Chapter 9

"Let him take his choice--either to hang, or enlist. What do you say, youngster? Which do you prefer--the death of a traitor, or the glorious career of a soldier in the confederate army?"

"It is impossible for me, sir," said Penn, in a voice of deep feeling and unalterable conviction--"it is impossible for me to bear arms against my country!"

"But the Confederate States shall be your country, and a country to be proud of!" said the man.

"I am a citizen of the United States; to the United States I owe allegiance," said Penn. "So far from being a traitor, I am willing to die rather than appear one."

"Then you won't enlist?"

"No, sir."

"Not even to save your life?"

"Not even to save my life!"

"Then," growled the man, turning away, "if you will be such a fool, I've nothing more to say."

So it only remained for Penn to submit quietly to his fate. The executioners laid hold of the table, and waited for the order to remove it.

But just then Carl, breaking through the crowd, threw himself before the officer's horse.

"O, Colonel Derring! hear me--von vord!"

"Von vord!" repeated the officer, with a coarse laugh, mocking him. "What's that, you Dutchman?"

"You vill let him go, and I shall wolunteer in his place!" said Carl.

"You!" The officer regarded him critically. Carl, though so young, was very sturdy. "You offer yourself as a substitute, eh, if I will spare his life?"

"Carl!" cried Penn, "I forbid you! You shall not commit that sin for me! Better a thousand times that I should die than that you should be a rebel in arms against your country."

"I have no country," answered Carl, ingeniously excusing himself. "I am vot this man says, a Tuchman. I vill enlisht mit him, and he vill shpare your life."

"Boy, it's a bargain," said Colonel Derring, whose passion for obtaining recruits overruled every other consideration. "Cut that fellow's cords, lieutenant, and let him go. Come along with me, Dutchy."

Ropes obeyed, and Penn, bewildered, almost stunned, by the sudden change in his destiny, saw himself released, and beheld, as in a dream, poor Carl marching off as his substitute to the recruiting station.

"Now let me give you one word of advice," said Captain Sprowl in his ear. "Don't let another night find you within twenty miles of that halter there, if you wouldn't have your neck in it again."

"Will you give me a safe conduct?" said Penn, who thought the advice excellent, and would have been only too glad to act upon it.

"I've no authority," said Sprowl. "You must take care of yourself."

Penn looked around upon the ferocious, disappointed faces watching him, and felt that he might about as well have been despatched in the first place, as to be let loose in the midst of such a pack of wolves thirsting for his blood. He did not despair, however, but, putting on his clothes, determined to make one final and desperate effort to escape.

XIX.

_THE ESCAPE._

Walking off quickly across the field towards Mrs. Sprowl's house, he turned suddenly aside from the path and plunged into the woods.

He soon perceived that he was followed. A man--only one--came through the undergrowth. Penn stopped. "God forgive me!" he said within himself; "but this is more than human nature can bear!" He had been, as it were, smitten on one cheek and on the other also: it was time to smite back. He picked up a club: his nerves became like steel as he grasped it: his eyes flashed fire.

The man advanced; he was unarmed. Suddenly Penn dropped his club, and uttered a cry of joy. It was his friend Stackridge.

"What! the Quaker will fight?" said the farmer, with a grim smile.

"That shows," said Penn, bursting into tears as he wrung the farmer's hand, "that I have been driven nearly insane!"

"It shows that some of the insanity has been driven out of you!" replied Stackridge, beginning to have hopes of him. "If you had taken my pistol and used it freely in the first place, or at least shown a good will to use it, you'd have proved yourself a good deal more of a man in my estimation, and been quite as well off."

"Perhaps," murmured Penn, convinced that this passive submission to martyrdom was but a sorry part to play.

"But now to business," said Stackridge. "You must get away as quickly and secretly as possible, unless you mean to stay and fight it out. I am here to help you. I have a horse in the woods here, at your disposal. I thought there might be such a thing as your slipping through their hands, and so I took this precaution. I will show you a bridle-road that will take you to the house of a friend of mine, who is a hearty Unionist. You can leave my horse with him. He will help you on to the house of some friend of his, who will do the same, and so you will manage to get out of the state. I advise you to travel by night, as a general thing; but just now it seems necessary that you should see a little hard riding by daylight. You'll find some luncheon in the saddlebags. When you get into some pretty thick woods, leave the road, and find a good place to tie up till night; then go on cautiously to my friend's house. I'll give you full directions, while we're finding the horse."

They made haste to the spot where the animal was tied.

"He has been well fed," said the farmer. "You will water him at the first brook you cross, and let him browse when you stop. Now just trade that coat for one that will make you look a little less like a Quaker schoolmaster."

He had brought one of his own coats, which he made Penn put on, and then exchanged hats with him. Penn was admirably disguised. Brief, then, were the thanks he uttered from his overflowing heart, short the leave-takings. He was mounted. Stackridge led the horse through the bushes to the bridle-path.

"Now, don't let the grass grow under your feet till you are at least five miles away. If you meet anybody, get along without words if you can; if you can't, let words come to blows as quick as you please, and then put faith in Dobbin's heels."

Again, for the last time, he made Penn the offer of a pistol. There was no leisure for idle arguments on the subject. The weapon was accepted. The two wrung each other's hands in silence: there were tears in the eyes of both. Then Stackridge gave Dobbin a resounding slap, and the horse bounded away, bearing his rider swiftly out of sight in the woods.

All this had passed so rapidly that Penn had scarcely time to think of any thing but the necessity of immediate flight. But during that solitary ride through the forest he had ample leisure for reflection. He thought of the mountain cave, whose gloomy but quiet shelter, whose dark but nevertheless humane and hospitable inmates he seemed to have quitted weeks ago, so crowded with experiences had been the few hours since last he shook Pomp and Cudjo by the hand. He thought of Virginia and her father, to visit whom for perhaps the last time he had incurred the risk of descending into the valley; whom now he felt, with a strangely swelling heart, that he might never see again. And he thought with grief, pity, and remorse of Carl, a rebel now for his sake.

These things, and many more, agitated him as he spurred the farmer's horse along the narrow, shaded, lonesome path. He met an old man on horseback, with a bright-faced girl riding behind him on the crupper, who bade him a pleasant good morning, and pursued their way. Next came some boys driving mules laden with sacks of corn. At last Penn saw two men in butternut suits with muskets on their shoulders. He knew by their looks that they were secessionists hastening to join their friends in town. They regarded him suspiciously as he came galloping up. Penn perceived that some off-hand word was necessary in passing them.

"Hurry on with those guns!" he cried; "they are wanted!"

And he dashed away, as if his sole business was to hurry up guns for the confederate cause.

He met with no other adventure that day. He followed Stackridge's directions implicitly, and at evening, leaving his horse tied in the woods, approached on foot the house to which he had been sent.

He was cordially received by the same old man whom he had seen riding to town in the morning with a bright-faced girl clinging behind him. At a hint from Stackridge the man had hastily ridden home again, passing Penn at noon while he lay hidden in the woods; and here he was, honest, friendly, vigilant, to receive and protect his guest.

"You did well," he said, "to turn off up the mountain; for I am not the only man that passed you there. You have been pursued. Three persons have gone on after you. I met them as I was going into town; they inquired of me if I had seen you, and when I got home I found they had passed here in search of you. They have not yet gone back."

This was unpleasant news. Yet Penn was soon convinced that he had been extremely fortunate in thus throwing his pursuers off his track. It was far better that they should have gone on before him, than that they should be following close upon his heels.

He staid with the farmer all night, and departed with him early the next morning to pursue his journey. It was not safe for him to keep the road, for he might at any moment meet his pursuers returning; accordingly, the old man showed him a circuitous route along the base of the mountains, which could be travelled only on foot, and by daylight.

"Here I leave you," said his kind old guide, when they had reached the banks of a mountain stream. "Follow this run, and it will take you around to the road, about a mile this side of my brother's house. There's a bridge near which you can wait, when you get to it. If your pursuers go back past my house, then I will harness up and drive on to the bridge, and water my horse there. You will see me, and get in to ride, and I will take you to my brother's, and make some arrangement for helping you on still farther to night."

So they parted; the lonely fugitive feeling that the kindness of a few such men, scattered like salt through the state, was enough to redeem it from the fate of Sodom, which otherwise, by its barbarism and injustice, it would have seemed to deserve.

Following the stream in its windings through a wilderness of thickets and rocks, he reached the bridge about the middle of the afternoon. His progress had been leisurely. The day was warm, bright, and tranquil. The stream poured over ledges, or gushed among mossy stones, or tumbled down jagged rocks in flashing cascades. Its music filled him with memories of home, with love that swelled his heart to tears, with longings for peace and rest. Its coolness and beauty made a little Sabbath in his soul, a pause of holy calm, in the midst of the fear and tumult that lay before and behind him.

During that long, solitary ramble he had pondered much the great question which had of late agitated his mind--the question which, in peaceful days, he had thought settled with his own conscience forever. But days of stern experience play sad havoc with theories not founded in experience. In all the ordinary emergencies of life Penn had found the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, of overcoming evil with good, beautiful and sublime. But had he not the morning before given way to a natural impulse, when he seized a club, firmly resolved to oppose force with force? The recollection of that incident had led him into a singular train of reasoning.

"I know," he said, "that it is still the highest doctrine. But am I equal to it? Can I, under all circumstances, live up to it? I have seen something of the power and recklessness of the faction that would destroy my country. Would I wish to see my country submit? Never! Such submission would be the most unchristian thing it could do. It would be the abandonment of the cause of liberty; it would be to deliver up the whole land to the blighting despotism of slavery; it would postpone the millennium I hope for thousands of years. I see no other way than that the nation must resist; and what I would have the nation do I should be prepared, if called upon, to do myself. If this government were a Christian government I would have it use only Christian weapons, and no doubt those would be effectual for its preservation. But there never was a Christian government yet, and probably there will not be for an age or two. Governments are all founded on human policy, selfishness, and force. Or if _I_ was entirely a Christian, then _I_ would have no temptation, and no right, to use any but spiritual weapons. But until I attain to these, may I not use such weapons as I have?"

These thoughts revolved slowly and somewhat confusedly in the young man's mind, when an incident occurred to bring form, sharply and suddenly, out of that chaos.

He had reached the bridge. He looked up and down the road, and saw no human being. It was hardly time to expect the farmer yet; so he climbed down upon some dry stones in the bed of the stream, where he could watch for his coming, and be at the same time hidden from view and sheltered from the sun.

He had not been long in that situation when he heard the sounds of hoofs. It was not his white-haired farmer whom he saw approaching, but two men on horseback. They were coming from the same direction in which he was looking for the old man. As they drew near, he discovered that one was a negro. The face of the other he recognized shortly afterwards. It was that of Mr. Augustus Bythewood, who was evidently taking advantage of the fine weather to make a little journey, accompanied by a black servant.

Penn's heart contracted within him as he thought of his friend Pomp, and of the wrongs he had suffered at this man's hands. He thought of his own safety too, and crept under the bridge. He had time, however, before he disappeared, to catch a glimpse of three other horsemen coming from the north. His heart beat fast, for he knew in an instant that these were his pursuers returning.

He had already prepared for himself a good hiding-place, in a cavity between the two logs that supported the bridge. Upon the butment, close under the trembling planks, he lay, when Bythewood and his man rode over. The dust rattled upon him through the cracks, and sifted down into the stream. The thundering and shaking of the planks ceased, but he listened in vain to hear the hoofs of the two horses clattering off in the distance. To his alarm he perceived that Bythewood and his man had halted on the other side of the bridge, and were going to water their horses in the bed of the stream. Clashing and rattling down the steep, stony banks, and plashing into the water, came the foam-streaked animals. The negro rode one, and led the other by the bridle. There he sat in the saddle, watching the eager drinking of the thirsty beasts, and pulling up their heads occasionally to prevent them from swallowing too fast or too much; all in full sight of the concealed schoolmaster. Bythewood, after dismounting, also walked down to the edge of the stream in full view.

Such was the situation when the three horsemen from the north arrived. They all rode their animals down the bank into the water. Penn had not been mistaken as to their character and business. Two of them were the men who had adjusted the noose to his neck the day before. The third was no less a personage than Captain Lysander Sprowl. Penn lay breathless and trembling in his hiding-place; for those men were but a few yards from him, and all in such plain view that it seemed inevitable but they must discover him.

"What luck?" said Bythewood, carelessly, seating himself on a rock and lighting a cigar.

"The rascal has given us the slip," said Lysander, from his horse. "I believe we have passed him, and so, on our way back, we'll search the house of every man suspected of Union sentiments. He started off with Stackridge's horse, and we tracked him easy at first, but to-day we haven't once heard of him."

"It's my opinion he don't intend to leave the state," said Bythewood, coolly smoking. "Sam, walk those horses up and down the road till I call you: I want a little private talk with the captain."

The captain's attendants likewise took the hint, reined their horses up out of the water, rode over the shaking bridge and Penn's head under it, and proceeded to search the next house for him, while Sprowl was conversing with Augustus.

"Let's go over the other side," said Bythewood, "where we can be in the shade. The sun is powerful hot."

They accordingly walked over Penn's head a moment later, climbed down the same rocks he had descended, picked their way along the dry stones to the bridge, and took their seats in its shadow beneath him, and so near that he could easily have reached over and taken the captain's cap from his head!

XX.

_UNDER THE BRIDGE._

"The colonel wasn't aware of your sentiments," said Sprowl, "or he wouldn't have let him off for fifty substitutes."

"Or if you and Ropes," retorted Bythewood, "had only put through the job with the celerity I had a right to expect of you, he would have been strung up before the colonel had a chance to interfere." And he puffed impatiently a cloud of smoke, whose fragrance was wafted to the nostrils of the listener under the planks.

"Well," said Lysander, accepting a cigar from his friend, "if he gets out of the state,"--biting off the end of it,--"and never shows himself here again,"--rubbing a match on the stones,--"you ought to be satisfied. If he stays, or comes back,"--smoking,--"then we'll just finish the little job we begun."

Penn lay still as death. What his thoughts were I will not attempt to say; but it must have given him a curious sensation to hear the question of his life or death thus coolly discussed by his would-be assassins over their cigars.

"Where are you bound?" asked Lysander.

"O, a little pleasure excursion," said Bythewood. "There's to be some lively work at home this evening, and I thought I'd better be away."

"What's going on?"

"The colonel is going to make some arrests. About fifteen or twenty Union-shriekers will find themselves snapped up before they think of it. Stackridge among the first. 'Twas he, confound him! that helped the schoolmaster off."

"Has the colonel orders to make the arrests?"

"No, but he takes the responsibility. It's a military necessity, and the government will bear him out in it. Every man that has been known to drill in the Union Club, and has refused to deliver up his arms, must be secured. There's no other way of putting down these dangerous fellows," said Augustus, running his jewelled fingers through his curls.

"But why do you prefer to be away when the fun is going on?"

"There may be somebody's name in the list on whose behalf I might be expected to intercede."

"Not old Villars!" exclaimed Lysander.

"Yes, old Villars!" laughed Augustus,--"if by that lively epithet you mean to designate your venerable father-in-law."

"By George, though, Gus! ain't it almost too bad? What will folks say?"

"Little care I! Old and blind as he is, he is really one of the most dangerous enemies to our cause. His influence is great with a certain class, and he never misses an opportunity to denounce secession. That he openly talks treason, and harbors and encourages traitors arming against the confederate government, is cause sufficient for arresting him with the others."

"Really," said Sprowl, chuckling as he thought of it, "'twill be better for our plans to have him out of the way."

"Yes," said Bythewood; "the girls will need protectors, and your wife will welcome you back again."

"And Virginia," added Sprowl, "will perhaps look a little more favorably on a rich, handsome, influential fellow like you! I see! I see!"

There was another who saw too,--a sudden flash of light, as it were, revealing to Penn all the heartless, scheming villany of the friendly-seeming Augustus. He grasped the Stackridge pistol; his eyes, glaring in the dark, were fixed in righteous fury on the elegant curly head.

"If I am discovered, I will surely shoot him!" he said within himself.

"The old man," suggested Sprowl, "won't live long in jail."

"Very well," said Bythewood. "If the girls come to terms, why, we will secure their everlasting gratitude by helping him out. If they won't, we will merely promise to do everything we can for him--and do nothing."

"And the property?" said Lysander, somewhat anxiously.

"You shall have what you can get of it,--I don't care for the property!" replied Bythewood, with haughty contempt. "I believe the old man, foreseeing these troubles, has been converting his available means into Ohio railroad stock. If so, there won't be much for you to lay hold of until we have whipped the north."

"That we'll do fast enough," said Lysander, confidently.

"Well, I must be travelling," said Augustus.

"And I must be looking for that miserable schoolmaster."

So saying the young men arose from their cool seats on the stones,--Lysander placing his hand, to steady himself, on the edge of the butment within an inch of Penn's leg.

Darkness, however, favored the fugitive; and they passed out from the shadow of the bridge without suspecting that they had held confidential discourse within arms' length of the man they were seeking to destroy. They ascended the bank, mounted their horses, and took leave of each other,--Bythewood and his black man riding north, while Sprowl hastened to rejoin his companions in the search for the schoolmaster.

XXI.

_THE RETURN INTO DANGER._

Trembling with excitement Penn got down from the butment, and peering over the bank, saw his enemies in the distance.

What was to be done? Had he thought only of his own safety, his way would have been clear. But could he abandon his friends? forsake Virginia and her father when the toils of villany were tightening around them? leave Stackridge and his compatriots to their fate, when it might be in his power to forewarn and save them?

How he, alone, suspected, pursued, and sorely in need of assistance himself, was to render assistance to others, he did not know. He did not pause to consider. He put his faith in the overruling providence of God.

"With God's aid," he said, "I will save them or sacrifice myself."

As for fighting, should fighting prove necessary, his mind was made up. The conversation of the villains under the bridge had settled that question.

Instead, therefore, of waiting for the friend who was to help him on his journey, he leaped up from under the bridge, and set out at a fast walk to follow his pursuers back to town.

He had travelled but a mile or two when he saw the farmer driving towards him in a wagon.

"Are you lost? are you crazy?" cried the astonished old man. "You are going in the wrong direction! The men have been to my house, searched it, and passed on. Get in! get in!"

"I will," said Penn; "but, Mr. Ellerton, you must turn back."

He briefly related his adventure under the bridge. The old man listened with increasing amazement.

"You are right! you are right!" he said. "We must get word to Stackridge, somehow!" And turning his wagon about, he drove back over the road as fast as his horse could carry them.

It was sunset when they reached his house. There they unharnessed his horse and saddled him. The old man mounted.

"I'll do my best," he said, "to see Stackridge, or some of them, in season. If I fail, may be you will succeed. But you'd better keep in the woods till dark."

Ellerton rode off at a fast trot. Penn hastened to the woods, where Stackridge's horse was still concealed. The animal had been recently fed and watered, and was ready for a hard ride. The bridle was soon on his head, and Penn on his back, and he was making his way through the woods again towards home.