She had soon eaten all she cared for.  But the berries were still numerous, and it occurred to her that her granddaddy would like a blackberry pudding for dinner.  Catching up her apron, and using it as a receptacle for the berries, she had gathered scarcely more than a handful when she heard a groan.

Cicely was not timid, and her curiosity being aroused by the sound, she stood erect, and remained in a listening attitude.  In a moment the sound was repeated, and, gauging the point from which it came, she plunged resolutely into the thick underbrush of the forest.  She had gone but a few yards when she stopped short with an exclamation of surprise and concern.

Upon the ground, under the shadow of the towering pines, a man lay at full length,—­a young man, several years under thirty, apparently, so far as his age could be guessed from a face that wore a short soft beard, and was so begrimed with dust and incrusted with blood that little could be seen of the underlying integument.  What was visible showed a skin browned by nature or by exposure.  His hands were of even a darker brown, almost as dark as Cicely’s own.  A tangled mass of very curly black hair, matted with burs, dank with dew, and clotted with blood, fell partly over his forehead, on the edge of which, extending back into the hair, an ugly scalp wound was gaping, and, though apparently not just inflicted, was still bleeding slowly, as though reluctant to stop, in spite of the coagulation that had almost closed it.

Cicely with a glance took in all this and more.  But, first of all, she saw the man was wounded and bleeding, and the nurse latent in all womankind awoke in her to the requirements of the situation.  She knew there was a spring a few rods away, and ran swiftly to it.  There was usually a gourd at the spring, but now it was gone.  Pouring out the blackberries in a little heap where they could be found again, she took off her apron, dipped one end of it into the spring, and ran back to the wounded man.  The apron was clean, and she squeezed a little stream of water from it into the man’s mouth.  He swallowed it with avidity.  Cicely then knelt by his side, and with the wet end of her apron washed the blood from the wound lightly, and the dust from the man’s face.  Then she looked at her apron a moment, debating whether she should tear it or not.

“I ’m feared granny ’ll be mad,” she said to herself.  “I reckon I ’ll jes’ use de whole apron.”

So she bound the apron around his head as well as she could, and then sat down a moment on a fallen tree trunk, to think what she should do next.  The man already seemed more comfortable; he had ceased moaning, and lay quiet, though breathing heavily.

“What shall I do with that man?” she reflected.  “I don’ know whether he ’s a w’ite man or a black man.  Ef he ‘s a w’ite man, I oughter go an’ tell de w’ite folks up at de big house, an’ dey ’d take keer of ’im.  If he ‘s a black man, I oughter go tell granny.  He don’ look lack a black man somehow er nuther, an’ yet he don’ look lack a w’ite man; he ’s too dahk, an’ his hair’s too curly.  But I mus’ do somethin’ wid ’im.  He can’t be lef’ here ter die in de woods all by hisse’f.  Reckon I ’ll go an’ tell granny.”