Chapter 26

"The hair of your head is not the flesh of your body. No, I will not injure _the hair_!"--Pomp waited for his prisoner to take in all the horrible suggestiveness of this equivocation; then resumed. "Is not that what you would have said to me if you had found me in your power after making me such a promise? The black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect! The most solemn pledges made by one of your race to one of mine are to be heeded only so long as suits your convenience. Did you not promise your dying brother in your presence to give me my freedom? Answer,--yes or no."

"Yes," faltered Augustus.

"And did you give it me?"

"No." And Augustus felt that out of his own mouth he was condemned.

"Well, I shall keep my promise better than you kept yours. Comply with all I demand of you (this is what I said), and no part of you, neither flesh nor hair, shall be harmed."

"What do you demand of me?"

"This. Here are pen and ink. Write as I dictate."

"What?"

"An order to have the fighting on your side discontinued, and your forces withdrawn."

Augustus hesitated to take the pen.

"I have no words to waste. If you do not comply readily with what I require, it is no object for me that you should comply at all."

Penn came and stood by Pomp, looking calm and determined as he. Virginia came also, and looked upon the prisoner, without a smile, without a frown, but strangely serious and still. These were the three against whom he had sinned in the days of his power and pride; and now his shame was bare before them. He took the quill, bit the feather-end of it in supreme perplexity of soul, then wrote.

"Very well," said Pomp, reading the order. "But you have forgotten to sign it." Augustus signed. "Now write again. A letter to your colonel. Mr. Hapgood, please dictate the terms."

Penn understood the whole scheme; he had consulted with Virginia, and he was prepared.

"A safe conduct for Mr. Villars, his daughter and servants, beyond the confederate lines. This is all I have to insist upon."

"I," said Pomp, "ask more. The man who betrayed us must be sent here."

"If you mean Sprowl," said Bythewood, "his wife has no doubt saved the trouble."

"Not Sprowl, but Deslow."

Bythewood was terrified. Pomp had spoken with the positiveness of clear knowledge and unalterable determination. But how was it possible to comply with his demand? Deslow had been promised not only pardon, but protection from the very men he betrayed! Therefore he could not be given up to them without the most cowardly and shameful perfidy.

"I have no influence whatever with the military authorities," the prisoner said, after taking ample time for consideration.

"You forget what you boasted to Sprowl, under the bridge," said Penn.

"You forget what you just now boasted to me," said Virginia.

"Call it boasting," said Bythewood, doggedly. "Absolutely, I have not the power to effect what you require."

"It is your misfortune, then," said Pomp. "To have boasted so, and now to fail to perform, will simply cost you your life. Will you write? or not?"

The prisoner remained sullen, abject, silent, for some seconds. Then, with a deep breath which shook all his frame, and an expression of the most agonizing despair on his face, he took the pen.

"I will write; but I assure you it will do no good."

"So much the worse for you," was the grim response.

Mechanically and briefly Bythewood drew up a paper, signed his name, and shoved it across the table.

"Does that suit you?"

Pomp did not offer to take it.

"If it suits you, well. I shall not read it. It is not the letter that interests us; it is the result."

Bythewood suddenly drew back the paper, pondered its contents a moment, and cast it into the fire.

"I think I had better write another."

"I think so too. I fear you have not done what you might to impress upon the colonel's mind the importance of these simple terms--a safe conduct for Mr. Villars and family, the troops withdrawn entirely from the mountains, and Deslow delivered here to-night. This is plain enough; and you see the rest of us ask nothing for ourselves. I advise you to write freely. Open your mind to your friend. And beware,"--Pomp perceived by a strange expression which had come into the prisoner's face that this counsel was necessary,--"beware that he does not misunderstand you, and send a force to rescue you from our hands. If such a thing is attempted, this cave will be found barricaded. With what, you wonder? With those stones? With your dead body, my friend!"

After that hint, it was evident Augustus did not choose to write what had first entered his mind on learning that his address to the colonel was not to be examined. Penn handed him a fresh sheet, and he filled it--a long and confidential letter, of which we regret that no copy now exists.

Before it was finished, Carl returned, accompanied by four of the patriots and two of the prisoners. One of these last was Pepperill. He was immediately paroled, and sent off to the sink with the order that had been previously written. The letter completed, it was folded, sealed, and despatched by the other prisoner to Colonel Derring's head-quarters.

"Do you believe Deslow will be delivered up?" said Stackridge, in consultation with Penn in a corner of the cave; the farmer's gray eye gleaming with anticipated vengeance.

"I believe the confederate authorities, as a general thing, are capable of any meanness. Their policy is fraud, their whole system is one of injustice and selfishness. If Derring, who is Bythewood's devoted friend, can find means to give up the traitor without too gross an exposure of his perfidy, he will do it. But I regret that Pomp insisted on that hard condition. He was determined, and it was useless to reason with him."

"And he is right!" said Stackridge. "Deslow, if guilty, must pay for this day's work!"

"There is no doubt of his guilt. Pepperill knew of it--he whispered it to Pomp at the sink."

"Then Deslow dies the death! He was sworn to us! He was sworn to Pomp; and Pomp had saved his life! The blood of Withers, my best friend----" The farmer's voice was lost in a throe of rage and grief.

"And the blood of Cudjo, whom Pomp loved!" said Penn. "I feel all you feel--all Pomp feels. But for me, I would leave vengeance with the Lord."

"So would I," said Pomp, standing behind him, composed and grand. "And I would be the Lord's instrument, when called. I am called. Deslow comes to me, or I go to him."

"Then the Lord have mercy on his soul!"

XLVI.

_THE TRAITOR._

The news of the disaster at the sink, and of the loss of prisoners, had reached Colonel Derring, and he was preparing to forward reënforcements, when Bythewood's letter arrived.

Of the colonel's reflections on the receipt of that singular missive little is known. He was unwontedly cross and abstracted for an hour. At the end of that time he asked for the renegade Deslow.

At the end of another hour Deslow had been found and brought to head-quarters. The colonel, having now quite recovered his equanimity of temper, received him with the most flattering attentions.

"You have done an honorable and patriotic work, Mr. Deslow. Your friends are coming to terms. Bythewood is at this moment engaged in an amicable conference with them. Your example has had a most salutary effect. They all desire to give themselves up on similar terms. But they will not believe as yet that you have been pardoned and received into favor."

The dark brow of the traitor brightened.

"And they have no suspicions?"

"None whatever. They do not imagine you had anything to do with the discovery of their retreat. Now, I've been thinking you might help along matters immensely, if you would go up and join Bythewood, and represent to your friends the folly of holding out any longer, and show them the advantage of following your example."

Deslow felt strong misgivings about undertaking this delicate business. But persuasions, flatteries, and promises prevailed upon him at last. And at sundown he set out, accompanied by the man who had brought Bythewood's letter.

In consequence of the messenger's long absence, it was beginning to be feared, by those who had sent him, that he had gone on a fruitless errand. Evening came. There was sadness on the faces of Penn and Virginia, as they sat by the corpse of Salina. Pomp was gloomy and silent. Bythewood, bound to Lysander's rock, sat waiting, with feelings we will not seek to penetrate, for the answer to his letter. In that letter he had mentioned, among other things, a certain pair of horses that were in his stable. Had he known that the colonel, during his hour of moroseness, had gone over to look at these horses, and that he was now driving them about the village, well satisfied with the munificent bribe, he would, no doubt, have felt easier in his mind.

"You will not go to your father to-night," said Penn, having looked out into the gathering darkness, and returned to Virginia's side. "We have one night more together. May be it is the last."

Carl was comforting his wounded cousin, who had been brought and placed on some skins on the floor. The patriots were holding a consultation. Suddenly the sentinel at the door announced an arrival; and to the amazement of all, the messenger entered, followed by Deslow.

The traitor came in, smiling in most friendly fashion upon his late companions, even offering his hand to Pomp, who did not accept it. Then he saw in the faces that looked upon him a stern and terrible triumph. By the rock he beheld Bythewood bound. And his heart sank.

The messenger brought a letter for Augustus. Pomp took it.

"This interests us!" he said, breaking the seal. "Excuse me, sir!"--to Bythewood.--"I was once your servant; and I had forgotten that circumstances have slightly changed! As your hands are confined, I will read it for you."

He read aloud.

"Dear Gus: This is an awful bad scrape you have got into; but I suppose I must get you out of it. Villars shall have passports, and an escort, if he likes. I'll keep the soldiers from the mountains. The hardest thing to arrange is the Deslow affair. I don't care a curse for the fellow but I don't want the name of giving him up. So, if I succeed in sending him, keep mum. Probably _he_ never will come away to tell a tale."

"Yours, etc., Derring."

"P. S. Thank you for the horses."

Then Pomp turned and looked upon the traitor, who had been himself betrayed. His ghastly face was of the color of grayish yellow parchment. His hat was in his hand, and his short, stiff hair stood erect with terror. If up to this moment there had been any doubt of his guilt in Pomp's mind, it vanished. The wretch had not the power to proclaim his innocence, or to plead for mercy. No explanations were needed: he understood all: with that vivid perception of truth which often comes with the approach of death, he knew that he was there to die.

"Have you anything to confess?" Pomp said to him, with the solemnity of a priest preparing a sacrifice. "If so, speak, for your time is short."

Deslow said nothing: indeed, his organs of speech were paralyzed.

"Very well: then I will tell you, we know all. We trusted you. You have betrayed us. Withers is dead: you killed him. Cudjo is dead: his blood is upon your soul. For this you are now to die."

There was another besides Deslow whom these calm and terrible words appalled. It was Bythewood, who feared lest, after all he had accomplished, his turn might come next.

It was some time before the fear-stricken culprit could recover the power of speech. Then, in a sudden, hoarse, and scarcely articulate shriek, his voice burst forth:--

"Save me! save me!"

He rushed to where the patriots stood. But they thrust him back sternly.

"This is Pomp's business. Deal with him!"

"Will no one save me? Will no one speak for my life?" These words were ejaculated with the ghastly accent and volubility of terror.

"Your life is forfeited. Pomp saved it once; now he takes it. It is just," said Stackridge.

"My God! my God! my God!" Thrice the doomed man uttered that sacred name with wild despair, and with intervals of strange and silent horror between. "Then I must die!"

"_I_ will speak for you," said a voice of solemn compassion. And Penn stepped forward.

"You? you? you will?"

"Do not hope too much. Pomp is inexorable as he is just. But I will plead for you."

"O, do! do! There is something in his face--I cannot bear it--but you can move him!"

Pomp was leaning thoughtfully by one of the giant's stools. Penn drew near to him. Deslow crouched behind, his whole frame shaking visibly.

"Pomp, if you love me, grant me this one favor. Leave this wretch to his God. What satisfaction can there be in taking the life of so degraded and abject a creature?"

"There is satisfaction in justice," replied Pomp, quietly smiling.

"O, but the satisfaction there is in mercy is infinitely sweeter! Forgiveness is a holy thing, Pomp! It brings the blessing of Heaven with it, and it is more effective than vengeance. This man has a wife; he has children; think of them!"

These words, and many more to the same purpose, Penn poured forth with all the earnestness of his soul. He pleaded; he argued; he left no means untried to melt that adamantine will. In vain all. When he finished, Pomp took his hand in one of his, and laying the other kindly on his shoulder, said in his deepest, tenderest tones,--

"I have heard you because I love you. What you say is just. But another thing is just--that this man should die. Ask anything but this of me, and you will see how gladly I will grant all you desire."

"I have done."--Penn turned sadly away.--"It is as I feared. Deslow, I will not flatter you. There is no hope."

Then Deslow, regaining somewhat of his manhood, drew himself up, and prepared to meet his fate.

"Soon?" he asked, more firmly than he had yet spoken.

"Now," said Pomp. He lighted a lantern. "You must go with me. There are eyes here that would not look upon your death." He took his rifle. "Go before." And he conducted his victim into the recesses in the cave.

They came to the well, into the unfathomable mystery of which Carl had dropped the stone. There Pomp stopped.

"This is your grave. Would you take a look at it?" He held the lantern over the fearful place. The falling waters made in those unimaginable depths the noise of far-off thunders. Half dead with fear already, the wretch looked down into the hideous pit.

"Must I die?" he uttered in a ghastly whisper.

"You must! I will shoot you first in mercy to you; for I am not cruel. Have you prayers to make? I will wait."

Deslow sank upon his knees. He tried to confess himself to God, to commit his soul with decency into His hands. But the words of his petition stuck in his throat: the dread of immediate death absorbed all feeling else.

Pomp, who had retired a short distance, supposed he had made an end.

"Are you ready?" he asked, placing his lantern on the rock, and poising his rifle.

"I cannot pray!" said Deslow. "Send for a minister--for Mr. Villars!--I cannot die so."

"It is too late," answered Pomp, sorrowful, yet stern. "Mr. Villars has been carried away by the soldiers you sent. If you cannot pray for yourself, then there is none to pray for you."

Scarce had he spoken, when out of the darkness behind him came a voice, saying with solemn sweetness, as if an angel responded from the invisible profound,--

"I will pray for him!"

He turned, and saw in the lantern's misty glimmer a spectral form advancing. It drew near. It was a female figure, shadowy, noiseless; the right hand raised with piteous entreaty; the countenance pale to whiteness,--its fresh and youthful beauty clothed with sadness and compassion as with a veil.

It was Virginia. All the way through the dismal galleries of the cave, and down Cudjo's stairs, she had followed the executioner and his victim, in order to plead at the last moment for that mercy for which Penn had pleaded in vain.

Struck with amazement, Pomp gazed at her for a moment as if she had been really a spirit.

"How came you here?"

She laid one hand upon his arm; with the other she pointed upwards; her eyes all the while shining upon him with a wondrous brilliancy, which was of the spirit indeed, and not of the flesh.

"Heaven sent me to pray for him--and for you."

"For me, Miss Villars?"

"For you, Pomp!"--Her voice also had that strange melting quality which comes only from the soul. It was low, and full of love and sorrow. "For if you slay this man, then you will have more need of prayers than he."

Pomp was shaken. The touch on his arm, the tones of that voice, the electric light of those inspired eyes, moved him with a power that penetrated to his inmost soul. Yet he retained his haughty firmness, and said coldly,--

"If there had been mercy for this man, Penn would have obtained it. The hardest thing I ever did was to deny him. What is there to be said which he did not say?"

"O, he spoke earnestly and well!" replied Virginia. "I wondered how you could listen to him and not yield. But he is a man; and as a man he gave up all hope when reason failed, and he saw you so implacable. But I would never have given up. I would have clung to your knees, and pleaded with you so long as there was breath in me to ask or heart to feel. I would not have let you go till you had shown mercy to this poor man!"--(Deslow had crawled to her feet: there he knelt grovelling),--"and to yourself, Pomp! If he dies repenting, and you kill him unrelenting, I would rather be he than you. When we shut the gate of mercy on others we shut it on ourselves. For all that you have done for my father and friends, and for me, I am filled with gratitude and friendship. Your manly traits have inspired me with an admiration that was almost hero-worship. For this reason I would save you from a great crime. O, Pomp, if only for my sake, do not annihilate the noble and grand image of you which has built itself up in my heart, and leave only the memory of a strange horror and dread in its place!"

Pomp had turned his eyes away from hers, knowing that if he continued to be fascinated by them, he must end by yielding. He drooped his head, leaning on his rifle, and looking down upon the wretch at their feet. A strong convulsion shook his whole frame, as she ceased speaking. There was silence for some seconds. Then he spoke, still without raising his eyes, in a deep, subdued voice.

"This man is the hater of my race. He is of those who rob us of our labor, our lives, our wives, and children, and happiness. They enslave both body and soul. They damn us with ignorance and vice. To take from us the profits of our toil is little; but they take from us our manhood also. Yet here he came, and accepted life and safety at my hands. He made an oath, and I made an oath. His oath was never to betray my poor Cudjo's secret. The oath I made was to kill him as I would a dog if his should be broken. It has been broken. My poor Cudjo is dead. Withers is dead. Your sister is dead. I see it to be just that this traitor too should now die!"

Again he poised his rifle. But Virginia threw herself upon the victim, covering with her own pure bosom his miserable, guilty breast.

Pomp smiled. "Do not fear. For your sake I have pardoned him."

"O, this is the noblest act of your life, Pomp!" she exclaimed, clasping his hand with joy and gratitude.

He looked in her face. A great weight was taken from his soul. His countenance was bright and glad.

"Do you think it was not a bitter cup for me? You have taken it from me, and I thank you. But Bythewood must not know I have relented. We have yet a work to do with him."

Then those who had been left behind in the cave, listening for the death-signal, heard the report of a rifle ringing through the chambers of rock. Not long after Pomp and Virginia returned; and Deslow was not with them. Augustus heard--Augustus saw--nor knew he any reason why the fate of Deslow should not presently be his own.

"Is justice done?" said Stackridge, with stern eyes fixed on Pomp.

"Is justice done?" said Pomp, turning to Virginia.

"Justice is done!" she answered, in a serious, firm voice.

XLVII.

_BREAD ON THE WATERS._

The next morning a singular procession set out from the cave. Stretchers had been framed of the trunks and boughs of saplings, and upon these the dead and wounded of yesterday were placed. They were borne by the prisoners of yesterday, who had been paroled for the purpose. Carl walked by the side of the litter that conveyed his cousin Fritz, talking cheerfully to him in their native tongue. Behind them was carried the dead body of Salina, followed by old Toby with uncovered head. With him went Pepperill, charged with the important business of seeing that all was done for the Villars family which had been stipulated, and of reporting to Pomp at the cave afterwards.

Last of all came Virginia, leaning on Penn's arm. He was speaking to her earnestly, in low, quivering tones: she listened with downcast countenance, full of all tender and sad emotions; for they were about to part.

Pepperill was intrusted with a second letter from Bythewood to the colonel, couched in these terms:--

"_Deslow was taken last night, and slaughtered in cold blood. The same will happen to me if all is not done as agreed. I am to be retained as a hostage until Pepperill's return. For Heaven's sake, help Mr. Villars and his family off with all convenient despatch, and oblige,_" &c.

Virginia was going to try her fortune with her father; but Penn's lot was cast with his friends who remained at the cave. From these he could not honorably separate himself until all danger was over; and, much as he longed to accompany her, he knew well that, even if he should be permitted to do so, his presence would be productive of little good to either her or her father. Moreover, it had been wisely resolved not to demand too much of the military authorities. A safe conduct could be granted with good grace to a blind old minister and his daughter, but not to men who had been in arms against the confederate government. Nor was it thought best to trust or tempt too far these minions of the new slave despotism, whose recklessness of obligations which interest or revenge prompted them to evade, was so notorious.

Penn would have attended Virginia to the base of the mountain, risking all things for the melancholy pleasure of prolonging these last moments. But this she would not permit. Hard as it was to utter the word of separation,--to see him return to those solitary and dangerous rocks, not knowing that he would ever be able to leave them, or that she would ever see him again in this world;--still, her love was greater than her selfishness, and she had strength even for that.

"No farther now! O, you must go no farther!" And, resolutely pausing, she called to Carl,--for Carl's lot too lay with his. Toby and Pepperill also stopped.

"Daniel," said Penn, with impressive solemnity, "into thy hands I commit this precious charge. Be faithful. Good Toby, I trust we shall meet again in God's good time. Farewell! farewell!"

And the procession went its way; only Penn and Carl remained gazing after it long, with hearts too full for words.

When it was out of sight, and they were turning silently to retrace their steps, they saw a man come out of the woods, and beckon to them. It was a negro--it was Barber Jim.

Permitted to approach, he told his story. Since the escape of the arrested Unionists through his cellar, he had been an object of suspicion; and last night his house had been attacked by a mob. He had managed to escape, and was now hiding in the woods to save his life.

"Deslow betrayed you with the rest," said Penn; "that explains it."

"My wife--my two daughters: what will become of them?" said the wretched man. "And my property, that I have been all this while laying up for them!"