AN UNEXPECTED DISAPPEARANCE

Dorothea had not expected to sleep a wink but she suddenly found herself awake with the sun streaming in at the window. She had a feeling that it was still early, but in a little she heard sounds coming from the direction of the cookhouse and there was a faint smell of fried bacon in the air, so that she knew it was not any too early to start Larry Stanchfield on his way, and she turned over to speak to Miss Imogene, a little fearful lest they had overslept.

To her surprise Miss Imogene’s place was empty and the girl looked about the room a little bewildered, and still somewhat sleepy. Then she jumped out of bed and put on a dressing-wrapper to be ready for anything that might happen.

She had not long to wait. In a few minutes Miss Imogene came noiselessly into the room with a face of anxious perplexity.

“What is it?” whispered Dorothea.

“I don’t know, child,” was the answer. “He’s gone.”

“Mr. Stanchfield?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s all right,” murmured Dorothea.

“I wish I knew, but I’m afraid not,” Miss Imogene went on. “I couldn’t sleep in that soft nightgown of yours after Macon Mills muslin, so, when you were sound asleep, I slipped out. I wanted to see if there was any chance of his getting off before the others woke; but, my dear, there was Val Tracy’s whole troop camped around the house! I could see their camp fires. That made me despair, for I wanted to get that bundle of clothes out of the way at least. But the boy didn’t put them outside his door. This was in the night, you understand, so I came back and waited. Well, my dear, just before dawn I dozed off, but I was awake again as the sun came up, and there wasn’t a trooper about! They’d all gone and I determined to warn young Larry and send him off to take his chances—but he isn’t there. The bed has been used and he had had his bath, but—but what has happened I fear to think. I’m afraid Val has taken him, after all.”

“I shall never want to speak to Mr. Tracy again if he has,” Dorothea protested.

“Oh, you mustn’t say that, honey,” the elder woman returned. “He must do his duty, you know. After all they are enemies, those two, and—”

She broke off a little tearfully and wiped her eyes.

“Could he have gotten out by the window?” Dorothea suggested.

“Oh, I don’t know—perhaps,” Miss Imogene replied. “I was so surprised to find him gone that I didn’t think of anything else. He may have escaped after all. I’m going back now to see if there is any clew to what happened.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Dorothea, and the two tiptoed down the hallway to Miss Imogene’s room.

“He has burned something in the fireplace,” Dorothea whispered, as she looked down at the ashes in the grate.

“Clothing!” exclaimed Miss Imogene after an inspection. “I wonder what he has worn away?”

“Are you sure?” Dorothea asked, surprised, stooping down beside her.

Miss Imogene picked up a piece of charred cloth. There could be no doubt about that.

“It’s very curious,” murmured Dorothea, and went over to the window, which she found fastened on the inside. “And he hasn’t gone out here, either.”

“He’s been taken by Val Tracy,” Miss Imogene declared positively, all hope gone.

This Dorothea could not well deny. It certainly looked as if no other explanation of the young man’s disappearance would fit the facts. The girl looked about the room hopelessly, and her eye fell upon the desk in the corner. Miss Imogene followed her glance and then with a little cry ran to it.

“I left this open,” she said hurriedly, letting down the lid as she spoke.

It was long since the compartments had been filled with creamy sheets, gone, too, were all the luxurious fittings. A dish of sand, a goose quill pen or two, poke-berry ink, some home-made wafers and wallpaper envelopes. For paper there was only a book of household receipts which had been written upon one side only. That was the extent of the stationery. But on one of these sheets was a note, propped up against the inkstand. Miss Imogene tore it open, half frantically.

“Dear and gracious lady,” it began. “It is neither lack of gratitude nor fear for my own skin that takes me off without a word of thanks and farewell. Your kindness and that of the young lady at whose window I knocked so unceremoniously, I shall never forget. But my presence here cannot fail to be an embarrassment to you and a danger as well. In happier days, perhaps, I shall see you both again, and if I should ever be able to repay you for what you have done for a spent and rather helpless wanderer, believe me, I shall not fail. What fortune is ahead of me I cannot guess. I, at least, have hope. Always faithffully yours, Laurence Stanchfield.”

“Now what do you make of that?” Miss Imogene questioned. “Has he escaped or hasn’t he?”

“I should think he was going to try it,” Dorothea replied.

“But he couldn’t, with all those troopers about the house!” Miss Imogene exclaimed. “And yet he talks as if he expected to be all right.”

“Perhaps he didn’t know they were there till afterwards,” Dorothea suggested.

“That’s it!” Miss Imogene agreed; “and yet I don’t think he would have tried to go without looking out of the window at least, and he could have seen their camp-fires on every side. And then he would have had a chance to add a postscript or—or—”

She stopped in perplexity, looking at the girl before her as if asking a word of encouragement, but she shook her head.

“All we can do is to wait and see what Val Tracy says.”

“If I know Val, he won’t say anything,” Miss Imogene declared.

“But some one will know,” Dorothea insisted. “They couldn’t capture a man who was trying to escape without any one hearing of it. I should have thought we would have heard the noise.”

“That’s true, too,” Miss Imogene admitted. “I am usually like a cat, yet I didn’t catch a sound, not even of the troopers riding away. I did fall asleep for a few minutes. However, I know a struggle would have waked me.”

“All we can do is to wait,” Dorothea repeated.

“And not say a word,” Miss Imogene added, and so it was agreed. Dorothea went back to her room and, taking Miss Imogene’s advice to sleep longer if she could, slipped back into bed again.

When she opened her eyes once more Harriot was sitting on the edge of the bed, cross-legged, gazing down at her unwinkingly.

“I didn’t say a word,” she protested the moment Dorothea’s eyes were opened. “I promised mother I wouldn’t wake you and I didn’t. I just looked at you—and it was funny to see you squirm.”

Dorothea stretched and yawned luxuriously.

“Is it very late?” she asked a little conscience-stricken.

“Oh, no,” Harriot assured her. “Hardly anybody is up but me, except of course, Val Tracy. He’s always out at daybreak with his troop. But he’s in a fine temper this morning. Somebody stole his best horse right out of our stable.”

Dorothea sat up in bed, suddenly very wide awake. She knew of one who had need of a horse and she wondered if any one else would share her suspicions.

“Who do you suppose borrowed it?” she asked innocently.

“I don’t know,” Harriot answered promptly. “Val insists that it must be one of the negroes in the neighborhood who is taking his freedom and wants to get away. I don’t think that’s it, but of course you can’t tell. It might be Lee Hendon, for all we know. They say he’s out-laying, and he may want to get over into Tennessee. But of course I wouldn’t tell Val that. When he stops treating me like a child, I’ll help him to find his old horse, but not before.”

Dorothea found in this much food for thought. For one thing she felt certain that Val Tracy’s natural suspicion would fall upon the man who was thought to have escaped from Andersonville and to be in the neighborhood of the May house, if not actually in it. If he had not seen them the night before with young Stanchfield, this would be his natural conclusion. And, if he had seen them, there was only one interpretation to put upon his inaction. Val, himself, had helped the man to escape, furnishing him with a good horse for that purpose. This brought the question, “Why should he have done such a thing?” To Dorothea’s thinking there was only one explanation. Val Tracy was the mysterious Red String. That would make clear much that had puzzled her. She had previously taken for granted that this unknown person was a woman because Stanchfield had evidently thought so. Now she wondered where Tracy wore his tell-tale badge and determined to look for it at the first opportunity. She would have liked to have a talk with Miss Imogene, but Lucy opened the door with her breakfast tray and put an end to her reflections.

After breakfast she and Harriot went down stairs together, and as they descended the sounds of impatient horses and of men stamping about the gallery jingling their spurs and accouterments drew them to the front door. Lieutenant Tracy and his troop were back again, but evidently preparing to leave at once, and the sight of them put another alarming thought into Dorothea’s mind. Suppose, after all, she was mistaken and that instead of Tracy’s helping Stanchfield he was then and there preparing to hunt him down? This suggestion brought a sharp catch at her heart.

Tracy himself seemed in anything but a good humor and greeted the two with a gruff “good morning.”

“Where are you off to?” Harriot inquired innocently.

“Hunting!” he answered shortly, then turning to Dorothea, “Won’t you wish me luck?”

“That depends upon what you are to hunt,” she answered quickly.

“There is only one quarry in war-times,” he answered shortly, and snapping his sword to his belt he ran down the steps and mounted his horse.

Dorothea’s eyes followed him and it came into her mind that after all he was going upon a dangerous errand and might not come back.

“I wish you a safe return,” she called up to him.

He glanced down at her quickly, and a bright smile came over his face.

“Faith, that’s a better wish than the other,” he cried, gayly. “It will take a fine lot of Yankees to keep me away if you’re wanting me to come back!” And with a smile he rode off at the head of his troop.

The girls looked after them and Dorothea felt a little glow of warmth in her heart at Val’s words. Perhaps, after all, he did value her good wishes for his safe return and, yes, she admitted to herself that she did not want anything to happen to him. And there had been a good deal of earnestness in his tone, as if indeed he had meant what he said.

“He’s a great blarneyer is Val Tracy,” Harriot remarked calmly. “He seems to think that every girls wants him to be in love with her. Such silliness!”

Dorothea did not reply to this observation. She looked after the troop till it was out of sight, then turned back into the house.

“What’s come over you all of a sudden?” Harriot demanded. “You look as if you’d lost your best friend.”

“Nonsense!” Dorothea declared, but her cousin was not convinced.

It was not until well on in the afternoon that Dorothea saw Miss Imogene alone and then there was a little satisfaction to be gotten out of talking things over. The elder lady could offer no solution to the problems that perplexed them both. Whether Val Tracy had helped Stanchfield to escape or whether, on the other hand, he was at that moment trying to effect his capture they neither of them could determine. There was plenty of evidence to confirm either conclusion.

“All we can do is to wait till Val comes back,” Miss Imogene remarked disconsolately.

“But even then we may not be able to tell, unless he says something about it,” Dorothea replied.

“That is true too, honey,” Miss Imogene conceded. “But there is nothing else for it. I only pray the boy has escaped. It was a bold move to take Val’s horse, but it was only boldness that offered a chance of escape.”

“But we thought Val had helped him,” Dorothea suggested, and Miss Imogene, nodding her head in agreement, replied,

“We only hoped, honey, but it was most improbable. At all events we don’t know anything, we’ll just have to wait.”

The day passed slowly enough. Harriot attached herself to Dorothea but complained that her cousin wasn’t like herself.

“I bring you cake and you just nibble it as if you were at a party being polite,” she protested. “Then I beg Aunt Decent to make some goober pralines and you don’t even look at them. You’re getting just like April.”

Dorothea forced a laugh.

“That’s a compliment,” she said with as much gayety of manner as she could muster.

“Oh, is it?” Harriot drawled scornfully. “Well, I didn’t mean it that way. If growing up means just falling in love, then—”

“What are you talking about?” Dorothea interrupted sharply.

“You,” Harriot answered blandly, munching one of the scorned pralines energetically. “I’ve been puzzling my head, trying to think who it could be. Of course there’s Val Tracy, but ’most everybody thinks he’s in love with April, and ’most everybody is, so I don’t be—”

“Stop talking nonsense!” Dorothea broke in again. “I’m not in love with anybody.”

“Hum!” murmured Harriot doubtfully. “I don’t know anything else that would take your appetite away, and you needn’t deny it’s gone.”

“It seems to me I’ve been eating ever since you woke me up this morning,” Dorothea protested.

“I didn’t wake you up,” Harriot insisted, thus changing the subject much to Dorothea’s delight.

But as the hours wore on she became more and more anxious for Val’s return and when in the early evening she heard a horseman ride rapidly up to the front of the house she was the first on the porch to welcome him. It was not Tracy, however, but Hal, and he brought information that was by no means welcome.

“We’re ordered off!” he announced.

He had little more to tell than that. Tracy was already on the move and they need not expect to see him for a long time to come. The Confederate Government was combing the country for men and big events were expected. Hal gave his meager news and was off again ere they realized it, and the household settled down to await events.

“That’s the way it goes,” Mrs. May sighed as they sat at the table that night and looked about at the empty places. “In the morning the house is full. In the evening we are deserted. We women haven’t the easiest part in some ways.”

“That is the misfortune of being born a girl,” April said bitterly.

“We have our place, too, honey,” Miss Imogene replied with a gentle rebuke in her tone. “I think our men need us just as we are. Fighting isn’t just letting off guns.”

“But I might take the place of a man who won’t fight!” April burst out and, jumping to her feet, she left the room amid a hush that lasted some little time after she had gone. All knew of whom she was thinking, and the rest of the meal was eaten in comparative silence.