When the third day passed without Mollie appearing at the Arnolds’ cabin Mrs. Arnold gave Berry permission to go and find out the reason. There were not to be any lessons that morning, as Mr. Arnold had not been well for several days, and it was Lily who cared for the cow, brought the milk to the cabin, the wood from the shed, and did all the chores that Berry’s father usually did about the cabin.

“Isn’t it lucky I found Lily?” Berry asked soberly, as she made ready for her tramp over the ridge to the Braggs’ cabin.

“Lily is a great help,” Mrs. Arnold replied, but she did not tell Berry that the fact of having the fugitive slave girl in the house might prove a great danger to the Yankee household on the Tennessee mountain ridge.

“Do not say a word about Lily to Mollie or to Mr. and Mrs. Bragg,” Mrs. Arnold added, and Berry promised, thinking that whatever78 Mollie’s secret was it could not be more wonderful than the discovery of Lily.

“It’s like spring,” thought Berry as she strode along the leaf-covered path. “I smell it in the air.” For it was one of the days of late January when, among the ravines and valleys of the Tennessee mountains, spring seems close at hand. The sun shone warmly down, and wrens, nuthatches and cardinals flitted about the forest. “It won’t be long before the sap begins to run and we can make maple-sugar,” thought Berry. For there was a grove of sugar maples not two miles distant from the cabin, and Berry recalled the previous spring when she and her father had tapped the trees, boiled down the sap and made maple-sugar. “And that’s what we’ll do this year,” she decided happily, as she left the path for a moment to watch a scurrying partridge as it fluttered over the rough ground.

Berry had not gone far from home, however, before she was sure that she was being followed; that someone, keeping well out of sight behind trees and underbrush, was not far behind her; and she wondered if it might not be the man who, only a week earlier, had spoken to her at the brook crossing, and mistaken her for a boy; and79 at this thought Berry’s hand sought the silver whistle.

“But the whistle wouldn’t help to-day; Father is too ill to come,” she thought; “but it might frighten anyone who was hiding,” she decided. But Berry did not use the whistle. She was a fleet runner, and off she went at her best pace, sure that she could outrun any would-be pursuer. Nevertheless, by the breaking of twigs and the crashing noises in the undergrowth, the little girl knew that her unseen pursuer still kept her in view; and not until she reached the highway, along which she must go for a short distance before reaching the rough lane leading to the Braggs’ cabin, did she believe that she was at last out of reach of her pursuer.

“I’ll ask Mr. Bragg to go home with me,” Berry resolved as she hurried up the lane, for she recalled the stranger’s threats if she told of having seen him, and did not wish to encounter him again.

As Berry came in sight of Mollie’s home she noticed that there was no thread of smoke rising from the chimney of the cabin; it had a lonely and deserted look, but Berry did not stop to think of this. She was sure that in a moment the80 door would open wide, and Mollie, smiling with pleasure at the sight of her friend, would give her a warm welcome.

Berry rapped on the door, and then gave it a little push. But the door did not open, there was no response to her knock, and Berry now noticed that the cabin windows on each side of the door were evidently boarded up on the inside.

“They’ve gone away! And Mollie did not tell me!” she exclaimed aloud, with a sense of angry resentment against poor Mollie.

“That was her old secret! All the time I was making her doll, and her dress, and when she was pretending to want to come to school she knew she was going off,” thought Berry, tears of angry resentment and disappointment coming to her eyes.

It was to be many weeks before Berry was to hear the true story of the Braggs’ sudden disappearance, and learn that poor little Mollie had not been given time to tell her great secret, or to say good-bye to the friends who had given her such a happy birthday.

For a few moments Berry stood on the worn stone that formed the threshold to the dilapidated81 cabin, wondering where the Braggs had gone, and if they meant to return. The boarded windows made her feel sure that they had no intention of coming back, and, with a mournful sigh, Berry at last turned from the cabin and started on her tramp back through the forest.

Her thoughts were so filled by Mollie’s disappearance that she had entirely forgotten the possibility of again encountering the man who had called her “Berry Nees,” and not until she had left the main road and chanced to see a crouching figure lurking behind an o............