University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
A GUINEA NEGRO.

Appalled by the magnitude of her misfortune, Ruth slowly
arose from her recumbent posture, but remained sitting upon the
ground almost in a state of stupefaction.

The robber had already disappeared from view, and she knew
that it would be vain to hope for his return, or to seek redress.
He would be certain not to go back to his late place of service,
which he had evidently quitted with this very crime in view, as
was apparent to her now, when she remembered the bundle which
he had brought clandestinely with him, doubtless containing his own
apparel. Ruth's grief, however, was not for herself; she scarcely
considered her own destitution; she only thought how fatally her
loss might result to her unknown friend, as she had no longer the
means to fulfill a behest which he deemed so important, and, on
the faithful performance of which she thought his life might
depend.

Goaded by this reflection, she suddenly arose and hurried forward
on her journey, with a vague hope, that she might still in
some way be able to perform the task she had undertaken—a hope
so faint, it was well-nigh akin to despair.

The road to Prescott was a direct one, from which she could
not stray, and after a long and weary walk, and many alarms, she
entered the village soon after the dawn of day.

She resolved to beg a few pennies to pay her ferriage across the

river, and when once in the States, she would perform the journey
on foot, if she could find no other means of progress, and she
would make such great speed as might yet leave a slight chance
for the success of her mission.

But the mendicant's art was a new one to the poor girl, and for
more than two hours she paced the streets in a spirit of indecision,
gazing wistfully into every face she met, but unable to utter a petition
for charity. When at length she succeeded in asking, it was
only to meet with repeated rebuffs, and occasionally with a silent
look of contempt, until worn out with fatigue, she sat down on a
door-step to rest, and, in her hopeless manner, again to pray.

She had stopped undesignedly opposite to the jail, and her
attention was soon attracted by the assembling of a crowd around
its walls in apparent anticipation of some unusual spectacle. From
some passers-by, whose conversation she overheard, she soon
learned that some of the American prisoners had been confined
there through the night, and were soon to be brought out and
sent to Kingston under a strong guard. They were some who had
fled at the time of the surrender, and had been subsequently taken,
but at too late an hour to admit of sending them to Kingston at
the same time with the main body of captives, and she at once
concluded that the young officer whom she had befriended was
among the number. Inspired with the hope of seeing him again,
and informing him of her great misfortune, she at once went over
and mingled with the crowd; but a little reflection convinced her
that there she would not be allowed to speak to her friend, when
he was brought out. She pressed desperately forward through the
throng; she saw the sentinel pacing his rounds in front of the
building, and animated with such courage as carried soldiers to the
cannon's mouth, for scarcely less would have nerved the timid
child for such an act, she ran up to the fierce-looking man, and
asked him if he would allow her to go in and see one of the prisoners,
before he was taken away. The sentinel turned quickly,

and was about to order her off, when something evidently in her
desolate appearance, or in the very piteous accents of her voice,
seemed to arrest his attention, and he replied mildly, as he continued
his walk, that he had no power to admit her.

“Is there a friend of yours in there?” he asked, as she ran
along at his side, looking up anxiously into his face.

“Y-yes, sir,” she replied, hesitatingly.

“I am sorry for you, my child. Is it your brother or father?”
he asked; and then, without waiting for a reply, he added, hastily,
“possibly the jailer might dare let you in; he is a very good-natured
man. That is him standing in the door-way, and if you
will ask him to step this way, I will speak to him for you. I cannot
leave my post.”

Emboldened by this encouragement, Ruth ran to the jailer,
addressed a few earnest words to him, and soon returned to the
sentinel, followed by the wondering man of anthority.

“Hale,” said the soldier, “this poor girl has a friend among the
prisoners, and she has travelled a great way, I believe on foot, to
see him before he is sent away. As she will never see him again,
don't you think you could manage to let her in?”

The man reflected a moment, and replied, “It could do no harm,
I suppose, but I do not like to do it without permission. However,
I will tell you what she can do. The poor fellows have not
had their breakfast yet, and the girl may go into the kitchen, and
when the food is sent in, she may carry something in.”

“Oh, yes—yes—thank you!” exclaimed Ruth; “that will do.”

“What is your father's name?” asked the jailer.

“It is not my father, sir, that I wish to see,” replied Ruth.
“He is a young man, and he has a black servant.”

“Oh, yes, I know the man. He is supposed to be an officer, by
reason of having a servant, but he will not admit it, which would
be rather perilous. I know where he is—he and the negro
occupy one cell. Come with me.”

The girl followed the warder into the interior of the building,
where she was given in charge to a servant, who, after some
whispered instructions, conducted her to the kitchen, and directed
her to lay aside her bonnet and shawl.

She met with ready sympathy among the servants, and was
supplied, on request, with the means of making a hasty toilet,
which she had scarcely done, before she was summoned to the
performance of her solicited task.

A trencher, containing meat, potatoes and brown bread, was
placed in her hand and she was directed to follow a large, surly-looking
man, whose capacious arms contained the piled dishes for
a dozen different cells. Her own load was designed for a single room,
and that, of course, the one which contained Lieutenant Vrail and
his sable companion. She trembled as she passed the massive doors
and heard them close with a jarring sound behind her, and she started
at the clangor of the sliding bolts, which, echoing along the dismal
corridors, told her that she was locked in among the hapless
prisoners whose fate she had bemoaned.

It was with much agitation that she drew near the cell of
Vrail, which was pointed out to her by her companion, but
fortunately she was not at first recognized, by either of its inmates.

Harry was sitting on a bench, looking pale and dejected, and
Brom was standing beside him talking, and apparently attempting
to console and cheer him.

“Here comes your breakfast, massa Harry,” he said, as the girl
appeared; “now you jes eat this, and you feel better right off.”

Ruth had no time to waste, and she immediately spoke.

“You do not know me,” she said, “I am the little girl”—

“Who tried to save our lives, and would have done so but for
my own stupidity,” exclaimed Harry, springing up and approaching
the door. “How have you come here Ruth, and why?
This is a very dangerous experiment, for your uncle is probably
among the crowd in the street.”

The girl replied by telling him the whole of her sorrowful story
as rapidly as she could, not omitting to relate the manner in which
she had gained admission to the jail.

“I feared,” she concluded, “that I never could get to H—
in time to do you any good, if I went on foot, and I thought I
ought to come first and tell you all about it, and do as you say.
I hope you will let me go still, for I will walk day and night, if
you can only give me a few sixpences to buy bread. I am very,
very sorry that I lost the money, but the boy was so much stronger
than I that I could not help it.”

Vrail turned away to conceal his rising tears. “Here is
a child,” he thought, “capable of performing the most heroic
deeds, and utterly unconscious of her intrepidity and excellence.”
Then addressing her he said, “I have no longer the means to help
you, and I cannot permit you to undergo such perils and hardships
for me as you propose. The men who surprised us last
night took from me all my money and my watch.”

“And my watch too, by jingo!” said the negro, who had carried
a silver “bull's eye” for many years, and who had given it up
only with the greatest indignation; “I hope it won't go for the
rapscallions.”

“You must consult your own safety now, my poor child,” Vrail
continued, “for you can no longer do anything for us. Return
to your uncle; or the man you call so, and bear your sad lot until
some more favorable opportunity offers for improving it. If I
should ever regain my liberty, depend upon it, I will not forget
you. Good-bye.”

“Oh, no, no. I will go for you to H—. I will beg my
way, and perhaps I shall be in time for them to come and save
you. I will certainly go: but I will return afterwards to uncle
Shay's if you think I ought.”

“If you go, you must not return; but great as is my anxiety
for you to go, both for your sake and my own, I cannot permit

you to run so great a risk. You are a mere child, certainly not
strong, and the weather is cold, and may be very inclement. No,
no, I should not deserve assistance if I could seek it by such
means.”

Vrail pondered a few moments in great perplexity. He
had little reason, at the best, to hope for any effectual interference
in his behalf by his friends at home, but that little was
much for a man in whose face the gallows might be said to be
staring.

If he had dared to make known to his captors his name and
his rank in the patriot army, the intelligence of his position would
have been conveyed to his friends, through the medium of the
public press, more speedily than he could communicate it to them
in any other way, and the agency of Ruth would have become
unnecessary. But such a step would have been hazardous in
the extreme, for on the officers of the expedition, of course, the
severest punishment would alight.

He hoped to pass for a private soldier, and in order to increase
his chances of doing so he was careful not to divulge his name.
Of course he could not dispatch a letter without the certainty of
espionage, and the trembling child before him was the only reliance
for sending a verbal message a distance of three hundred
miles into the interior of a country which she had never seen.

If his friends did not hear from him, nor see his name reported
among the prisoners, they would doubtless suppose him killed in
battle, and would mourn him as lost, without making an effort in
his behalf. Yet if they knew all, what could they do for him, or
who was there to whom he could look for aid?

While he pondered thus, and while Ruth waited tearfully for
his attention, in order to renew her petition to be permitted to
continue her journey with her own resources, Brom had retired
to the back part of the cell, from which he now returned laughing.

“How much money did you lose, Missa Roof?” he said.

“I don't know,” replied the girl; “there must have been a
great deal.”

“About twenty dollars,” said Vrail.

“Well, how much is dar, Massa Harry?” he said, laying down
a dozen quarter eagles on the bench.

Harry started in the utmost astonishment as the golden pieces
met his gaze; and Ruth, with clasped hands, bent forward towards
them, in an ecstasy of delight.

“What does this mean, Brom?” Vrail asked in a whisper,
placing himself at the same between the gold and the door of his
cell, so that it could not be seen by any one from without.
“Whose money is this, and how did you manage to keep it from
the soldiers last night?”

“Golly! they never searched me for money. I mout have had
it in my pocket for all them—but I didn't, though.”

“But is all this yours, Brom?”

“Nebber mind whose it is—it isn't safe to talk too much in an
enemy's country, Massa Harry. Didn't I tell you I had money
laid up.”

“Yes, but I did not suppose you had brought it with you.”

“How much is dar, I say?”

“Thirty dollars.”

“Give Missa Roof twenty; den she will have as much as she
had before, and I'll take the rest, and put it where it was before;”
and the negro retreated again to a corner with four of the pieces,
which he re-concealed in some part of the lining of his coarse
vestments.

Without further waste of time in seeking explanations, Harry
gave the remainder of the unexpected treasure at once to Ruth,
with the unnecessary warning not to exhibit it before strangers,
and having repeated his former messages and instructions, which
she had by no means forgotten he bade her farewell, and advised
her to depart.

“And Roof,” said Brom, pressing his face against the bars of
the door, and speaking in a loud whisper, “if you ever should get to
H—, which I don't much 'spect, p'raps you will see a colored
gal called Sally, that lives in the lane close by old Mass' Rosevelt.
Ef you will have the goodness to tell her you saw me, and say
that I am comfortable, and 'spect to be back home one of these
days; ef you just will do that, I will tank you very much.”

“I certainly will, sir,” said the girl; “I will go to her and tell
her. What is her other name?”

“Her other name?” asked Brom.

“Yes, sir—her surname?”

“Oh, Jiminy! Missa Roof, I don't know. I don't think she
has got any other name 'cept Sally. It isn't the fashion 'mong
the first colored people to have two names; but the woman's
name that she lives with is Brown.”

“Very well, I'll find her—you may depend on that.”

“Tank you, Missa Roof—good-bye.”