In a short time a thorough search for the lost girl was in progress.
Servants were sent along the streets, and Mrs. Fulton hastened home
thinking it possible that Sylvia might be in her own room.

No one paid any attention to the little colored girl in the faded blue
cotton gown who wandered about the paths and around the summer-house.
Estralla noticed two of the older girls talking together, and heard the
taller one say: "Well, wherever she is, she needn't think we will ever
take back one word. She IS a Yankee!"

"They'se done somethin' to my missy," decided Estralla. "They'se scairt
her." She ran down the path toward the wall at the end of the garden,
and stopped suddenly; for right in front of her, caught on the jessamine
vine which grew over the wall, she saw a fluttering blue ribbon. "Dat's
off'n Missy Sylvia's hair, dat ribbon is," she whispered, reaching up
for it. Holding it fast in her hands she looked closely at the mass of
heavy vines, and nodded her little woolly head. "Dat's w'at she done.
She dumb right up here, to git away frum those imps o' Satan w'at was a
plaguein' her," decided Estralla, and in an instant she was going up the
wall in a much easier manner than had been possible for Sylvia. She
dropped on the further side, just as Sylvia had done, and traced
Sylvia's steps to near the landing-place. Then she stopped short. Men
were loading boxes on a schooner at the end of the pier, and she could
see a tall officer in uniform standing on the deck of the vessel.

"Hullo, here's another small girl. Black one this time," said one of the
white sailors.

"Yas, Massa! Please whar' is my missy?" replied the little darky
eagerly.