dollar which had been dropped there; and after picking it up and polishing it on his handkerchief to make sure it was good money, he tossed it to the nearest negro idling on the street corner.

“That was slavery. It was the whites who were enslaved to the blacks, after all. Both were bound by the system; but it was the negro who got the best of it, for every half dollar that the white man earned he had to pay for food to keep his slaves. Now,” added Nettie, smiling, “the law even lets the bad white man cheat the ignorant black out of the wages he earns, and the poor black may starve.”

“Dear me!” cried Helen, “we’re getting as sociological as one of Miss Brokaw’s lectures. Let’s not. Keep your information to yourself, please, Miss Parsons. Positively I refuse to learn anything about social conditions in the South while I am in the Land of Cotton. I’ll get my information from text-books and at a distance. This is too beautiful a landscape to have it spoiled by statistics and examples, or any other such trash!”

By and by, as the darkness came swiftly (so swiftly that it surprised the visitors from the North) a bird flew heavily out of the lowlands and pitched upon a dead limb near the house. At once the plaintive cry of “whip-poor-will!” resounded through the night, and Ruth and Helen began to count the number of times in succession the bird uttered its somber note without a break.

Usually the count numbered from forty-three to forty-seven—never an even number; but Nettie said she had heard one demand “the castigation of poor William” more than seventy times before stopping.

The whippoorwill flew to other “pitches” near the house, and once actually lit upon the roof to utter his love-call; but never, Nettie told the other girls, would the bird alight upon a live branch.

Just before his cry began they could hear him “cluck! cluck! cluck!” just like an old hen—or, as Ruth suggested—“like a rheumatic old clock getting ready to strike.”

“He’s clearing his voice,” declared Helen. “Now! off he goes. Isn’t he funny?”

“I wonder what the little whippoorwillies are like?” asked Ruth.

“I don’t know. I never saw the young. But I’ve seen a nest,” said Nettie. “The whippoorwill makes it right out in the open, on the top of an old stump, or on a boulder. There the female lays the eggs and shelters them and the young from the storms with her own body.”

“My, I’d like to see one!” exclaimed Helen.

But there were more interesting things than the nest of the whippoorwill to see about the Merredith plantation. And the sightseeing began the next morning, before the sun had been long up.

Immediately after breakfast, while it was still cool, the horses appeared on the gravel before the great door, each held by a grinning negro lad from the stables. No Southern plantation would be properly equipped without a plentiful supply of good riding stock, and Mrs. Parsons had bred some rather famous horses during the time she had governed her ancestral estate.

Ruth and Helen had learned to ride well when they visited Silver Ranch some years before; so they were not afraid to mount the spirited animals that danced and curveted upon the gravel. Mr. Lomaine, the superintendent of the estate, and whom the visitors had met the evening before, came pacing along from the stables upon a great, black horse, ready to accompany the three girls upon a tour of inspection.

Mr. Lomaine was a very pleasant gentleman and was dressed in black, wearing a broad-brimmed black hat, riding puttees, and gauntlets. The whip he carried was silver-mounted. He had entire charge of the work on the plantation; but the old negro, Patrick Henry, Mammy Dilsey’s husband, had personal care of the house, its belongings, and the other negroes’ welfare.

“Come on, girls,” cried Nettie, showing more vigor than she usually displayed as she was helped into her saddle by one of the attendants. “I’m just aching for a ride.”

They rode, however, with side-saddle, and neither Ruth nor Helen felt as sure of themselves mounted in this way as they had in the West on the cow-ponies belonging to Mr. Bill Hicks.

The morning, however, was delightful. The dogs and little negroes cheered the cavalcade as they passed in sight of the cabins. Had Mr. Lomaine not ordered them back, a dozen or more of both pickaninnies and canines would have followed “de quality” around the plantation.

They rode down from the corn lands to the cotton fields. Negroes and mules were at work everywhere. “I do say!” gasped Helen. “I didn’t know there were so many mules in the whole world. Funny things! with their shaved tails and long ears.”

“And hind feet with the itch!” exclaimed Ruth. “I don’t want to get near the dangerous end of one of those creatures.”

The cavalcade followed the roads through the fields of cotton and down to the river bank. Here stood the long cotton warehouse and the gin-house and press, where the cotton is prepared, baled, and stored for the market. The Merredith cotton was shipped direct from the plantation’s own dock, and the buyers came here at the selling time to inspect and judge the quality of the output.

The warehouse boss, a long, lean, yellow man with a chin whisker that wabbled in a funny way every time he spoke, came out on the platform to speak with Mr. Lomaine. There were some hands inside trundling baled cotton from one end of the dark warehouse to the other.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Mr. Lomaine, within the girls’ hearing, and after a minute or two of desultory conversation with the boss. “Hullo! who’s that white boy you got there, Jimson?”

“That boy?” returned the man, with a broad grin. “That’s a little, starvin’ Yank that come along. I had to feed him; so I thought I’d bettah put him to work. And he kin work—sho’ kin!”

Ruth’s eye would never have been attracted by the slim figure wheeling the big cotton bale had she not overheard this speech. A boy from the North? And he had curly hair.

It was a very dilapidated figure, indeed, that Ruth watched trundle the bale down the shadowy length of the warehouse. When his load was deposited he wheeled the hand-truck back for another bale. His face was red and he was perspiring. Ruth thought the work must be very arduous for his slight figure.

And then she forgot all about anything but the identity of the boy. It was Henry Smith—“Curly” as he was known about Lumberton, New York. She glanced quickly at her chum. Helen saw the boy, too, and had recognized him as quickly as had Ruth herself.

CHAPTER XIII—RUTH IS TROUBLED

“Something has happened to poor Curly since then,” said Ruth, with a sigh. “I guess he has found out that it is not so much fun to run away as he thought.”

“The man said he was starving,” sighed Helen.

“He certainly must have been having a hard time,” Ruth returned. “I’ll write to his grandmother again. Her answer to my letter written at Old Point Comfort has not arrived yet; but I think she ought to know that we have found Curly again.”

“And tell her he is ragged and hungry. Maybe it will touch her heart,” begged Helen. “But we ought to do something for him, Ruth.”

“Maybe.”

“Of course we should. Why not?”

“It might scare him away if he knew that anybody here had recognized him. It is such a coincidence that he should come right here to this Merredith plantation,” Ruth said. “What do you suppose it means? Could he have known that we were coming here, and is he trying to find us?”

“Oh, Ruth! He’d know we would help him, wouldn’t he?”

“I didn’t think that Curly was the sort of boy to hunt up girl’s help in any case,” laughed Ruth.

“Don’t laugh! it seems so cruel. Hungry!” breathed Helen.

“The boy is learning something,” her chum said, with decision. “Now that he is really away from his grandmother, I hope this will teach him a lesson. I don’t want any harm to come to Curly Smith; but if he learns that his home is better than a loose life among strangers, it will be a good thing.”

“Why, Ruth!” gasped Helen. “You talk just as though the police were not looking for him.”

“Hush! we won’t tell everybody that,” advised Ruth. “Probably they will never discover him here, in any case. His crime is not so great in the eyes of the law.”

“I don’t believe he ever did it!” cried Helen.

“Neither do I. It seems to me,” Ruth said gravely, “that if he had helped those men commit the robbery, he would have gone away from Lumberton with them.”

“That is so!”

“And he shows that he has no criminal friends, or he would not come so far—and all alone. Nor would he have been so forlorn and hungry, if he was willing to steal.”

Ruth wrote her letter, as she promised; and she thought a good deal about the boy they had seen at the cotton warehouse. Suppose Curly Smith should take up his wanderings from this place? Suppose the warehouseman, Mr. Jimson, should discharge him? The man had spoken in rather an unfeeling way of the “little, hungry Yank,” and Ruth did not know how good at heart the lanky, chin-whiskered man was.

She determined to do something to make it reasonably sure that Curly would remain on the Merredith plantation until she could hear from his grandmother. Possibly the trouble in Lumberton might be settled. If the railroad had not lost much money—provided it was really proved that Curly had recklessly helped the thieves—the matter might be straightened out if Mrs. Sadoc Smith would refund a portion of the money lost.

And by this time Ruth believed the boy’s grandmother might be willing to do just that. It was very natural for her to announce in the first flush of her anger and shame, that she would have nothing more to do with her grandson, but Ruth was quite sure she loved him devotedly, and that her heart would soon be yearning for his graceless self.

Besides, when Mrs. Smith read the letter Ruth wrote, she would know that the wandering boy was in trouble and in poverty. As Helen begged her, Ruth had written these facts “strong.” She had made out Curly’s case to be as pitiful as possible, and she hoped for results from Lumberton.

Suppose, however, if a forgiving letter came from Mrs. Sadoc Smith, Curly could not then be found at the warehouse on the river side? Ruth thought of this during the heat of the day, when the family at the Big House rested. That siesta after luncheon seemed necessary here, in the warm, moist climate of the river-lands. Ruth awoke about three o’clock, with an idea for action in Curly Smith’s case. She slipped out of the room without disturbing Helen.

Running downstairs she found that nobody had yet descended. Two of the liveried men rose yawning from the mahogany settees in the hall. A downstairs girl dozed with her head on her arms on the center table in one reception room.

“The castle of the Sleeping Beauty,” murmured Ruth, smiling, and without speaking to any of the house servants, she ran out.

She knew the way to the stables and there were signs of life there. Two or three of the grooms were currying horses in the yard, and idly talking and laughing. One of them threw down the currycomb and brush and ran immediately to Ruth as she appeared at the bars.

Ruth recognized him as the boy who had held her horse while she mounted that morning, and she suspected immediately that he had been instructed to be at her beck and call if she expressed any desire for a mount. She asked him if that was so.

“Yes, ma’am. Patrick Henry say fo’ me t’ ‘tend yo’ if yo’ rode.”

“Can I ride out any time?” asked the girl.

He grinned at her widely. “Sho’ kin, ma’am,” he said. “Dat little bay mare wid de scah on her hip, she at yo’ sarbice—an’ so’s Toby.”

“You are Toby?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am.”

“Then saddle the mare for me at once and—stay! can you go with me?”

“Positive got t’ go wid yo’, miss. Ab-so-lum-lute-ly,” declared the negro, gravely. “Dem’s ma ’structions f’om Patrick Henry.”

“All right, Toby. I want to go back to that cotton warehouse where we stopped this morning. I forgot something.”

“Ready in a pig’s wink, Miss Ruth,” declared the young negro, and ran off to saddle the bay mare and get, for himself, a wicked looking speckled mule.

The bay mare felt just as much refreshed by her siesta as Ruth did. She started when Ruth was in the saddle, seemingly with a determination to break her own record for speed. The girl of the Red Mill, her hat off, her hair flying, and her eyes and cheeks aglow, looked back to see what had become of Toby and the speckled mule.

But she need not have worried about them. Toby had no saddle, and only a rope bridle; but he clung to the mule like a limpet to a rock, with his great-toes between two ribs, “tick’lin’ ob ‘im up!” as he expressed it to the laughing Ruth, when at last she brought the mare to a halt in sight of the river.

“Dishyer mu-el,” declared Toby, “I s’pec could beat out dat mare on a long lane; but I got t’ hol’ Mistah Mu-el in, ’cause Patrick Henry done tol’ me hit ain’ polite t’ ride ahaid ob de quality.”

He dropped respectfully to the rear when they started again, only calling out to Ruth the turns to take as they rode on. In half an hour they were in sight of the cotton warehouse.

It was just then that the girl almost drew her bay mare to a full stop. It smote her suddenly that she had not made up her mind just how she should approach Curly Smith, the runaway.

CHAPTER XIV—RUTH FINDS A HELPER

“I wanted another ride,” went on Ruth, “and I got Toby to take me around this way. Because, you see, I’m curious.”

“Is that so, Miss Ruth?” returned the long and lanky man. “Seems t’ me we most of us are. What is yo’ curiosity aimin’ at right now?”

Ruth laughed, as she saw his gray eyes twinkling. But she put on a brave front and said: “I’d dearly love to see into your cotton storehouse. Can’t I come in? Are the men working there now?”

“Yes’m. And the boys,” said Mr. Jimson, drily.

Ruth had to flush at that. How the boss had guessed her errand she did not know; but she believed he suspected the reason for her visit. It was a moment or two before she could decide whether to confide in him or not.

Meanwhile, Toby held her stirrup and she leaped down and mounted the platform. The negro led the mare and the mule into the shade. Mr. Jimson still smiled lazily at her, and chewed a straw.

Finally, when Ruth was just before the man, she smiled one of her friendly, confiding smiles and he capitulated.

“Miss Ruth,” he said, in his soft, Southern drawl, “Jes’ what is it yo’ want? I saw you an’ that other little Miss Yank—beggin’ yo’ pahdon—lookin’ at that rag’muffin I took in yisterday, an’ I s’pected that you knowed him.”

“Oh, Mr. Jimson! how sharp you are.”

“Pretty sharp,” admitted the boss, with a sly smile. “I’d like t’ know what he’s done.”

“He’s run away from home,” Ruth said quickly.

“Ya-as. They mos’ allus do. But what did he do ’fore he ran away, Miss Ruth?”

The man’s dry, crooked smile held assurance in it. Ruth realized that if she wanted his help—and she did—she must be more open with Mr. Jimson.

“I don’t believe that he has really done anything very bad,” Ruth said gravely. “It was what he was accused of and the punishment threatening him, which made Curly run away.”

“Curly?” repeated Jimson.

“Yes. That’s what we call him. His name is Henry Smith.”

“I’ll be whip-sawed!” exclaimed Jimson. “I like that boy. He give me his real name—he sho’ did. Curly Smith he said ’twas. An’ yit, that‘d be as good a disguise as he could ha’ thunk up, mebbe. Smith’s a mighty common name, ain’t it?”

“Curly always was a frank and truthful boy. But he was full of mischief.”

She knew that she had Mr. Jimson’s sympathy for the boy now, so she began to tell him all about Curly. The warehouse boss listened without interruption save for an occasional, “sho’, now!” or “you don’t say!” Her own and Helen’s adventures since they had left home to come South, seemed to amuse Mr. Jimson a great deal, too.

“I’ll be whip-sawed!” he exclaimed, at last. “You little Miss Yanks are the beatenes’—I declar’! Never heard tell of sech gals as you are, travelin’ about alone—jest as perky as young pa’tridges! Sho’ now!”

“My chum and I have gone about a good deal alone. We don’t think it so very strange. ‘Most always my friend’s twin brother is with us.”

“Wal, that don’t make so much difference,” said Mr. Jimson. “Her twin brother? Is he older’n she is?” he added, quite innocently.

“Oh, no,” Ruth admitted, stifling a desire to laugh. “My chum and I feel quite confident of finding our way about all right.”

“Sho’ now! I got a gal at home that’s bigger’n older’n you and Miss Helen and her maw wouldn’t trust her t’ go t’ the Big House for a drawin’ of tea. She’d plumb git lost,” chuckled Mr. Jimson. “But now! about this boy. What d’ yo’ want t’ do about him?”

“Oh, Mr. Jimson!” Ruth cried. “I do so want to be sure that Curly stays here until I can hear from his grandmother. I have written to her and begged her to take him back——”

“An’ git him grabbed by the police?” demanded Jimson.

“He ought to go back and fight it out,” Ruth declared firmly. “He ought not to knock about the world, and fall into bad associations as he may, and come to harm. I don’t believe he will be punished if he is not guilty.”

“It don’t a-tall matter whether a man’s innocent or guilty,” objected Mr. Jimson. “If the police is after him, he’s jest natcher’ly scared.”

“I suppose so,” Ruth admitted. “I would run away myself, I suppose. But I want Curly to go back to Mrs. Sadoc Smith.”

“Jest as you say, Miss Ruth. I’ll hold on to him,” the warehouse boss promised.

“I hope he doesn’t see us girls and get frightened, thinking that we’ll tell on him,” Ruth said.

“I’ll see to it that he doesn’t skedaddle,” Mr. Jimson assured her. “He’s sleepin’ at my shack nights. I’ll lock him in his room.”

Ruth laughed at that, and rather ruefully. “That’s what his grandmother did,” she observed. “But it didn’t do any good, you see. He got out of the window and went over the shed roof to the ground. And it was a twenty-foot drop, too.”

“Don’t yo’ fret,” said Mr. Jimson. “The windah of his room is barred. And he’d half t’ drop into the river. By the looks of things,” he added, cocking his eye at the treetops, “there’s goin’ to be plenty of water in this river pretty soon.”

Jimson was a prophet. That very night it began to rain.

CHAPTER XV—THE RIDE TO HOLLOWAYS

Mammy Dilsey insisted she could remember when men really dressed in satin and lace, and wore wonderfully fluted shirt-bosoms, and fine linen and broadcloth. The pre-Civil War ladies, of course, with their crinolines, and tiny bonnets, and enormous shade-hats must have looked really beautiful. The girls listened to the tales of the parties at the Big House almost breathlessly.

“An’ dat time de Gov’nor come—de two Gov’nors come,” sighed Mammy Dilsey. “De Gov’nor ob No’th Ca’lina an’ de Gov’nor ob So’th Ca’lina——”

“I know what they said to each other—those two governors,” interrupted Helen, her eyes dancing. “My father told me.”

“I dunno wot dey said,” said Mammy Dilsey, who did not know the old joke. “But I sho’ knows how dey looked. Dey was bof such big, upstandin’ sort o’ men. My-oh-my! Ah tells yo’, chillen, dey was a big breed o’ men in dese pahts in dem days—sho’ was.

“Ma Miss Rachel, she been a li’le tinty gal in dem days. Ah car’s her in ma arms ‘mos’ de time. Her maw was weakly-like. An’ I could walk up an’ down de end o’ dis big verandah wid dat mite ob a baby, an’ see all dat went on.

“My-oh-my! de splendid car’ages, an’ de beautiful horses, an’ de fine ladies an’ gemmen—dere nebber’ll be nothin’ like it fo’ ol’ Mammy Dilsey t’ see ag’in twill she gits t’ dat Hebenly sho’ an’ see dat angel band wot de Good Book talks about.”

Incidents of this great party at the Merredith plantation, and of other famous entertainments there, were still as fresh in Mammy Dilsey’s mind as the occurrences of yesterday.

“Oh, goodness,” sighed Helen, “there never will be any fun for girls again. And nowadays the boys only care to go to baseball games, or to go hunting and fishing. They refuse to come at our beck and call as they used to in these times Mammy Dilsey tells about.”

“I guess we make ourselves too much like themselves,” laughed Ruth. “That’s why the boys of to-day are different. If chivalry is dead, we women folks have killed it.”

“I don’t see why,” pouted Helen.

“Oh, my dear!” cried her chum. “You want to have your cake and eat it, too. It can’t be done. If we girls want the boys to be gallant and dance attendance on us, and cater to our whims—as they certainly did in our grandmothers’ days—we must not be rough and ready friends with them: play golf, tennis, swim, run, bat balls, and—and talk slang—the equal of our boy friends in every particular.”

“You’re so funny, Ruthie,” laughed Nettie.

“Lecture by Miss Ruth Fielding, the famous woman’s rights advocate,” groaned Helen.

“I am not sure I advocate it, my dear,” sighed Ruth. “‘I, too, would love and live in Arcady.’”

“Goodness! hear her exude sentiment,” gasped Helen. “Who ever thought to live till that wonder was born?”

“Maybe, after all, Ruth has the right idea,” said Nettie, timidly. “My cousin Mapes says that he finds lots of girls who are ‘good fellows’; but that when he marries he doesn’t want to marry a ‘good fellow,’ but a wife.”

“Horrid thing!” Helen declared. “I don’t like your cousin Mapes, Nettie.”

“I am not sure that a girl might not, after all, fill your cousin’s ‘bill of particulars,’ if she would,” Ruth said, laughing. “‘Friend Wife’ can still be a good comrade, and darn her husband’s socks. I guess, after all, not many young fellows would want to marry the kind of girl his grandmother was.”

The trio of girls did not spend all their rainy hours with Mammy Dilsey, or in such discussions as the above. Besides, now and then the sun broke through the clouds and then the whole world seemed to steam.

The girls had the big porch to exercise upon, and as soon as it promised any decided change in the weather there were plans for new activities.

Across the river was a place called Holloways—actually a small island. It was quite a resort in the summer, there being a hotel and several cottages, occupied by Georgetown and Charleston people through the hot season.

Mrs. Parsons thought that her young guests would become woefully lonely and “fair ill of Merredith,” if they did not soon have some social diversion, so it was planned to go to Holloways to the weekend “hop” held by the hotel guests and cottagers.

This was nothing like a public dance. Mrs. Parsons would not have approved of that. But the little coterie of hotel guests and the neighbors arranged very pleasant parties which the mistress of the Merredith plantation was not averse to her young folks attending.

As it happened, she herself could not go. A telegram from her lawyers in Charleston called Mrs. Parsons to the city only a few hours before the time set for the party to start for Holloways.

“Now, listen!” cried Aunt Rachel. “You girls shall not be disappointed—no, indeed! Mrs. Holloway will herself act as your chaperon and will take good care of you. We should remain at her hotel over night, in any case.”

“But we won’t have half so much fun if you don’t go, Mrs. Parsons,” Helen said.

“Nonsense! nonsense! what trio of girls was ever enamored of a strict duenna like me?” and Mrs. Parsons laughed. “I’ll send one of the boys on ahead with a note to Mrs. Holloway to look out for you and Jeffreys will drive you over and come after you to-morrow noon. I believe in girls sleeping till noon after a party.”

“But how are you going to the station, Aunt Rachel?” cried Nettie.

“I’ll ride Nordeck. And John shall ride after me and bring the horse back. Now, scatter to do your own primping, girls, and let Mammy Dilsey ’tend to me.”

In half an hour Mrs. Parsons was off—such need was there for haste. She went on horseback with a single retainer, as she said, riding at her heels. Although the weather appeared to have cleared permanently, the creeks were up and Mr. Lomaine reported the river already swollen.

Mrs. Parsons had been wise to ride horseback; a carriage might not have got safely through some of the fords she would be obliged to cross between the plantation and the railroad station.

On the other hand, the girls bound for Holloways were not likely to be held back, for there were bridges instead of fords. All in their party finery, Ruth and Helen and Nettie started away from the Big House in the roomy family carriage, and with them went Norma, Nettie’s own little colored maid, with her sewing kit and extra wraps.

The road to the bridge which spanned the wide river led directly past the cotton warehouse. Ruth had not been there since her conversation with Mr. Jimson; but the warehouse boss had sent her word twice that Curly Smith seemed to be contented and desired to remain.

Both of the Northern girls were extremely anxious to see the boy from Lumberton. Ruth looked every day, now, for a letter from Mrs. Sadoc Smith; and she hoped the stern old woman would relent and ask her grandson to return.

The river was, as Mr. Lomaine had said, very high. The brown, muddy current was littered with logs, uprooted trees, fence rails, pig-pens, hen houses, and other light litter wrenched from the banks during the last few days. Ruth said it looked quite as angry as the Lumano, at the Red Mill, when there was a flood.

Jeffreys had brought the carriage to a full stop on the bank overlooking the stream and the warehouse. The water surged almost level with the shipping platform. There had been a reason for Mr. Jimson’s shifting all the cotton in storage to the upper end of the huge building. He had foreseen this rain and feared a flood.

Suddenly, just as Jeffreys was about to drive on, Helen uttered a scream, and pointed to a drifting hencoop.

“See! See that poor thing!” she cried.

“What’s the matter now, honey?” asked Nettie. “I don’t see anything.”

“On the roof of that coop,” Ruth said quickly espying what her chum saw. “The poor cat!”

“Where is there a cat?” cried Nettie, anxiously. She was a little near-sighted and could not focus her gaze upon the small object on the raft as quickly as the chums from the North.

“Dear me, Nettie!” cried Helen, in exasperation. “If you met a bear he’d have to bite you before you’d know he was there.”

“Never mind,” drawled the Southern girl, “I am not being chased and knocked down by deer——Oh! I see the poor kitty.”

“I should hope you did!” Helen said. “And it’s going to be drowned!”

“No, no,” Ruth said. “I hope not. Can’t it be brought ashore? See! that coop is swinging into an eddy.”

“Well, Ruthie Fielding!” cried Helen, “you’re not going to jump overboard in your party dress, and try to get that poor cat, I should hope!”

“There’s a boy who can get her!” exclaimed Nettie, standing up in the carriage, and being able to see well enough to espy a figure on a small raft down by the loading dock.

“Oh, Nettie! ask him to try!” gasped Ruth.

“Hey, boy!” called Nettie. “Can’t you save that poor cat for us?”

The boy turned, and both Ruth and Helen recognized the curly head—if not the shockingly ragged garments—of Henry Smith. He waved a reassuring hand and pushed off from the platform.

Mr. Jimson came running from the interior of the warehouse and shouted after him.

“There! I hope we haven’t got him into more trouble,” mourned Ruth.

“And he can’t get the cat,” wailed Helen, in a moment. “The current is taking the raft clear out into midstream.”

Curly was working vigorously with the single sweep, however, and he finally brought the cumbersome craft to the edge of the eddy where the hencoop with its frightened passenger whirled under the high bank.

“Yo’ kyant git that cat, you fool boy!” bawled Jimson. “And yo’ll lose my raft.”

“Oh, Mr. Jimson!” cried Nettie. “We do want him to save that cat if he can.”

“But he’ll lose a mighty good oar, an’ that raft,” complained the boss.

“Never mind,” said Nettie, firmly. “You can make another oar and another raft. But how are you going to make another cat?”

“I’ll be whip-sawed!” exclaimed the long and lanky man. “Who ever heard the like of that? There’s enough cats come natcher’lly without nobody’s wantin’ t’ make none.”

The girls laughed at this, but they were anxious about the cat. And, the next moment, they began to be anxious about the boy.

Curly threw away the oar and plunged right into the eddy. He had little clothing on, and no shoes, so he was not greatly trammeled in swimming to the drifting hencoop. But once there, how would he get the cat ashore?

However, the boy went about his task in quite a manful manner. He climbed up, got one arm hooked over the roof and reached for the wet and frightened cat. The poor creature was so despairing that she could not even use her claws in defense, and Curly pulled her off her perch and set her on his shoulder.

There she clung trembling, and when Curly let himself down into the water again she only uttered a wailing, “Me-e-ou!” and did not try to scratch him. He struck out for the shore, keeping his shoulders well out of the water, and after a fight of a minute or two, brought the cat to land.

Once within reach of the land, the cat leaped ashore and darted into the bushes; while Jimson helped the breathless Curly to land.

“There! yo’ reckless creatuah!” exclaimed the man. “I’ve seen folks drown in a current no worse than that. Stan’ up an’ make yo’ bow t’ Miss Nettie, here,” and he turned to Nettie, who had got out of the carriage in her interest.

Ruth and Helen stayed back. They did not wish to thrust themselves on the notice of Curly Smith. Nettie told Jimson to see that the saturated boy had a new outfit.

“And don’t let him get away till Aunt Rachel returns from Charleston and sees him. She’ll want to do something for him, I know,” she added.

The boy glanced shyly up at the girls and suddenly caught sight of Ruth and Helen in the background. Like a shot he wheeled and ran into the bushes.

“Oh! catch him!” gasped Ruth. “Don’t let him run away, Mr. Jimson.”

“He’s streakin’ it for my shack, I reckon,” said the boss. “Mis Jimson’ll find him some old duds of mine to put on.”

“But maybe he won’t come back,” said Helen, likewise anxious.

“Ya-as he will. I ain’t paid him fo’ his wo’k here,” chuckled Jimson. “He’ll stay a while longah. Don’t fret about that.”

Nettie got back into the carriage, which went on toward the bridge. As they crossed the long span the girls saw that the current was roaring between the piers and that much rubbish was held upstream by the bridge. The bridge shook under the blows of the logs and other debris which charged against it.

“My! this is dangerous!” cried Helen. “Suppose the bridge should give way?”

“Then we would not get home very easily,” laughed Nettie.

It was not a laughing matter, however, when they came later to the shorter span that bridged the back water between the island where the hotel was situated, and the shore of the river. Here the rough current was level with the plank flooring of the bridge, and as the carriage rattled over, the girls could feel that the planks were almost ready to float away.

“We’ll be marooned on this island,” said Ruth, “if the water rises much higher.”

“Who cares?” laughed Nettie, to whom it was all an exciting adventure and nothing more. With all her natural timidity she did not look ahead very far.

Jeffreys and the footman were in a hurry to get back. The instant the girls and their little maid got out at the hotel steps, the coachman turned the horses and hastened away.

A little, smiling woman in a trailing gown came down the steps to welcome the party from Merredith. “I am Mrs. Holloway,” she said. “I am glad to see you, girls. Jake reached here about an hour ago and said Mrs. Parsons could not come. It is to be deplored; but it need not subtract any from your pleasure on the occasion.

“Come in—do,” she added. “I will show you to your rooms.”