Chapter 13

There was a new moon, but it was hidden by clouds. Still the evening was not very dark. The long twilight of the summer day still lingered in the valley. Here and there she could distinguish landmarks,--a knoll, a rock, or a tree,--which gave her confidence. I will not say that she feared nothing. She was by nature timid, imaginative, and she feared many things. Her own footsteps were a terror to her. The moving of a bush in the wind, the starting of a rabbit from her path, caused her flesh to thrill. At sight of an object slowly and noiselessly emerging from the darkness and standing before her, motionless and spectral, she almost fainted, until she discovered that it was an old acquaintance, a tall pine stump. But all these childish terrors she resolutely overcame. Her heart never faltered in its purpose. Affection for her father, anxiety for his welfare, and, it may be, some little solicitude for her father's friend, who had appointed the tryst at the rock,--not with herself, indeed, but with Toby,--kept her firm and unwavering in her course. And beneath all, deep in her soul, was a strong religious sense, a faith in a divine guidance and protection.

What most she feared was neither ghost nor wild beast of the mountains. She felt that, if she could avoid encountering the brutal soldiers of secession, keeping watch along the mountain-side, she would willingly risk everything else. With the utmost caution, with breathless tread, she drew near the road she was to cross. Her footsteps were less loud than her heart-beats. Dogs barked in the distance. In a pool near by, some happy frogs were singing. The shrill cry of a katydid came from a poplar tree by the road--"Katy did! Katy didn't!" with vehement iteration and contradiction. No other sounds; she waited and listened long; then glided across the road.

She had come far from the village in order to avoid meeting any one. Her course now lay directly up the mountain-side. The round rock was a famous bowlder known to picnic parties that frequented the spot in summer to enjoy a view from its summit, and a luncheon under its shadow. She had been there a dozen times; but could she find it in the night? In vain, as she toiled upwards, she strained her eyes to see the huge dim stone jutting out from the shadowy rocks and bushes.

At length a sudden light, faint and silvery, streamed down upon her. She looked and saw the clouds parted, and below them the crescent moon setting, like a cimeter of white flame withdrawn by an invisible hand behind the vast shadowy summit of the mountain. Almost at the same moment she discovered the object she sought. The rock was close before her; and close upon her right was the grove which she herself had so often helped to fill with singing and laughter. How little she felt like either singing or laughing now!

She remembered--indeed, had she not remembered all the way?--that the last time she visited the spot it was in company with Penn. Now she had come to meet him again--how unmaidenly the act! In darkness, in loneliness, far from the village and its twinkling lights, to meet an attractive and a very good looking young man! What would the world say? Virginia did not care what the world would say. But now she began to question within herself, "What would Penn think?" and almost to shrink from meeting him. Strong, however, in her own conscious purity of heart, strong also in her confidence in him, she put behind her every unworthy thought, and sought the shelter of the rock.

And there, after all her labors and fears, scratches in her flesh and rents in her clothes,--there she was alone. Penn had not come. Perhaps he would not come. It was by this time ten o'clock. What should she do? Remain, hoping that he would yet fulfil his promise? or return the way she came, unsatisfied, disheartened, weary, her heart and strength sustained by no word of comfort from him, by no tidings from her father?

She waited. It was not long before her eager ear caught the sound of footsteps. An active figure was coming along the edge of the grove. How joyously her heart bounded! In order that Penn might not be too suddenly surprised at finding her in Toby's place, she stepped out from the shadow of the bowlder, and advanced to meet him. She shrank back again as suddenly, fear curdling her blood.

The comer was not Penn. He wore the confederate uniform: this was what terrified her. She crouched down under the rock; but perceiving that the man did not pass by,--that he walked straight up to her,--she started forth again, in the vain hope to escape by flight. Almost at the first step she tripped and fell; and the hand of the confederate soldier was on her arm.

XXVII.

_THE MEN WITH THE DARK LANTERN._

The moon had now set, and it was dark. The frightened girl could not distinguish the features of him who bent over her; but through the trance of horror that was upon her, she recognized a voice.

"Wirginie! I tought it vas you! Don't you know me, Wirginie?"

No voice had ever before brought such joy to her soul.

"O Carl! why didn't I know you?"

"Vy not? Pecause maybe you vas looking for somepody else. Mishter Hapgoot came part vay mit me, but he vas so used up I made him shtop till I came to pring Toby up vere he is."

Then Virginia, recovering from her agitation, had a score of questions to ask about her father, about the fight, and about Penn.

"If you vill only go up, he vill tell you so much more as I can. Then you vill go and see your fahder. That vill be petter as going back to-night, vere there is no goot shtout fellow in the house to prewail on them willains to keep their dishtance."

Even at the outset of her adventurous journey Virginia had felt a vague hope that she should visit her father before she returned. What the boy said inspired her with courage to proceed. She would go up as far as where Penn was waiting, at all events: then she would be guided by his advice.

The two set out, Carl leading her by the hand, and assisting her. It grew darker and darker. The stars were hidden: the sky was almost completely overcast by black clouds. Slowly and with great difficulty they made their way among trees and bushes, through abrupt hollows, and over rocks. Virginia felt that she could have done nothing without Carl; and the thought of returning alone, in such darkness, down the mountain, made her shudder.

But at length even Carl began to sweat with something besides the physical exertion required in making the ascent. His mind had grown exceedingly perturbed, and Virginia perceived that his course was wavering and uncertain.

He stopped, blowing and wiping his face.

"Dish ish de all confoundedesht, meanesht, mosht dishgusting road for a dark night the prince of darkness himself ever inwented!" he exclaimed, speaking unusually thick in his heat and excitement. "I shouldn't be wery much surprised if I vas a leetle out of the right vay. You shtay right here till I look."

She sat down and waited. Intense darkness surrounded her; not a star was visible; she could not see her own hand. For a little while Carl's footsteps could be heard feeling for more familiar ground; and then, occasionally, the crackling of a dry twig, as he trod upon it, showed that he was not far off. Then he whistled; then he softly called, "Hello!" in the woods; moving all the time farther and farther away.

Carl believed that Penn could not be far distant, and, in order to get an answering signal, he kept whistling and calling louder and louder. At length came a response--a low warning whistle. So he plodded on, and had nearly reached the spot where he was confident Penn was searching for him, when there came a rush of feet, and he was suddenly and violently seized by invisible assailants.

"Got him?"

"Yes! all right!"

"Hang on to him! It's the Dutchman, ain't it? I thought I knew the brogue!"

The last speaker was Lieutenant Silas Ropes; and Carl perceived that he had fallen into the hands of a squad of confederate soldiers. That he was vastly astonished and altogether disconcerted at first, we may well suppose. But Carl was not a lad to remain long bereft of his wits when they were so necessary to him.

"Ho! vot for you choke a fellow so?" he indignantly demanded. "I vas treated petter as that ven I vas a prisoner."

"What do you mean, you d--d deserter?"

"Haven't I just got avay from Stackridge? and vasn't I running to find you as vast as ever a vellow could? And now you call me a deserter!" retorted Carl, aggrieved.

"Running to find _us_!"

"To be sure! Didn't I say, 'Is it you?' For they said you vas on the mountain. Though I did not think I should find you so easy!" which was indeed the truth.

Carl persisted so earnestly in regarding the affair from this point of view, that his captors began to think it worth while to question him.

"Vun of them vellows just says to me, he says, 'Shpeak vun vord, or make vun noise, and I vill plow your prains out!' I vasn't wery much in favor to have my prains plowed out, so I complied mit his wery urgent request. That's the vay they took me prisoner."

"Wal," remarked Silas, "what he says may be true, but I don't believe nary word on't. Got his hands tied? Now lock arms with him, and bring him along."

Carl was in despair at this mode of treatment, for it rendered escape impossible,--and what would become of Virginia? His anxiety for her safety became absolute terror when he discovered the errand on which these men were bound.

By the light of a dark lantern they led him through the grove, across a brook that came tumbling down out of a wild black gorge, and up the mountain slope into the edge of the great forest above. Here they stopped.

"This yer's a good place, boys, to begin. Kick the leaves together. That's the talk."

They were in a leafy hollow of the dry woods. A blaze was soon kindled, which shot up in the darkness, and threw its ruddy glare upon the trunks and overhanging canopy of foliage, and upon the malignant, gleaming faces of the soldiers. Little effort was needed to insure the spreading of the flames. They ran over the ground, licking up the dry leaves, crackling the twigs, catching at the bark of trees, and filling the forest, late so silent and black, with their glow and roar.

"That's to smoke out your d--d Union friends!" said Silas to Carl, with a hideous grin.

Yes, Carl understood that well enough. In this same forest, on the banks of the brook above where it fell into the gorge, the patriots were encamped. And Virginia? Still believing that the worst that could happen to her would be to fall into the hands of these ruffians, the lad sweated in silent agony over the secret he was bound to keep.

"What makes ye look so down-in-the-mouth, Dutchy? 'Fraid your friends will get scorched?"

"I vas thinking the fire vill be apt to scorch us as much as it vill them. And I have my hands tied so I can't run."

"Don't be afraid; we'll look out for you. I swear, boys! the fire looks as though 'twas dying down! Get out o' this yer holler and there ain't no leaves to feed it; and I be hanged if the wind ain't gitting contrary!"

Carl witnessed these effects with a gleam of hope. The soldiers fell to gathering bark and sticks, which they piled at the roots of trees. The lad was left almost alone. Had his hands been free, he would have run. A soldier passed near him, dragging a dead bush.

"Dan Pepperill! cut the cord!" Dan shook his head, with a look of terror. "Drop your knife, then!"

"O Lord!" said Dan. "They'd hang me! I be durned if they wouldn't!"

"Dan, you must! I don't care vun cent for myself. But Wirginie Willars--she is just beyond vere you took me. Vill you leave her to die? And Mishter Hapgoot is just a little vay up the mountain, and there is nopody to let him know!"

A look of ghastly intelligence came into Dan's face as he stopped to listen to this explanation. He seemed half inclined to set the boy's limbs free, and risk the consequences. But just then Ropes shouted at him,--

"What ye at thar, Pepperill? Why don't ye bring along that ar brush?"

So the brief conference ended, and the cords remained uncut. And a great, dangerous fire was kindling in the woods. And now Carl's only hope for Virginia was, that she would take advantage of its light to make good her retreat from the mountain.

XXVIII.

_BEAUTY AND THE BEAST._

Unfortunately the poor girl had no suspicion of the mischance that had overtaken her guide. She heard voices, and believed that he had fallen in with some friends. Thus she waited, expecting momently that he would return to her. She saw a single gleam of light that vanished in the darkness. Then the voices grew fainter and fainter, and at length died in the distance. And she was once more utterly alone.

Fearful doubt and uncertainty agitated her. In a moment of despair, yielding to the terrors of her situation, she wrung her hands and called on Carl imploringly not to abandon her, but to come back--"O, dear, dear Carl, come back!"

Suddenly she checked herself. Why was she sitting there, wasting the time in tears and reproaches?

"Poor Carl never meant to desert me in this way, I know. If I ever see him again, he will make me sorry that I have blamed him. No doubt he has done his best. But, whatever has become of him, I am sure he cannot find his way back to me now. I'll follow him; perhaps I may find him, or Penn, or some of their friends."

She arose accordingly, and groped her way in the direction in which she had seen the light and heard the voices. And soon another and very different light gladdened her eyes--a faint glow, far off, as of a fire kindled among the forest trees. It was the camp of the patriots, she thought.

She came to the brook, which, invisible, mysterious, murmuring, rolled along in the midnight blackness, and seemed too formidable for her to ford. She felt the cold rush of the hurrying water, the slippery slime of the mossy and treacherous stones, and withdrew her appalled hands. To find a shallow place to cross, she followed up the bank; and as the light was still before her, higher on the mountain, she kept on, groping among trees, climbing over logs and rocks, falling often, but always resolutely rising again, until, to her dismay, the glow began to disappear. She had, without knowing it, followed the stream up into the deep gorge through which it poured; and now the precipitous wood-crowned wall, rising beside her, overhanging her, shut out the last glimpse of the fire.

She was by this time exceedingly fatigued. It seemed useless to advance farther; she felt certain that she was only getting deeper and deeper into the entangling difficulties of that unknown, horrible place. Neither had she the courage or strength to retrace her steps. Nothing then remained for her but to pass the remainder of the night where she was, and wait patiently for the morning.

Little knowing that the light she had seen was the glare of the kindled forest, she endeavored to convince herself that she had nothing to fear. At all events, she knew that trembling and tears could avail her nothing. She had not ventured to call very loudly for help, fearing lest her voice might bring foe instead of friend. And now it occurred to her that perhaps Carl had been taken by the soldiers: yes, it must be so: she explained it all to herself, and wondered why she had not thought of it before. It would therefore be folly in her now to scream for aid.

Comfortless, yet calm, she explored the ground for a resting-place. She cleared the twigs away from the roots of a tree, and laid herself down there on the moss and old leaves. Everything seemed dank with the never-failing dews of the deep and sheltered gorge; but she did not mind the dampness of her couch. A strong wind was rising, and the great trees above her swayed and moaned. She was vexed by mosquitoes that bit as if they then for the first time tasted blood, and never expected to taste it again; but she was too weary to care much for them either. She rested her arm on the mossy root; she rested her head on her arm; she drew her handkerchief over her face; she shut out from her soul all the miseries and dangers of her situation, and quietly said her prayers.

There is nothing that calms the perturbations of the mind like that inward looking for the light of God's peace which descends upon us when in silence and sweet trust we pray to him. A delicious sense of repose ensued, and her thoughts floated off in dreams.

She dreamed she was flying with her father from the fury of armed men. She led him into a wilderness; and it was night; and great rocks rose up suddenly before them in the gloom, and awful chasms yawned. Then she was wandering alone; she had lost her father, and was seeking him up and down. Then it seemed that Penn was by her side; and when she asked for her father he smilingly pointed upward at a wondrously beautiful light that shone from the summit of a hill. She sought to go up thither, but grew weary, and sat down to rest in a deep grove, with an ice-cold mountain stream dashing at her feet. Then the light on the hill became a lake of fire, and it poured its waves into the stream, and the stream flowed past her a roaring river of flame. Lightnings crackled in the air above her. Thunderbolts fell. The heat was intolerable. The river had overflowed, and set the world on fire. And she could not fly, for terror chained her limbs. She struggled, screamed, awoke. She started up. Her dream was a reality.

Either the fire set by the soldiers had spread, driven by the wind over the dry leaves, into the grove below her, or else they had fired the grove itself on their retreat. Her eyes opened upon a vision of appalling brightness. For a moment she stood utterly dazzled and bewildered, not knowing where she was. Memory and reason were paralyzed: she could not remember, she could not think: amazement and terror possessed her.

Instinctively shielding her eyes, she looked down. The ground where she had lain, the log, the sticks, the moss, and her handkerchief fallen upon it, were illumined with a glare brighter than noonday. At sight of the handkerchief came recollection. Her terrible adventure, the glow she had seen in the woods, her bed on the earth,--she remembered everything. And now the actual perils of her position became apparent to her returning faculties.

Where all was blackness when she lay down, now all was preternatural light. Every bush and jutting rock of the wild overhanging cliffs stood out in fearful distinctness. The saplings and trees on their summits, fifty feet above her head, seemed huddling together, and leaning forward terror-stricken, in an atmosphere of whirling flame and smoke. Climb those cliffs she could not, though she were to die.

She must then flee farther up into the deep and narrow gorge, or endeavor to escape by the way she had come. But the way she had come was fire.

The conflagration already enveloped the mouth of the gorge, shutting her in. The trunks of near trees stood like the bars of a stupendous cage, through which she looked at the raging demons beyond. Burning limbs fell, shooting through the air with trails of flame. Every tree was a pillar of fire. Here a bough, still untouched, hung, dark and impassive, against the lurid, surging chaos. Then the whirlwind of heated air struck it, and you could see it writhe and twist, until its darkness burst into flame. There stood what was late a lordly maple, but now,--trunk, and limb, and branch,--a tree of living coal. And down under this gulf of fire flowed the brook, into which showers of sparks fell hissing, while over all, fearfully illumined clouds of smoke and cinders and leaves went rolling up into the sky.

Virginia approached near enough to be impressed with the dreadful certainty that there was no outlet whatever, for any mortal foot, in that direction. Tortured by the heat, and pursued by lighted twigs, that fell like fiery darts around her, she fled back into the gorge.

The conflagration was still spreading rapidly. The timber along both sides of the gorge, at its opening, began to burn upwards towards the summits of the cliffs. Soon the very spot where she had slept, and where she now paused once more in her terrible perplexity and fear, would be an abyss of flame.

Again she took to flight, hasting along the edge of the stream, up into the heart of the gorge. Over roots of trees, over old decaying trunks, over barricades of dead limbs brought down by freshets and left lodged, she climbed, she sprang, she ran. All too brightly her way was lighted now. A ghastly yellow radiance was on every object. The waters sparkled and gleamed as they poured over the dark brown stones. Every slender, delicate fern, every poor little startled wild flower nestled in cool, dim nooks, was glaringly revealed. Little the frightened girl heeded these darlings of the forest now.

All the way she looked eagerly for some slant or cleft in the mountain walls where she might hope to ascend. Here, over the accumulated soil of centuries, fastened by interwoven roots to the base of the cliff, she might have climbed a dozen feet or more. Yonder, by the aid of shrubs and boughs, she might have drawn herself up a few feet farther. But, wherever her eye ranged along the ledges above, she beheld them dizzy-steep and unscalable. And so she kept on until even the way before her was closed up.

On the brink of a rock-rimmed, flashing basin she stopped. Down into this, from a shelf twenty feet in height, fell the brook in a bright, fire-tinted cascade. Fear-inspired as she was, she could not but pause and wonder at the strange beauty of the scene,--the plashy pool before her, the flame-color on the veil of silver foam dropped from the brow of the ledge, and--for a wild background to the picture--the wooded, fire-lit, shadowy gorge, opening on a higher level above.

During the moment that she stood there, a great bird, like an owl, that had probably been driven from his hollow tree or fissure in the rocks by the conflagration, flapped past her face, almost touching her with his wings, and dashed blindly against the waterfall. He was swept down into the pool. After some violent fluttering and floundering in the water, he extricated himself, perched on a stone at its edge, shook out his wet feathers, and stared at her with large cat-like eyes, without fear. She was near enough to reach him with her hand; but either he was so dazzled and stunned that he took no notice of her, or else the greater terror had rendered him tame to human approach. She believed the latter was the case, and saw something exceedingly awful in the incident. When even the wild winged creatures of the forest were stricken down with fear, what cause had she to apprehend danger to herself!

On reaching the waterfall she had felt for a moment that all was over--that certain death awaited her. Then, out of her very despair, came a gleam of hope. She might creep under the cascade, or behind it, and that would protect her. But when she looked up, and saw, around and above her, the forest trees with the frightful and ever-increasing glow upon them, and knew that they too soon must kindle, and thought of firebrands rained down upon her, and falling columns of fire filling the gorge with burning rubbish,--then her soul sickened: what protection would a little sheet of water prove against such furnace heat?