"_Dark and bloody ground! Dark
and bloody ground_!" something seemed to say just behind her. Then the
trees took it up, and all the leaves whispered, "_Sh--sh, sh! Dark and
bloody ground! Sh--sh_!"
At that she was so frightened that she began calling again, but the
sound of her own voice startled her. "Oh, they are not coming," she
thought, with a miserable ache in her throat, that seemed swelling
bigger and bigger. "I'll have to stay here in the woods all night. Oh,
mamma! mamma!" she moaned, "I am so scared! If you could only come back
and get your poor little girl!"
Up to this time she had bravely fought back the tears, but just then a
screech-owl flapped down from a branch above her with such a dismal
hooting that she gave a nervous start and a cry of terror. "Oh, that
frightened me so!" she sobbed. "I don't believe I can stand it to be out
here all night alone with so many horrible creepy things everywhere. And
nobody cares! Nobody but papa and mamma, and they are away, way off in
Cuba. Maybe I'll never see them any more," At that the tears rolled down
her face, and she could not move a hand to wipe them away. To be so
little and miserable and forsaken, so worn out with waiting and so
helpless among all these unknown horrors that the dark woods might hold,
was worse torture to the imaginative child than any bodily pain could
have been.
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