It was with a grave face that Mr. Arnold listened to Berry’s story of her morning’s adventure at the brook; and her mother instantly declared that Berry could no longer run about alone. “The man was probably a Confederate spy,” she said anxiously, “and if he had discovered that a family from New England were living near by, that, instead of being a little boy of Tennessee, you were a little Yankee girl, we cannot tell what would have happened.”

“Yes, I believe the man has been traveling along the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers looking over the Confederate line of defense, and his saying he might return this way in the spring may mean that the Confederates fear an attack will be made upon Fort Henry or Fort Donelson. If the union army could capture these forts and open the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, the Confederate line of defense would be39 destroyed,” said Mr. Arnold thoughtfully; and Mrs. Arnold instantly added, “We surely need not fear any battle taking place near this remote spot, but with spies everywhere we must take all possible precautions. I hope you did not tell the Braggs of meeting a stranger, Berry?” she added.

“No; I didn’t tell Mrs. Bragg. I don’t know why I didn’t,” Berry responded thoughtfully. “I guess I was really frightened after all, and didn’t want Mrs. Bragg to know it.”

“Nonsense, Berry!” said Mr. Arnold sharply. “You could run away from anyone. And if you blew your whistle, even if you were too far away for me to hear and come to your assistance, it would make any dangerous person sure that help was close at hand, and would probably frighten him away.”

Berry’s father did not like the idea of the little girl going about in fear. He knew it would destroy all her pleasure in the free woodland life which they had all taken so much happiness in. The whistle of which he spoke had been a gift to Berry from her brother Francis. It was a silver whistle, attached to a long silver chain that Berry always wore about her neck, with the whistle40 tucked into the pocket of her blouse. During the first year in the cabin Mr. Arnold had not been sufficiently strong to walk far, and it was Francis who had chopped the wood for the cabin fires, journeyed to Corinth for necessary provisions, and fished for bass and pickerel along the river; and Berry had often been his companion. He had given her the whistle so if she lost sight of him in the woodland trails she could instantly call him; and Berry valued it more than anything else and never left the cabin without it.

Nothing more was said that day in regard to the stranger, but in the afternoon Mr. Arnold started off into the forest, telling Berry that he thought she would better stay and keep her mother company. He followed the trail to the Braggs’ cabin, and made his way for some distance up the stream where Berry had encountered the stranger; but he found nothing to cause alarm, and was tempted to believe that, after all, the man might have been only a woodsman journeying across country, who had thought it an amusing game to frighten the small boy for whom he had mistaken Berry.

As he walked along the ridge and down the slope to his cabin Mr. Arnold thought to himself41 that, as his wife had said that noon, however the conflict went between the armies of the North and the South, there was small danger of its coming nearer to Shiloh church than the defensive line of the Confederates at the river forts, and which stretched on through Kentucky from the Mississippi River to the Cumberland Mountains. The control of this defense was in the hands of General Albert Sidney Johnston, a man respected alike by his opponents and his soldiers. His line of defense included Fort Henry, on the right bank of the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson, on the left bank of the Cumberland River; and Mr. Arnold was confident that General Ulysses S. Grant, the commander of union forces in the West, would not long delay in an attempt to conquer these river strongholds. “With those forts destroyed Grant’s army could soon break the whole western line of defense,” reflected Mr. Arnold, little realizing that within a month this very thing would be accomplished.

Before Mr. Arnold reached home the sky filled with heavy clouds and it began to snow. “Glad Berry is indoors,” he thought, as he approached the cabin and saw the dancing blaze of the sitting-room fire shine out through the windows.42 Berry and her mother were on the settle beside the fire busy with sewing.

“It looks just like my things, only smaller,” said Berry, holding up a blue serge blouse.

“Only Mollie’s suit is a skirt and blouse, instead of knickerbockers,” her mother smilingly reminded her.

“Well, Mollie would like knickerbockers, but her father never would let her wear them,” said Berry. “Why does Mr. Bragg think I ought to wear long calico skirts, I wonder? I could not run or climb trees or jump across brooks if I wore skirts. Mollie is always tearing hers, and tumbling down when she runs after me.”

“Mr. Bragg doesn’t really think, my dear. He simply echoes,” responded Mrs. Arnold. “But I am sure Mollie will like her new skirt.”

“Won’t she be surprised, Mother, to have a birthday party? And on the very day school begins. The minute Mrs. Bragg said that January tenth was Mollie’s birthday I thought I’d make her a present; but it was you who thought of a party,” and Berry gazed admiringly at her pretty, smiling mother, who was always thinking of such interesting things for little girls to do. For it was Mrs. Arnold who had suggested ripping43 up a blue serge skirt of her own and making a blouse and skirt of it for Mollie. But it was Berry who, with her mother’s help, had cut out blouse and skirt, and who had stitched the seams and embroidered a star in red worsted on the corners of the collar.

When the Arnolds came to Tennessee they had brought a good store of clothing; but they had not believed a great war was so close at hand, a war that was to impoverish the Southern States and to make it nearly impossible for people to procure suitable clothing; and at the close of their second year in their mountain cabin the Arnolds began to realize that they must take good care of their garments, as they could not purchase new material in the town of Corinth. With the Braggs conditions were more difficult, as they had never possessed decent clothing; such dresses as Mrs. Bragg had managed to secure for herself and Mollie were worn to rags. Mrs. Arnold had given Mrs. Bragg a dress of stout gingham; but poor little Mollie ran about in a thin worn calico. Mrs. Arnold was teaching the little girl to knit a jacket for herself of the fine blue yarn that her mother spun, and, with a dress of serge, Mollie would soon be comfortably clothed.

44

When the last stitches were set and Mollie’s dress was quite finished, Berry carried the serge blouse and skirt into her own room, which opened from the sitting-room, and that was as pleasant a chamber as any little girl could ask. The floor of the room, like all the cabin floors, was painted yellow. The walls and ceiling were boarded with pine, whose soft color blended with the floor. Mr. Arnold and Francis had built this room on to the cabin, and its wide window overlooked the deep ravine toward Lick Creek. But a tall oak tree grew so close to the cabin on this side as to hide the little building from sight, and when Berry looked from her window she looked out between the branches of the trees toward rough banks and wooded ridges. Mr. Arnold had made the simple white bedstead that stood in Berry’s room, and the dressing-table, over which hung a small square mirror. And Francis had built the box-like window-seat, which Mrs. Arnold had covered with flowered chintz which she had brought with her from the North, and had made curtains for the window of the same material. A white rug of sheepskin lay beside the bed, and there was a chest of drawers in one corner of the room, and a small wooden rocking-chair painted white.

45

Berry put Mollie’s new dress in the lower drawer of the wide chest and looked at it admiringly. Then, from a far corner of the drawer she took a long package wrapped in a piece of newspaper—for tissue and wrapping paper were not easy to obtain in that part of the world in 1862—and unrolled it, and a small doll appeared, a doll made of cloth, whose hair was of yarn raveled from the foot of an old brown stocking; whose eyes were black buttons, and whose scarlet mouth had been marked by beet juice. The doll wore a gay dress made of bits of yellow silk from Mrs. Arnold’s scrap-bag. Her feet were covered with kid shoes, made from a worn-out glove, and the little hat, tied on with a bit of yellow silk, Berry had made by plaiting dried grasses.

“Mollie will like this doll, too,” Berry thought happily, as she returned the package to its former place. “I wish there were some other little girls to ask to her birthday party,” she thought, recalling her former playmates of the far-off Vermont village, where a birthday party had meant the gathering of at least a dozen little girls, all in pretty dresses, and each bringing a gift for the girl whose birthday they were celebrating. Berry smiled to herself as she glanced46 down at her stout leather boots and baggy knickerbockers. “They would all think my clothes as queer as Mr. Bragg does,” she thought, recalling the full flounced skirts and embroidered pantalettes that she had worn before coming to Shiloh.

Snow continued to fall during the night, so that Mollie’s feet were wet and her faded skirt more drabbled and limp than usual when she reached the Arnolds’ cabin the next morning. An old brown shawl of Mrs. Bragg’s covered her head and shoulders, and one end of it trailed behind her as she entered the pleasant kitchen.

Mrs. Arnold took off Mollie’s shawl as she welcomed their little visitor, and Berry ran for a pair of moccasin slippers that Mr. Arnold had made from tanned sheepskin, and in a few moments Mollie’s wet shoes had been set to dry and she was following Berry through the sitting-room to Berry’s chamber, looking about as she always did with admiring eyes at the simple comforts of a home so different from the Braggs’ dark, squalid cabin.

“Do you remember what day this is, Mollie?” Berry demanded as they entered her room.

Mollie nodded eagerly as she smiled radiantly up at her friend.

47

“’Deed I does. It’s the day school begins!” she responded, her pale eyes shining with delight.

“And what else?” questioned Berry.

Mollie’s smile faded and her face grew anxious.

“I dunno, Berry. It’s snowing; you don’t mean that, do you?” she questioned, and Berry gave a gay little laugh, and leaning toward her kissed Mollie’s cheek, saying, “Happy birthday, Mollie Bragg. Here you are, eleven years old to-day! And you forgot all about it!”

Mollie looked at her friend with wide eyes. “I ’most always fergits it,” she replied. “I guess nobody ever said ‘Happy birthday’ to me before.”

“Well, I’ll always say it to you after this, always!” Berry declared. “If I go back to Vermont and can’t say it, I’ll write it,” she promised; and it was a promise she remembered and fulfilled after the two little girls were separated by the long distance between Vermont and Tennessee.

As Berry spoke she turned toward the chest of drawers and said:

“Birthdays mean presents, and here are your birthday presents from Mother and me,” and48 Berry drew forth a little petticoat of soft gray flannel, one that she had formerly worn, and the blue serge blouse and skirt.

“Slip off your dress, Mollie, and we’ll see if they fit,” urged Berry, laying the garments on her bed, and before Mollie had recovered from her surprise she found herself dressed in the warm petticoat and the pretty serge dress, and Berry was tying one of her own scarlet neckties under the wide sailor collar of the blouse.

“There, Mollie! Look at yourself!” and Berry swung Mollie about in front of the small mirror, where the little girl gazed admiringly at her new appearance. Then, with a sober face, she began to untie the strip of scarlet silk and to unfasten the blouse.

“Don’t take them off, Mollie!” exclaimed the astonished Berry. “You are to wear them, to-day anyway.”

“Are they mine? Truly?” asked Mollie, as if unable to believe that she could really own such beautiful apparel.

“Of course they are yours. I helped to make them, but it was Mother who planned them,” responded Berry.

“O-ooh!” exclaimed Mollie; but before she49 could say anything more a bell in the sitting-room tinkled sharply.

“School! Father is waiting!” Berry exclaimed laughingly, and putting her arm about the blue-clad little figure she drew Mollie toward the door.