Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir Part 23

Father Friday was accustomed to travel about the country for miles, hunting up those of his flock who, from the unsettled state of affairs, either could not or would not come into the town to church. Like the typical missionary, from necessity he always walked; though, in my youthful enthusiasm, I used to think how grandly he would look upon a charger and in the uniform of a general. In his old ca.s.sock, and wearing a hat either of plain brown straw or black felt, according to the season, he was as intrepid as a general, however; and went about alone as serenely as if the times were most peaceful. Our colonel often remonstrated with him for doing so, and finally insisted upon appointing an orderly to attend him. Father Friday at first declined; but upon hearing that the duty had been a.s.signed to me, he in the end a.s.sented--partly, I suppose, to keep me from bad company and out of mischief. Many a pleasant tramp I had with him; for he would beguile the way with anecdotes and jokes, and bits of information upon geology, botany, the birds of that section--everything likely to interest a boy.

What wonder that I regarded a day with him as a genuine holiday?

One October afternoon he said: "To-morrow morning, Captain Tom" (the t.i.tle was a pleasantry of his),--"to-morrow morning I shall be glad of your company. I am going some five miles back into the country to visit an invalid."

"Very well, Father," I answered. "I shall be ready."

Accordingly, the next day, at the appointed hour, I joined him at the gate of the convent, and we set out--this time in silence, for he carried the Blessed Sacrament. At first our course was through the open plain; but later it led, for perhaps a mile, across a corner of the pine forest, which extended all along the ridge and shut the valley in from the rest of the world. We entered the wood confidently, and for half an hour followed the windings of the path, which gradually became less defined. After a while it began to appear that we were making but little headway.

Father Friday stopped. "Does it not seem to you that we are merely going round and round, Tom?" he asked.

I a.s.sented gloomily.

"Have you a compa.s.s?"

I shook my head.

"Nor have I," he added. "I did not think of bringing one, being so sure of the way. How could we have turned from it so inadvertently?

Well, we must calculate by the sun. The point for which we are bound is in a southerly direction."

Having taken our bearings, we retraced our steps a short distance, then pushed forward for an hour or more, without coming out upon the bridle-path which we expected to find. Another hour pa.s.sed; the sun was getting high. Father Friday paused again.

"What time is it?" he inquired.

I looked at the little silver watch my mother gave me when I left home.

"Nine o'clock!" I answered, with a start.

"How unfortunate!" he exclaimed. "There is now no use in pressing on farther. We should arrive too late at our destination. We may as well rest a little, and then try to find our way home. It is unaccountable that I should have missed the way so stupidly."

But it was one thing to order a retreat, as we soldiers would call it, and quite another to go back by the route we had come. We followed first one track and then another; but the underbrush grew thicker and thicker, and at length the conviction was forced upon us that we were completely astray. I climbed a tree--it was no easy task, as any one who has ever attempted to climb a pine will agree. I got up some distance, after a fas.h.i.+on; but the branches were so thick and the trees so close together that there was nothing to be discerned, except that I was surrounded by what seemed miles of green boughs, which swayed in the breeze, making me think of the waves of an emerald sea.

I scrambled down and submitted my discouraging report. The sun was now overhead: it must therefore be noon. We began to feel that even a frugal meal would be welcome. I had managed to get a cup of coffee before leaving my quarters; but Father Friday, I suspected, had taken nothing. We succeeded in finding some berries here and there; and, farther on, a spring of water. However, this primitive fare was of little avail to satisfy one's appet.i.te.

Well, after wandering about, and shouting and hallooing till we were tired, in the effort to attract the attention of any one who might chance to be in the vicinity, we rested at the foot of a tree. Father Friday recited some prayers, to which I made the responses. Then he withdrew a little, and read his Office as serenely as if he were in the garden of the convent; while I, weary and disheartened, threw myself on the ground and tried again to determine by the sun where we were. I must have fallen asleep; for the next thing I knew the sun was considerably lower, and Father Friday was waiting to make another start.

"How strange," he kept repeating as we proceeded, "that we should be so entirely astray in a wood only a few miles in extent, and within such a short distance from home! It is most extraordinary. I cannot understand it."

It was, indeed, singular; but I was too dispirited to speculate upon the subject. Soldier though I prided myself upon being, and strong, active fellow that I certainly was, Father Friday was as far ahead of me in his endurance of the hards.h.i.+p of our position as in everything else.

Dusk came, and we began to fear that we should have to remain where we were all night. Again I climbed a tree, hoping to catch a glimpse of a light somewhere. All was dark, however; and I was about to descend when--surely there was a faint glimmer yonder! As the diver peers amid the depths of the sea in search of buried jewels, so I eagerly looked down among the green branches. Yes, now it became a ray, and probably shone from some dwelling in the heart of the wood. I called the good news to Father Friday.

"_Deo gratias_!" he exclaimed. "Where is it?"

"Over there," said I, pointing in the direction of the light.

I got to the ground as fast as I could, and we made our way toward it.

Soon we saw it plainly, glowing among the trees; and, following its guidance, soon came to a cleared s.p.a.ce, where stood a rude log cabin, in front of which burned a fire of pine knots. Before it was a man of the cla.s.s which the darkies were wont to designate as "pore white trash." He was a tall, gawky countryman, rawboned, with long, unkempt hair. His homespun clothes were decidedly the worse for wear; his trousers were tucked into the tops of his heavy cowhide boots, and perched upon his head was the roughest of home-woven straw-hats.

At the sound of our footsteps he turned, and to say that he was surprised at our appearance would but ill describe his amazement.

Father Friday speedily a.s.sured him that we were neither raiders nor bush-rangers, but simply two very hungry wanderers who had been astray in the woods all day.

"Wa-all now, strangers, them is raither hard lines," said the man, good-naturedly. "Jest make yerselves ter home hyere ternight, an' in the mornin' I'll put yer on the right road to A------. Lors, but yer must a-had a march! Been purty much all over the woods, I reckon.--Mirandy!" he continued, calling to some one inside the cabin.

"Mirandy!"

"I'm a-heedin', Josh. What's the matter?" inquired a _scrawny_, sandy-haired woman, coming to the door, with her arms akimbo. "Mussy me!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed upon seeing us.

"Hyere's two folks as has got lost in this hyere forest, an' is plum tired out an' powerful hongry," explained her husband.

"Mussy me!" she repeated, eyeing my blue coat askance, and regarding Father Friday with suspicious wonder. She had never seen a uniform like that long black ca.s.sock. To which side did he belong, Federal or Confederate?

"Mirandy's Secesh, but I'm for the Union," explained Josh, with a wink to us. "Sometimes we have as big a war as any one cyares ter see, right hyere, on 'ccount of it. But, Lors, Mirandy, yer ain't a-goin'

ter quarrel with a man 'cause the color of his coat ain't ter yer likin' when he ain't had a bite of vittles terday!"

"No, I ain't," answered the woman, stolidly. Glancing again at Father Friday's kind face, she added, more graciously: "Wa-all, yer jest in the nick of time; the hoe-cake's nyearly done, and we war about havin'

supper. Hey, Josh?"

"Sartain sure," said Josh, ushering us into the kitchen, which was the princ.i.p.al room of the cabin, though a door at the side apparently led into a smaller one adjoining. He made us sit down at the table, and Mirandy placed the best her simple larder afforded before us.

As we went out by the fire again, our host said, with some embarra.s.sment: "Now, strangers, I know ye're f.a.gged out, an' for sure ye're welcome to the tiptop of everythin' we've got. But I'm blessed if I can tell whar ye're a-goin' ter sleep ternight. We've company, yer see, in the leetle room yonder; an' that's the only place we've got ter offer, ordinar'ly."

Father Friday hastened to rea.s.sure him. "I propose to establish myself outside by the fire. What could be better?" said he.

Father Friday, you remember, had the Blessed Sacrament with him; and I knew that, weary as he was, he would pa.s.s the night in prayer.

"I am actually too tired to sleep now," I began. "But when I am inclined to do so, what pleasanter resting-place could a soldier desire than a bit of ground strewn with pine needles?"

"Wa-all, I allow I'm glad yer take it the right way," declared Josh; then, growing loquacious, he continued: "Fact is, this is mighty cur'ous company of ourn--"

"Josh, come hyere a minute, can't yer?" called Mirandy from within.

"Sartain," he answered, breaking off abruptly, and leaving us to conjecture who the mysterious visitor might be.

II.

"Yes, I allow I'm right glad yer don't mind pa.s.sin' the night out hyere by the fire," said Josh, taking up the thread of the conversation again upon his return, shortly after. "Wa-all, I was a-tellin' about this queer company of ourn. Came unexpected, same as you did; 'peared all of a sudden out of the woods. It's a leetle girl, sirs; says she's twelve year old, but small of her age--nothin' but a child, though I reckon life's used her hard, pore creetur! Yer should a-seen her when she 'rived. Her shoes war most wore off with walkin', an' her purty leetle feet all blistered an' sore. Mirandy 'marked to me arterward that her gown war a good deal tore with comin' through the brambles, though she'd tried to tidy it up some by pinnin' the rents together with thorns. But, land sakes, I did not take notice of that: my eyes were jest fastened on her peaked face. White as a ghost's, sirs; an'

her dull-lookin', big black eyes, that stared at us, yet didn't seem ter see nothin'.

"Wa-all, that's the way the leetle one looked when she stepped out of the shadders. Mirandy was totin' water from the spring yonder, an'

when she see her she jest dropped the bucket an' screamed--thought it was a spook, yer know. I war a-pilin' wood on the fire, an' when the girl saw me she shrank back a leetle; but when she ketched sight o'

Mirandy she 'peared to muster up courage, tuk a step forward, an' then sank down all in a heap, with a kinder moan, right by the bench thar.

She 'peared miserable 'nough, I can tell yer: bein' all of a s.h.i.+ver an'

shake, with her teeth chatterin' like a monkey's.

"Mirandy stood off, thinkin' the creetur was wild or half-witted, likely; but I says: 'Bullets an' bombsh.e.l.ls, Mirandy'--escuse me, gentlemen, but that's a good, strong-soundin' espression, that relieves my feelin's good as a swear word,--bullets an' bombsh.e.l.ls, woman, don't yer see the girl's all broke up with the ague?'--'Why, sur 'nough!'

cried she, a-comin' to her senses. 'I'd oughter known a chill with half an eye; an' sartain this beats all I ever saw,' With that she went over an' tuk the girl in her arms, an' sot her on the bench, sayin', 'You pore honey, you! Whar'd you come from?' At this the leetle one began to cry--tried to speak, then started to cry again.

'Wa-all, never mind a-talkin' about it now,' says Mirandy, settin' to quiet her, an' pettin' an' soothin' her in a way that I wouldn't a-believed of Mirandy if I hadn't a-seen it; for she hasn't had much to tetch the soft spot in her heart sence our leetle Sallie died, which is nigh onto eight year ago. 'Come, Josh,' she called ter me, 'jest you carry this hyere child inter the house an' lay her on the bed. I reckon she can have the leetle room, an' you can sleep in the kitchen ternight.'--'I'm agreeable,' answers I; so I picked her up (she war as limp an' docile as could be), an' carried her in, an' put her down on the bed. That was three weeks come Sunday, an' thar she's been ever since."