Sylvia looked at him resentfully.  “How dare you grab me like this?” she demanded.  “Let me go.”

The man released his grasp instantly.  No darky girl or slave would have spoken like that.  He vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, more frightened now than Sylvia herself.

For an instant Sylvia stood quite still.  She felt ready to cry, and now walked more slowly.  For the first time she realized something of what it must be to be a colored girl.

“If I had been Estralla he could have dragged me off and had me whipped,” she thought.  “Oh, I must get Mr. Robert Waite to let Estralla stay safe with us.”

She was now near her destination, which proved to be a large house right on the street.  She knocked at the door several times before it was opened.  Then she found herself looking up at a tall man whose white hair and kindly smile gave her confidence.

“Well, little girl, whom do you wish to see?” he asked pleasantly.

“I have a message, I—­” began Sylvia, her voice trembling a little.  “Are you Mr. Doane?”

“Yes; come in,” and he held the door open for her to enter, and then closed and fastened it behind them.

Sylvia drew the letter from its hiding-place and handed it to him, and Mr. Doane slipped it into his pocket.

“Come in, my child, and rest a moment; you are out of breath,” he said, leading the way to a small room at the end of the narrow hall.

Sylvia was glad to sit down in a low chair near the table, while Mr. Doane opened the envelope.  She could see that there was another letter enclosed, as well as the one which the tall man was reading with such interest.

When he had finished reading the letter he tore it into a great many small pieces.  Then he put the enclosed envelope carefully in an inner pocket.

“So you brought me this letter from the fort.  Well, you have done what I hope may prove a great service to the Stars and Stripes.  I thank you,” he said, looking with smiling eyes at the tired little figure in the brown cape.

Then he asked Sylvia her name, and she told him that no one, not even her dear mother, knew that she had brought the message.  Before they had finished their talk he had heard all about the blue cockades that the girls had worn at Miss Patten’s school, and of Sylvia’s refusal to salute the palmetto flag.

“You see I couldn’t do that, because it would mean that I believed that Estralla ought to be a slave, and of course I don’t believe such a dreadful thing,” she explained.  So then Mr. Doane heard all about Estralla and Aunt Connie.

Sylvia decided that she liked Mr. Doane even better than Captain Carleton.  And when he told her again that by her courage in bringing him the message from the fort, and by her silence in regard to it, that she had done him a great service, as well as a service to those whose only wish for South Carolina was that the State should free herself from slavery, Sylvia forgot all about the long walk through the shadowy streets.