seemed
almost to meet, as the skiff, scraping the bottom, darted through a
narrow strait.

Then the stars were shining over her, and the waters grew wide again,
and, lying in a trance of flying lights and images, she thought she felt
her lips kissed, and a voice say "Darling!"

Finally, she felt lifted up and carried, and, when she could realize the
situation, she found herself lying on a pile of shingles at an old
wharf, and the man, beside her, was weeping, as he watched the boat
receding down a moonlit aisle of wave.

"My boy, my poor ole woman," she heard her conductor mutter, "I never
can come back to you no mo'!"

"Why?" spoke Virgie, hardly realizing what she said.

"Because--because--_you_ did it!" the man exclaimed, with ardent eyes,
seen through his streaming tears.

"Oh, tell me where I am!" Virgie said. "Is it far to freedom now?"

She looked at the sky, all agitated with clouds and stars moving across
each other, and it seemed the nearest world of all.

"Is my father there?" thought Virgie, "my dear white father? Can he see
me here, sick and lonely, and hate me?"

"We're at de Shingle landing; yonder is St. Martin's," said the negro,
cautiously; "there's two roads nigh whar we air, goin' to the North,
dear Virgie; one is the stage-road, and t'other is the shingle-trail
through the Cypress Swamp.

"Take the road that's the safest to Freedom," Virgie sighed.

In a few moments, walking over the ground, they came to a place where
the cart-trail crossed a sandy road, and went beyond it, along the edge
of a small stream. The man walked a few steps up the better road
undecidedly, and suddenly drew Virgie back into the bushes, but not
quick enough to be unobserved by two men coming on in an old, rattling
wagon.

"My skin!" cried the man driving, a youngish man, of sharp, but not
unkindly eyes, "thar's a sniptious gal. Come out yer and show yourself!"

Virgie felt the man's eyes resting on her, but not with the coarse ardor
of his companion, who wore a wide slouched hat and red shirt, and was
bandaged around the head and throat, yet from his ghastly pale face,
like death, on which some blood seemed to be smeared, and to stain the
bandage at his neck, lay a coarse leer, and he kissed his mouth at her,
and uttered:

"_O flexuosa! esquisita!_ It is dainty, Sorden!"

"Now ef we was a going t'other way, Van Dorn," the driver said, "we
could give them a lift. Boy, what are you out fur? Where's your pass