"Escaping, are you?" cried the second voice.
"Politely, gentlemen, politely!" was heard from the third voice, some
distance off in the dark, and then chasing footsteps followed, and
Virgie arose and peeped below.
A fire was burning in a clay chimney beside a table, on which were meat
and liquor. The girl swung herself out of the loft to the ground-floor,
and, seizing the meat and bread, rushed noiselessly into the night.
She hardly knew what she was doing until she had crossed a bridge and
come to the edge of a small town, around which she took a road to the
right that led into another country road, and this she followed a mile
or more, till she saw a small brick house, by a stile and pole-well, in
the edge of woods.
The light from a little dormer-window in the garret beamed so brightly
that it charmed Virgie's soul with the fascination of warmth and home,
and, without thinking, she crossed the stile, bathed her hot temples at
the well, and walked into the kitchen before the fire.
"Freedom!" said Virgie, wanderingly; "have I come to it?" She fell upon
the rag carpet before the fire, saying, "Father, dear father," and did
not move.
"Well," spoke a man of large paunch and black snake's eyes, sitting
there, "it's not often people in search of freedom walk into Devil Jim
Clark's!"
"She is white," exclaimed a woman, looking compassionately upon the
stranger, "and she is dying.
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