It was a small cabin, and the woman in it had just gotten her fire well started for the morning, when a girl bare-headed and bare-footed, dripping wet to the skin, her damp hair hanging down her back, her face white and her eyes like coals, rushed in almost without knocking and asked for a chunk of fire. The woman had no time to refuse (she told of it afterward when she described the burning of the bridge); for without waiting for answer and before she really took in that it was not a ghost, the girl had seized the biggest chunk on the hearth and was running with it across the field. In fact, the woman rather thought she was an evil spirit; for she saw her seize a whole panel of fence—more rails than she could have carried to save her life, she said, and dashed with them over the hill.

In Vashti's mind, indeed, it was no time to waste words, she was back on the bridge with the chunk of fire and an armful of rails before the woman recovered from her astonishment, and was down on her knees blowing her chunk to rekindle it. The rails, however, like everything else, were wet and would not light, and she was in despair. At last she got a little blaze started, but it would not burn fast; it simply smoked. She expected the soldiers to come out of the woods every minute, and every second she was looking up to see if they were in sight. What would Darby think? What would happen if she failed? She sprang up to look around: the old rail of the bridge caught her eye; it was rotted, but what remained was heart and would burn like light-wood. She tore a piece of it down and stuck one end in the fire: it caught and sputtered and suddenly flamed up; the next second she was tearing the rail down all along and piling it on the blaze, and as it caught she dashed back through the water and up the hill, and brought another armful of rails. Back and forth she waded several times and piled on rails until she got a stack of them—two stacks, and the bridge floor dried and caught and began to blaze; and when she brought her last armful it was burning all across. She had been so busy bringing wood that she had forgotten to look across to the other side for some time, and was only reminded of it as she was wading back with her last armful of rails by something buzzing by her ear, and the second after the crack of a half-dozen guns followed from the edge of the wood the other side. She could not see them well for the burden in her arms, but she made out a number of horses dashing into the water on the little flat, and saw some puffs of smoke about their heads. She was bound to put her wood on, however, so she pushed ahead, went up on the bridge through the smoke as far as she could go, and flung her rails on the now devouring fire. A sudden veer of the wind blew the smoke behind her and bent the flames aside, and she could see clear across the fire to the other bank. She saw a great number of men on horses at the edge of the woods, in a sort of mass; and a half-dozen or so in the water riding up to their saddle-skirts half-way to the bridge, and between the first two, wading in water to his waist, Darby. He was bare-headed and he waved his hat to her, and she heard a single cheer. She waved her hand to him, and there was a little puff of smoke and something occurred in the water among the horses. The smoke from the fire suddenly closed around her and shut out everything from her eyes, and when it blew away again one of the horses had thrown his rider in the water. There was a lot of firing both from the edge of the wood and from the horsemen in the water, and Darby had disappeared.

She made her way back to the bank and plunged into a clump of bushes, where she was hidden and watched the raiders. She saw several of them try to ford the river, one got across but swam back, the others were swept down by the current, and the horse of one got out below without his rider. The other she did not see again.

Soon after their comrade had rejoined them, the men on the edge of the wood turned around and disappeared, and a half-hour later she saw the glint of the sun on their arms and accoutrements as they crossed over the top of the hill returning two miles above.

*****

This is the story of the frustration of the raid upon which so much hope was built by some in high position at Washington. A day was lost, and warning was given to the Confederate Government, and the bold plan of the commander of the raiding party was defeated.

As to Little Darby, the furlough he had applied for came, but came too late and was returned. For a time some said he was a deserter; but two women knew differently.

A Federal soldier who was taken prisoner gave an account of the raid. He said that a contraband had come from Washington and undertaken to lead them across the country, and that he had brought them around the head of the streams, when one night a rebel deserter came into camp and undertook to show them a better way by a road which ran between the rivers, but crossed lower down by a bridge; that they had told him that, if for any reason they failed to get through by his road they would hang him, a bargain which he had accepted. That he had led them straight, but when they had got to the bridge it had been set on fire and was burning at that moment; that a half-dozen men, of whom he, the narrator, was one, rode in, taking the guide along with them, to see if they could not put the fire out, or, failing that, find the ford; and when they were about half-way across the little flat they saw the person on the bridge in the very act of burning it, and waving his hand in triumph; and the man who was riding abreast of him in front fired his carbine at him. As he did so the deserter wheeled on him, and said, "God d—n you—don't you know that's a woman," and springing on him like a tiger tore him from his horse; and, before they took in what he was doing, had, before their very eyes, flung both of them into a place where the current was running, and they had disappeared. They had seen the deserter's head once in the stream lower down, and had fired at him, and he thought had hit him, as he went down immediately and they did not see him again.

This is all that was known of Little Darby, except that a year or more afterward, and nearly a year after Mrs. Stanley's death, a package with an old needle-case in it and a stained little Testament with a bullet hole through it, was left at the Cross-roads, with a message that a man who had died at the house of the person who left it as he was trying to make his way back to his command, asked to have that sent to Vashti Mills.

The End.



NOTES:

Thomas Nelson Page is known primarily for his short stories. 1853. Born at Oakland Plantation, in Hanover County, Virginia. 1872. Graduated from Washington and Lee University. 1874. Received his degree in law from the University of Virginia. 1922. Died.

Some books by Thomas Nelson Page:

In Ole Virginia. Meh Lady. A Story of the War. Marse Chan. A Tale of Old Virginia. The Burial of the Guns. Elsket and Other Stories. Newfound River. The Old South. Polly. A Christmas Recollection. Among the Camps. Young People's Stories of the War. Two Little Confederates. "Befo' de War." Echoes of Negro Dialect. (with A. C. Gordon)

THE END