who are already fighting in your cause without knowing it?"

These words probed the deep convictions of Pomp's breast. He had from
the first believed that the war meant death to slavery; although of late
the persistent and almost universal cry of Union men for the "Union as
it was,"--the Union with the injustice of slavery at its core,--had
somewhat wearied his patience and weakened his faith.

"Here, Cudjo! help get this horse up--we can find a path for him."

Reluctantly Cudjo obeyed; and almost by main strength the two athletic
blacks lifted and pulled the animal up the bank, and out of the chasm.

Penn assisted his old friend to remount, then took leave of him.

"I will be with you again soon!" he cried, hopefully, as the negroes
urged the horse forward into the thickets.

Then the young Quaker, left alone, turned to look at the dead rebel. For
a moment horrible nausea and faintness made him lean against the tree
for support. It was the first violent death of which he had ever been an
eye-witness. He had known this man,--who was indeed the same Griffin,
who had assisted the unwilling Pepperill to bring the tar-kettle to the
wood-side on a certain memorable evening; ignorant, intemperate, too
proud to work in a region where slavery made industry a disgrace, and
yet a fierce champion of the system which was his greatest curse. Now
there he lay, in his dirt, and rags, and blood, his neck shot through;
the same expression of ferocious hate with which he had rushed to
bayonet the schoolmaster still distorting his visage;--an object of
horror and loathing. Was it not assuming a terrible responsibility to
send this rampant sinner to his long account? Yet the choice was between
his life and Penn's; and had not Pomp done well? Still Penn could not
help feeling remorse and commiseration for the wretch.

"Poor Griffin! I have no murderous hatred for such as you! But if you
come in the way of my country's safety, or of the welfare of my friends,
you must take the penalty!"

He picked up the musket that had fallen at his feet where he stood
bound. Then, stifling his disgust, he felt in the dead man's pockets for
ammunition. Cartridges there were none; but in their place he found some
bullets and a powder-flask. Then putting in practice the lessons he had
learned of Pomp when they hunted together on the mountain, he loaded the
gun, resolutely setting his teeth and drawing his breath hard when he
thought of the different kind of game it might now be his duty to shoot.

While thus occupied he heard footsteps that gave him a sudden start. He
turned quickly, catching up the gun. To his immense relief he saw Pomp,
approaching with a smile.

"I thought you were with Mr. Villars!"

"Cudjo has gone with him. I am going with you."

"O Pomp!" cried Penn, with a joyful sense of reliance upon his powerful
and sagacious black friend. "But is Mr. Villars safe?"

"Cudjo is faithful," said Pomp. "He believes the old man is your friend,
and a friend of the slave. Besides, I promised, if he would take him to
the cave, that my next shot, if I have a chance, should be at his old
acquaintance, Sile Ropes."

Pomp took the lead, guiding Penn through hollows and among thickets to a
ledge crowned with shrubs of savin, whose summit commanded a view of all
that mountain-side.

They crept among the bushes to the edge of the cliff. There they paused.
Neither friend nor foe was in sight. No sound of fire-arms was
heard,--only the birds were singing.

Penn never forgot that scene. How fresh, and beautiful, and still the
morning was! The sunlight flushed the craggy and wooded slopes. Far off,
dim with early mist, lay the lovely hills and valleys of East Tennessee.
On the north the peaks of the mountain range soared away, purple, rosy,
glorious, in soft suffusing light. In the south-west other peaks
receded, billowy and blue. And God's pure, deep sky was over all.

Touched by the divine beauty of the day, Penn lay thinking with shame of
the scenes of human folly and violence with which it had been
desecrated, when the negro drew him softly by the sleeve.

"Look yonder! down in the edge of that little grove!"

Peering through an opening in the savins through which Pomp had thrust
his rifle, Penn saw, stealing cautiously out of the grove, a man.

"It is Stackridge! He is reconnoitring."

"It is a retreat," said Pomp. "See, there they all come!"

"Carl with the rest, showing them the way!" added Penn.

He was watching with intense interest the movements of his friends, and
rejoicing that no foe was in sight, when suddenly Pomp uttered a warning
whisper.

"Where? what?" said Penn, eagerly looking in the direction in which the
negro pointed.

Down at their left was a long line of dark thickets which marked the
edge of a ravine; out of which he now saw emerging, one by one, a file
of armed men. They climbed up a narrow and difficult pass, and halted on
the skirts of the thicket. Ten--twelve--fifteen, Penn counted. It was
the other party that had been sent out simultaneously with that under
Lieutenant Ropes, to get in the rear of the fugitives. And they had
succeeded. Only a bushy ridge concealed them from Stackridge's men, who
were coming up under the shelter of the same ridge on the other side.

Penn trembled with excitement as he saw the rebels cross swiftly
forward, skulking among the bushes, to the summit of the ridge. The
negro's eyes blazed, but he was perfectly cool. On one knee, his left
foot advanced,--holding his rifle with one hand, and parting the bushes
with the other,--he smiled as he observed the situation.

"Here," said he to Penn, "rest your gun in this little crotch. Now can
you see to take aim?"

"Yes," said Penn, with his heart in his throat.

"Calm your nerves! Everything depends on our first shot. Wait till I
give the word. See! they have discovered Stackridge!"

"We might shout, and warn him," said Penn, whose nature still shrank
from using any more deadly means of saving his friends.

"And so discover ourselves! That never'll do. Have you sighted your
man?"

"Yes--the one lying on his belly behind that cedar."

"Very well! I'll take the fellow next him. The moment you have fired,
keep perfectly still, only draw your gun back and load. Now--fire!"

Just then Stackridge and his men, in full view of their hidden friends
on the ledge, were appearing to the fifteen ambushed rebels also.
Suddenly the loud bang of a musket, followed instantly by the sharp
crack of a rifle, echoed down the mountain side. The rebel behind the
cedar sprang to his feet, dropping his gun, and throwing up his hands,
and rushed back down the ridge, screaming, "I'm hit! I'm hit!" while the
man next him also attempted to rise, but fell again, Pomp having
discreetly aimed at an exposed leg.

"I'm glad we've only wounded them!" whispered Penn, very pale, his lips
compressed, his eyes gleaming.

"It has the effect!" said Pomp. "Your friends have discovered the
ambush, thanks to that coward's uproar; and now the rascals are
panic-struck! Fire again as they go into the ravine--powder alone will
do now--a little noise will send them tumbling!"

They accordingly fired blank discharges; at the same time Stackridge and
his friends, recovering from their momentary astonishment, charged after
the retreating rebels, who had barely time to carry off their wounded
and escape into the ravine, when their pursuers scaled the ridge.

"I'm off!" said Pomp, creeping back through the savins. "These men are
not my friends, though they are yours. I'll go and look after Cudjo."
And bounding down into a hollow, he was quickly out of sight.

XXV.

_BLACK AND WHITE._

Penn attached his handkerchief to the end of the musket, and standing
upon the ledge, waved it over the bushes. Carl, recognizing him, was the
first to scramble up the height. The whole party followed, each sturdy
patriot wringing the schoolmaster's hand with hearty congratulations
when they learned what use he had made of the rebel musket.

"But the whole credit of the manoeuvre belongs not to me, but to the
negro Pomp!" And he related the story of his own rescue and theirs.

The patriots looked grave.

"Where is the fellow?" asked Stackridge.

"Being a fugitive slave, he feared lest he should find little favor in
the eyes of his master's neighbors," said Penn.

"That's where he was right!" said Deslow, with a bigoted and unforgiving
expression. "Nothing under the sun shall make me give encouragement to a
nigger's running away."

Two or three others nodded grim assent to this first principle of the
slaveholder's discipline. Penn was fired with exasperation and scorn,
and would have separated himself from these narrow-minded patriots on
the spot, had not Stackridge jumped up from the ground upon which he had
thrown himself, and, striking his gun barrel fiercely, exclaimed,--

"Now, that's what I call cursed foolishness, Deslow! and every man that
holds to that way of thinking had better go over to t'other side to
oncet! If we can't make up our minds to sacrifice our property, and,
what's more to some folks, our prejudices, in the cause we're fighting
for, we may as well stop before we stir a step further. I'm a
slaveholder, and always have been; but I swear, I can't say as I ever
felt it was such a divine institution as some try to make it out, and I
don't believe there's a man here that thinks in his heart that it's just
right. And as for the niggers running away, my private sentiment is,
that I don't blame 'em a mite. You or I, Deslow, would run in their
place; you know you would." And Stackridge wiped his brow savagely.

"And as for this particular case," said Captain Grudd, with a gleam of
light in his lean and swarthy countenance, "don't le's be blind to our
own interests; don't le's be downright fools. I've said from the first
that slavery and the rebellion was brother and sister,--they go
together; and I've made up my mind to stand by my country and the old
flag, whatever comes of the institution." All, except the conservative
Deslow, applauded this resolution. "Then consider," added the captain,
his deliberate, impressive manner proving quite as effective as
Stackridge's more excited and fiery style,--"here we are fighting for
our very lives and liberties; and if, as I say, slavery's the cause of
this war, then we're fighting against slavery, the best we can fix it.
How monstrous absurd 'twill be, then, for us to refuse the assistance of
any nigger that has it to give! Bythewood, Pomp's owner, is one of the
hottest secessionists I know; and d'ye think I want Pomp sent back to
him, to help that side, when he has shown that he can be of such mighty
good service to us? I move that we send the professor to make a treaty
with him. What do you say, Mr. Hapgood?"

"I say," replied Penn with enthusiasm, "that he and Cudjo are in a
condition to do infinitely more for us than we can do for them; and if
their alliance can be secured, I say that we ought by all means to
secure it."

"That depends," said Grudd, "upon what we intend to do. Are we going to
make a stand here, and see if the loyal part of old Tennessee will rise
up and sustain us? or are we going to fight our way over the mountains,
and never come back till a Union army comes with us to set things a
little to rights here?"

"Wa'al," said Withers, who concealed a hardy courage and earnest
patriotism under a phlegmatic and droll exterior, "while we're
discussin' that question, I reckon we may as well have breakfast. This
is as good a place as any,--we can take turns keeping a lookout from
that ledge."

He proceeded to kindle a fire in the hollow. The fugitives, in passing a
field of corn, had thrust into their pockets a plentiful supply of green
ears, which they now husked and roasted. There was a spring in the rocks
near by, from which they drank lying on their faces, and dipping in
their beards. This was their breakfast; during which Penn's mission to
the blacks was fully discussed, and finally decided upon.

The meal concluded, the refugees resumed their march, and entered an
immense thick wood farther up the mountain. In a cool and shadowy spot
they halted once more; and here Penn took leave of them, setting out on
his visit to the cave.

He had a mile to travel over a rough, wild region, where the fires that
had formerly devastated it had left the only visible marks of a near
civilization. In a tranquil little dell that had grown up to wild grass,
he came suddenly upon a horse feeding. It was Stackridge's useful nag,
which looked up from his lofty grove-shaded pasture with a low whinny of
recognition as Penn patted his neck and passed along.

A furlong or two farther on the well-known ravine opened,--dark, silent,
profound, with its shaggy sides, one in shadow and the other in the sun,
and its little embowered brook trickling far down there amid mossy
stones;--as lonesome, wild, and solitary as if no human eye had ever
beheld it before.

Penn glided over the ledges, and descended along the narrow shelf of
rock, behind the thickets that screened the entrance to the cave.
Sunlight, and mountain wind, and summer heat he left behind, and entered
the cool, still, gloomy abode.

Cudjo ran to the mouth of the cave to meet him. "Lef me frow dis yer
blanket ober your shoulders, while ye cool off; cotch yer de'f cold, if
ye don't. De ol' man's a 'speckin' ye."

Penn was relieved to learn that Mr. Villars had arrived in safety, and
gratified to find him lying comfortably on the bed conversing with Pomp.

"By the blessing of God, I am very well indeed, my dear Penn. These
excellent fellow-Christians have taken the best of care of me. The
atmosphere of the cave, which I thought at first chilly, I now find
deliciously pure and refreshing. And its gloom, you know, don't trouble
me," added the blind old man with a smile. "Have you had any more
trouble since Pomp left you?"

"No," said Penn; "thanks to him. Pomp, our friends want to see you and
thank you, and they have sent me to bring you to them."

The negro merely shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

"What good der tanks do to we?" cried Cudjo. "Ain't one ob dem ar men
but what would been glad to hab us cotched and licked for runnin' away,
fur de 'xample to de tudder niggers."

"If that was true of them once, it is not now," said Penn. "Yet, Pomp,
if you feel that there is the least danger in going to them, do not go."

"Danger?" The negro's proud and lofty look showed what he thought of
that. "Cudjo, make Mr. Hapgood a cup of coffee; he looks tired. You have
had a hard time, I reckon, since you left us."

"Him stay wid us now till he chirk up again," said Cudjo, running to his
coffee-box. "Him and de ol' gemman stay--nobody else."

While the coffee was making, Penn, sitting on one of the stone blocks
which he had named giant's stools, repeated such parts of the late
breakfast talk of Stackridge and his friends as he thought would
interest Pomp and win his confidence. Then he drank the strong, black
beverage in silence, leaving the negro to his own reflections.

"Are you going again?" said Pomp.

"Yes; I promised them I would return."

"Take some coffee and a kettle to boil it in; they will be glad of it, I
should think."

"O Pomp! you know how to do good even to your enemies! What shall I say
to them for you?"

"What I have to say to them I will say myself," said Pomp, taking his
rifle in one hand, and the kettle in the other, to Cudjo's great wrath
and disgust.

He set out with Penn immediately. They found the patriots reposing
themselves about the roots of the forest trees, on the banks of a stream
that came gurgling and plashing down the mountain side. Above them
spread the beautiful green tops of maples, tinted with sunshine and
softly rustling in the breeze. The curving banks formed here a little
natural amphitheatre, carpeted with moss and old leaves, on which they
sat or reclined, with their hats off and their guns at their sides.

A sentry posted on the edge of the forest brought in Penn and his
companion. There was a stir of interest among the patriots, and some of
them rose to their feet. Stackridge, Grudd, and two or three others
cordially offered the negro their hands, and pledged him their gratitude
and friendship. Pomp accepted these tokens of esteem in silence,--his
countenance maintaining a somewhat haughty expression, his lips firm,
his eyes kindling with a strange light.

Penn took the kettle, and proceeded, with Carl's help, to make a fire
and prepare coffee for the company, intently listening the while to all
that was said.

Jutting from one bank of the stream, which washed its base, was a huge,
square block covered with dark-green moss. Upon this Pomp stepped, and
rested his rifle upon it, and bared his massive and splendid head, and
stood facing his auditors with a placid smile, under the canopy of
leaves. There was not among them all so noble a figure of a man as he
who stood upon the rock; and he seemed to have chosen this somewhat
theatrical attitude in order to illustrate, by his own imposing personal
presence, the words that rose to his lips.

"You will excuse me, gentlemen, if I cannot forget that I am talking
with those who buy and sell men like me!"

Men like him! The suggestion seemed for a moment to strike the
slave-owning patriots dumb with surprise and embarrassment.

"No, no, Pomp," cried Stackridge, "not men like you--there are few like
you anywhere."

"I wish there was more like him, and that I owned a good gang of 'em!"
muttered the man Deslow.

"I don't," replied Withers, with a drawl which had a deep meaning in it;
"twould be too much like sleeping on a row of powder barrels, with
lighted candles stuck in the bung holes. Dangerous, them big knowin'
niggers be."

Pomp did not answer for a minute, but stood as if gathering power into
himself, with one long, deep breath inflating his chest, and casting a
glance upward through the sun-lit summer foliage.

"You buy and sell men, and women, and children of my race. If I am not
like them, it is because circumstances have lifted me out of the
wretched condition in which it is your constant policy and endeavor to
keep us. By your laws--the laws you make and uphold--I am this day
claimed as a slave; by your laws I am hunted as a slave;--yes, some of
you here have joined your neighbor in the hunt for me, as if I was no
more than a wild beast to be hounded and shot down if I could not be
caught. Now tell me what union or concord there can be between you and
me!"

"I own," said Deslow,--for Pomp's gleaming eyes had darted significant
lightnings at him,--"I did once come up here with Bythewood to see if we
could find you. Not that I had anything against you, Pomp,--not a thing;
and as for your quarrel with your master, I ain't sure but you had the
right on't; but you know as well as we do that we can't countenance a
nigger's running away, under any circumstances."

"No!" said Pomp, with sparkling sarcasm. "Your secessionist neighbors
revolt against the mildest government in the world, and resort to
bloodshed on account of some fancied wrongs. You revolt against them
because you prefer the old government to theirs. Your forefathers went
to war with the mother country on account of a few taxes. But a negro
must not revolt, he must not even attempt to run away, although he feels
the relentless heel of oppression grinding into the dust all his rights,
all that is dear to him, all that he loves! A white man may take up arms
to defend a bit of property; but a black man has no right to rise up and
defend either his wife, or his child, or his liberty, or even his own
life, against his master!"

Only the narrow-minded Deslow had the confidence to meet this stunning
argument, enforced as it was by the speaker's powerful manner, superb
physical manhood, and superior intelligence.

"You know, Pomp, that your condition, to begin with, is very different
from that of any white man. Your relation to your master is not that of
a man to his neighbor, or of a citizen to the government; it is that of
property to its owner."

"Property!" There was something almost wicked in the wild, bright glance
with which the negro repeated this word. "How came we property, sir?"

"Our laws make you so, and you have been acquired as property," said
Deslow, not unkindly, but in his bigoted, obstinate way. "So, really,
Pomp, you can't blame us for the view we take of it, though it does
conflict a little with your choice in the matter."

"But suppose I can show you that you are wrong, and that even by your
own laws we are not, and cannot be, property?" said Pomp, with a
princely courtesy, looking down from the rock upon Deslow, so evidently
in every way his inferior. "I will admit your title to a lot of land you
may purchase, or reclaim from nature; or to an animal you have captured,
or bought, or raised. But a man's natural, original owner is--himself.
Now, I never sold myself. My father never sold himself. My father was
stolen by pirates on the coast of Africa, and brought to this country,
and sold. The man who bought him bought what had been stolen. By your
own laws you cannot hold stolen property. Though it is bought and sold a
thousand times, let the original owner appear, and it is his,--nobody
else has the shadow of a claim. My father was stolen property, if he was
property at all. He was his own rightful owner. Though he had been
robbed of himself, that made no difference with the justice of the case.
It was so with my mother. It is so with me. It is the same with every
black man on this continent. Not one ever sold himself, or can be sold,
or can be owned. For to say that what a man steals or takes by force is
his, to dispose of as he chooses, is to go back to barbarism: it is not
the law of any Christian land. So much," added Pomp, blowing the words
from him, as if all the false arguments in favor of slavery were no more
to the man's soul, and its eternal, God-given rights, than the breath he
blew contemptuously forth into those mountain woods,--"so much for the
claim of PROPERTY!"

Penn was so delighted with this triumphant declaration of principles
that he could have flung his hat into the maple boughs and shouted
"Bravo!" He deemed it discreet, however, to confine the expression of
his enthusiasm to a tight grasp on Carl's sympathetic hand, and to watch
the effect of the speech on the rest.

"Deslow," laughed Stackridge, himself not ill pleased with Pomp's
arguments, "what do you say to that?"

"Wal," said Deslow, "I never thought on't in just that light before; and
I own he makes out a pooty good show of a case. But yet--" He hesitated,
scratching for an idea among the stiff black hair that grew on his low,
wrinkled forehead.

"But yet, but yet, but yet!" said Pomp, ironically. "It's so hard, when
our selfish interests are at stake, to confess our injustice or give up
a bad cause! But I did not come here to argue my right to my own
manhood. I take it without arguing. Neither did I come to ask anything
for myself. You can do nothing for me but get me into trouble. Yet I
believe in the cause in which you have taken up arms. I have served you
this morning without being asked by you to do it; and I may assist you
again when the time comes. In the mean while, if you want anything that
I have, it is yours; for I recognize that we are brothers, though you do
not. But I will not join you, for I am neither slave nor inferior, and I
have no wish to be acknowledged an equal." And Pomp stepped off the rock
with an air that seemed to say, "_I_ know who is the equal of the best
of you; and that is enough." If this man had any fault more prominent
than another, it was pride; yet that haughty self-assertion which would
have been offensive in a white man, was vastly becoming to the haughty
and powerful black.

"I, for one," said the impulsive Stackridge, again grasping his hand,
"honor the position you take. What I wanted was to thank you for what
you have done, and to promise that you are safe from danger as far as
regards us. I'm glad you've got your liberty. I hope you will keep it.
You deserve it. Every slave deserves the same that has the manliness to
strike a blow for the good old government----"

"That has kept him a slave," added Pomp, with a bitter smile.

"Yes; and so much the more noble in him to fight for it!" said
Stackridge. "Now, if you don't want to let us into the secrets of your
way of life, I can't say I blame ye. We're glad to get the coffee; and
if you've any game or potatoes on hand, that you can spare, we'll take
'em, and pay ye when we have a chance to forage for ourselves, which
won't be long first."

"I have some salted bear's meat that you'll be welcome to; and may be
Cudjo can spare a little meal." His eye rested on Carl, whose fidelity
he knew. "Let that boy come with us! We will send the provisions by
him."

Carl was delighted with the honor, for Penn was likewise going back to
Mr. Villars with the negro.

XXVI.

_WHY AUGUSTUS DID NOT PROPOSE._

The valiant confederates, returning from the pursuit of the escaped
prisoners, proved themselves possessed of at least one important
qualification for serving the rebel cause. They were able to give a
marvellously good account of themselves. Whatever the military
authorities may have thought of it, the people believed that the little
band of Union men had been nearly annihilated.

In the midst of the excitement, Mr. Augustus Bythewood returned home,
and went in the evening to call upon, counsel, and console the daughters
of the old man Villars.

"O, Massa Bythewood!" cried Toby, in great joy at sight of him, "dey
been killin' ol' massa up on de mountain; and de young ladies--O, Massa
Bythewood! ye must do sumfin' for de young ladies and ol' massa!"

Mr. Augustus flattered himself that he had arrived at just the right
time.

"My dear Virginia! you cannot conceive of my astonishment and grief on
hearing what has happened to your family! I have but just this hour
returned to town, or I should have hastened before to assure you that
all I can do for you I will most gladly undertake. My very dear young
lady, be comforted, I conjure you; for it grieves me to the heart to see
how pale, how very pale and distressed, you look!"

Thus the amiable, the chivalrous, the friendly Gus overflowed with
eloquent sympathy and protestation, pressing affectionately the hand of
the "very pale and distressed" fair one, and bowing low his dark,
aristocratic southern curls over it; appearing, in short, the very
courteous, noble, and devoted gentleman he wasn't.

Virginia breathed hard, compressed her lips, white with indignation as
well as with suffering, and let him act his part. And the confident
lover did not dream that those eyes, red with grief and surrounded by
dark circles, saw through all his hypocritical professions, or that the
cold, passive little hand, abandoned through the apathy of despair to
his caresses, would have been thrust into the fire, before ever he would
have been allowed to win it.

"Surely," she managed to say in a voice scarce above a whisper, "if ever
we needed a true, disinterested friend, it is now. Sit down; and be so
kind as to excuse me a moment. I will call my sister."

So she withdrew. And Augustus smiled. "Now is my time!" he said
complacently to himself, resolved to make an offer of that valuable hand
of his that very night: forlorn, friendless, wretched, was it possible
that she could refuse such a prize? So he sat, and fondled his curls,
and practised sweet smiles, and sympathized with Salina when she came,
and waited for Virginia,--little knowing what was to happen to her, and
to him, and to all, before ever he saw that vanished face again.

For Virginia had business on her hands that night. She remembered the
hurried directions Penn had given for communicating with her father, and
she was already preparing to send off Toby to the round rock.

"Gracious, missis!" said the old negro, returning hastily to the kitchen
door where she stood watching his departure, "dar's a man out dar, a
waitin'! Did ye see him, missis?"

She had indeed seen a human figure advance in the darkness, as if with
intent to intercept or follow him. Perplexed and indignant at the
discovery, she suffered the old servant to return into the house, and
remained herself to see what became of the figure. It moved off a little
way in the darkness, and disappeared.

"Wha' sh'll we do?" Toby rolled up his eyes in consternation. "Do jes'
speak to Mr. Bythewood, Miss Jinny; he's de bestist friend--he'll tell
what to do."

"No, no, Toby!" said Virginia, collecting herself, and speaking with
decision. "He is the last person I would consult. Toby, you must try
again; for either you or I must be at the rock before ten o'clock."

"You, Miss Jinny? Who eber heern o' sich a ting!"

"Go yourself, then, good Toby!" And she earnestly reminded him of the
necessity.

"O, yes, yes! I'll go! Massa can't lib widout ol' Toby, dat's a fac'!"

But looking out again in the dark, his zeal was suddenly damped. "Dey
cotch me, dey sarve me wus 'n dey sarved ol' Pete, shore! Can't help
tinkin' ob dat!"

Virginia saw what serious cause there was to dread such a catastrophe.
But her resolution was unshaken.

"Toby, listen. That man out there is a spy. His object is to see if any
of our friends come to the house, or if we send to them. He won't molest
you; but he may follow to see where you go. If he does, then make a wide
circuit, and return home, and I will find some other means of
communication."

Thus encouraged, the negro set out a second time. Virginia followed him
at a distance. She saw, as she anticipated, the figure start up again,
and move off in the direction he was going. Toby accordingly commenced
making a large detour through the fields, and both he and the shadow
dogging him were soon out of sight.

Then Virginia lost no time in executing the other plan at which she had
hinted. Instead of returning, to give up the undertaking in despair, and
listen to matrimonial proposals from Gus Bythewood, she took a long
breath, gathered up her skirts, and set out for the mountain.

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?

No: she must escape, or perish. Beside the cascade there was a broken
angle of the rocks, by which, if she could reach it, she might at least,
she thought, climb to the upper part of the gorge. But the nearest
foothold she could discover was ten feet above the basin, in sheer
ascent. The ledge was dank and slippery with the dashing spray. Gain the
top of it, however, she must. She ran up the embankment under the cliff.
Here a sapling gave her support; she clung to a crevice or projection
there; a drooping bough saved her from falling when the soft earth slid
from beneath her feet farther on. So she climbed along the side of the
precipice, until the broken corner of the cliff was hardly two yards off
before her. Yes, a secure foothold was there, and above it rose
irregular pointed stairs, leading steeply to the top of the cascade. O,
to reach that shattered ledge! A space of perpendicular wall intervened.
No shrub, no drooping bough, was there. Here was only a slight
projection, just enough to rest the edge of a foot upon. She placed her
foot upon it. She found a crevice above, and thrust her fingers into it
as if there was no such thing as pain. She clung, she took a step--she
was half a yard nearer the angle. But what next could she do? She was
hanging in the air above the basin, into which the slightest slip would
precipitate her. To change hands--relieve the one advanced and insert
the fingers of the other in its place,--was a perilous undertaking. But
she did it. Then she reached forward again with hand and foot, found
another spot to cling to, and took another step. She was thankful for
the great light that lighted the rocks before her. Close by now was the
fractured angle of the cliff: one more step, and she could set her foot
upon the nethermost stair. Her strength was almost gone; her hands,
though insensible to pain, were conscious of slipping. To fall would be
to lose all she had gained, and all the strength she had exhausted in
the effort. Her feet now--or rather one of them--had a tolerably secure
hold on the rib of the ledge. She made one last effort with her hands,
and, just as she was falling, gave a spring. She knew that all was
staked upon that one dizzy instant of time. But for that knowledge she
could never have accomplished what she did. She fell forwards towards
the angle, caught a point of the rock with her hands, and clung there
until she had safely placed her feet.

This done, it was absolutely necessary to stop a moment to rest. She
looked downwards and behind her, to see what she had done. The sight
made her dizzy--it seemed such a miracle that she could ever have scaled
that wall!

Nearer and louder roared the conflagration, and she had little time to
delay. Her labor was not ended, neither was the danger past. She cast a
hurried glance upwards over the ridge she was to climb, and advanced
cautiously, step by step. Her soul kept saying within her, "I will not
fall; I will not fall;" but she dared not look backwards again, lest
even then she should grow giddy and miss her hold.

As she ascended, the ridge inclined nearer and nearer to the side of the
cascade, until she found the stones slimy and dripping. This was an
unforeseen peril. Still she resolutely advanced, taking the utmost
precaution at each step against slipping. At length she was at the top
of the waterfall. She could look up into the upper gorge, and see the
water come rushing down. There was space beside the brook for her to
continue her flight; and the sides of the gorge above were far less
steep and rugged than below. She was thrilled with hope. She had but one
steep, high stair to surmount. She was getting her knee upon it, when a
crashing sound in the underbrush arrested her attention. The crashing
was followed by a commotion in the water, and she saw a huge black
object plunge into the stream, and come sweeping down towards her.

On it came, straight at the rock on which she clung, and from which a
motion, a touch, might suffice to hurl her back into the lower gorge.
She saw what it was; and for a moment she was frozen with terror. She
was directly in its path: it would not stop for her. The sight of the
blazing woods below, however, brought it to a sudden halt. And there,
close by the brink of the waterfall, facing her, not a yard distant, in
the full glare of the fire, it rose slowly on its hind feet to look--a
monster of the forest, an immense black bear.

And now, but for the nightmare of horror that was upon her, Virginia
might have perceived that the forest _above_ the cascade was likewise
wrapped in flames. The bear had been driven by the terror of them down
the stream; and here, between the two fires, on the verge of the
waterfall, the slight young girl and the great shaggy wild beast had
met. She would have shrieked, but she had no voice. The bear also was
silent; with his huge hairy bulk reared up before her, his paws pendant,
and his jaws half open in a sort of stupid amazement, he stood and
gazed, uttering never a growl.

XXIX.

_IN THE BURNING WOODS._

The incessant excitement and fatigue of the past few days had caused
Penn to fall asleep almost immediately after Carl left him. The rude
ground on which he stretched himself proved a blissful couch of repose.
Virginia climbed the mountain to meet him, and no fine intuitive sense
of her approach thrilled him with wakeful expectancy. Carl was captured,
and still he slept. The lost young girl wandered within fifty yards of
where he lay steeped in forgetfulness, dreaming, perhaps, of her; and
all the time they were as unconscious of each other's presence as were
Evangeline and her lover when they passed each other at night on the
great river.

Penn was the first to wake; and still his stupid heart whispered to him
no syllable of the strange secret of the beautiful sleeper whom he might
have looked down upon from the edge of the cliff so near.

The grove had been but recently fired, and it would have been easy
enough then for him to rush into the gorge and rescue her. From what
terrors, from what perils would she have been saved! But he wasted the
precious moments in staring amazement; then, thinking of his own safety,
he commenced running _away_ from her,--his escape lighted by the same
fatal flames that were enclosing her within the gorge.

She never knew whether, on awaking, she cried for help or remained dumb;
nor did it matter much then: he was already too far off to hear.

The glow on the clouds lighted all the broad mountain side. Under the
ruddy canopy he ran,--now through dimly illumined woods, and now over
bare rocks faintly flushed by the glare of the sky.

As he drew near the cave, he saw, on a rock high above him, a wild human
figure making fantastic gestures, and prostrating itself towards the
burning forests. He ran up to it, and, all out of breath, stood on the
ledge.

"Cudjo! Cudjo! what are you doing here?"

The negro made no reply, but, folding his arms above his head, spread
them forth towards the fire, bowing himself again and again, until his
forehead touched the stone.

Penn shuddered with awe. For the first time in his life he found himself
in the presence of an idolater. Cudjo belonged to a tribe of African
fire-worshippers, from whom he had been stolen in his youth; and,
although the sentiment of the old barbarous religion had smouldered for
years forgotten in his breast, this night it had burst forth again,
kindled by the terrible splendors of the burning mountain.

Penn waited for him to rise, then grasped his arm. The negro, startled
into a consciousness of his presence, stared at him wildly.

"That is not God, Cudjo!"

"No, no, not your God, massa! My God!" and the African smote his breast.
"Me mos' forgit him; now me 'members! Him comin' fur burn up de white
folks, and set de brack man free!"

Penn stood silent, thinking the negro might not be altogether wrong. No
doubt the dim, dark soul of him saw vaguely, with that prophetic sense
which is in all races of men, a great truth. A fire was indeed
coming--was already kindled--which was to set the bondman free: and God
was in the fire. But of that mightier conflagration, the combustion of
the forests was but a feeble type.

Penn turned from Cudjo to watch the burning, and became aware of its
threatening and rapidly increasing magnitude. The woods had been set in
several places, but the different fires were fast growing into one,
swept by a strong wind diagonally across and up the mountain. It seemed
then as if nothing could prevent all the forest growths that lay to the
southward and westward along the range from being consumed.

As he gazed, he became extremely alarmed for the safety of Stackridge
and his friends: and where all this time was Carl? In vain he questioned
Cudjo. He turned, and was hastening to the cave when he met Pomp coming
towards him. Tall, majestic, naked to the waist, wearing a garment of
panther-skins, with the red gleam of the fire on his dusky face and
limbs, the negro looked like a native monarch of the hills.

"O Pomp! what a fire that is!"

"What a fire it is going to be!" answered Pomp, with a lurid smile. "Our
new neighbors have brought us bad luck. All those woods are gone. The
fire is sweeping up directly towards us--it will pass over all the
mountain--nothing will be left." Yet he spoke with a lofty calmness that
astonished Penn.

"And our friends!--Carl!--have you heard from them?"

"I have not seen Carl since he left the cave with you, nor any of
Stackridge's people to-night."

"Then they are in the woods yet!"

"Yes; unless they have been wise enough to get out of them! I was just
starting out to look for them.--Who comes there?"--poising his rifle.

"It's Carl!" exclaimed Penn, recognizing the confederate coat. But in an
instant he saw his mistake.

"It is one of Ropes's men!" said Pomp. "He has discovered us--he shall
die for setting my mountains on fire!"

"Hold!" Penn grasped his arm. "He is beckoning and calling!"

Pomp frowned as he lowered his rifle, and waited for the soldier to come
up.

"What! is it you? I didn't know you in that dress, and came near
shooting you, as you deserve, for wearing it!" And Pomp turned
scornfully away.

The comer was Dan Pepperill, breathless with haste, horror-struck,
haggard. It was some time before he could reply to Penn's impetuous
demand--what had brought him up thither?

"Carl!" he gasped.

"What has happened to Carl?"

"Ben tuck! durned if he hain't! But that ar ain't the wust!"

"What, then, is the worst?" for that seemed bad enough.

"Virginny--Miss Villars!"

"Virginia! what of her?"

"She's down thar! in the fire!"

"Virginia in the fire!"

"She ar,--durned if she ain't! Carl said she war on the mountain, and
wanted me to hurry up and help her or find you; and I'd a done it, but I
couldn't git off till we was runnin' from the fires we'd sot; then I
kinder got scattered a puppus; t'other ones hung on to Carl, though, so
I had to come alone."

Penn interrupted the loose and confused narrative--Virginia: had he
_seen_ her?

"Wal, I reckon I hev! Ye see I war huntin' fur her thar, above the round
rock; fur Carl said,----"

A short, sharp groan broke from the lips of Penn. At first the idea of
Virginia being on the mountain had appeared to him incredible. But at
the mention of the place of rendezvous the truth smote him: she had come
up there with Toby, or in his stead. With spasmodic grip he wrung
Pepperill's arm as if he would have wrung the truth out of him that way.

"You saw her!--where?"

His hoarse voice, his terrible look, bewildered the poor man more and
more.

"I war a tellin' ye! Don't break my arm, and don't look so durned f'erce
at me, and I'll out with the hull story. Ye see, I warn't to blame, now,
no how. They sot the fires; they sot the grove on our way back; and if I
helped any, 'twas cause I had ter. But about _her_. Wal, I begun to the
big rock, and war a-huntin' up along, till the grove got all in a blaze,
and the red limbs begun ter fall, and I see 'twas high time for me to
put. Says I ter myself, 'She hain't hyar; she ar off the mountain and
safe ter hum afore this time, shore!' But jest then I heern a screech;
it sounded right inter the grove, and I run up as clust ter the fire's I
could, and looked, and thar I seen right in the middle on't, amongst the
burnin' trees, a woman's gownd, and then a face: 'twas her face, I
knowed it, fur she hadn't nary bunnit on, and the fire shone on it
bright as lightnin'! But thar war half a acre o' blazin' timber atween
her and me; and besides, I was so struck up all of a heap, I couldn't do
nary thing fur nigh about a minute--I couldn't even holler ter let her
know I war thar. And 'fore I knowed what I war about, durned if she
hadn't gone!"

Penn afterwards understood that Dan had actually had a glimpse of
Virginia when she ran out to the entrance of the gorge, and stood there
a moment in the terrible heat and glare.

"Where--show me where!" he exclaimed with fierce vehemence, dragging
Pepperill after him down the rocks.

"It war a considerable piece this side the round rock, nigh the upper
eend o' the grove," said Dan, in a jarred voice, clattering after him,
as fast as he could. "I reckon I kin find it, if 'tain't too late."

Too late? It must not be too late! Penn leaps down the ledges, and
rushes through the thickets, as if he would overtake time itself. They
reach the burning grove. Pepperill points out as nearly as he can the
spot where he stood when he saw Virginia. Great God! if she was in
there, what a frightful end was hers!

"Daniel! are you sure?"--for Penn cannot, will not believe--it is too
terrible!

Daniel is very sure; and he withdraws from the insufferable heat, to
which his companion appears insensible.

"There is a gorge just above there; perhaps she escaped into the gorge.
O, if I had known!" groans the half-distracted youth, thinking how near
he must have been to her when the fire awoke him.

He still hopes that Dan's vision of her in the fire was but the
hallucination of a bewildered brain. Yet no effort will he spare, no
danger will he shun. The entrance to the gorge is all a gulf of flame;
and the woods are blazing upwards along the cliffs, and all the forest
beyond is turning to a sea of fire. Yet the gorge must be reached. Back
again up the steep slope they climb. Penn flies to the verge of the
cliff. He looks down: the chasm is all a glare of light. There runs the
red-gleaming brook. He sees the logs, the stones, the mosses, all the
wild entanglement, deep below. But no Virginia. He runs almost into the
crackling flames, in order to peer farther down the gorge. Then he darts
away in the opposite direction, along the very brink of the precipice,
among the fire-lit trees,--Pepperill stupidly following. He seizes hold
of a sapling, and, with his foot braced against its root, swings his
body forward over the chasm, the better to gaze into its depths. From
that position he casts his eye up the gorge. He sees the cascade falling
over the ledge in a sheet of ruddy foam. He discovers the upper gorge;
sees a monster of the forest come plunging and plashing down to the
fall, and there lift himself on his haunches to look;--and what is that
other object, half hidden by a drooping bough? It is Virginia clinging
to the rocks.

A moment before, had Penn made the discovery of the young girl still
unharmed by fire, his happiness would have been supreme. But now joy was
checked by an appalling fear. The bear might seize her, or with a stroke
of his paw hurl her from his path.

Penn caught hold of the bough that impeded his view, and saw how
precarious was her hold. He dared not so much as call to her, or shout
to frighten the monster away, lest, her attention being for an instant
distracted, she might turn her head, lose her balance, and fall
backwards from the rocks.

"Durned if she ain't thar!" said Dan, excitedly. "But she's got a
powerful slim chance with the bar!"

"Come with me!" said Penn.

He ran to the upper gorge, showed himself on the bank above the cascade,
and shouted. The bear, as he anticipated, turned and looked up at him.
Virginia at the same time saw her deliverer.

"Hold on! I'll be with you in a minute!" he cried in a voice heard above
the noise of the waterfall and the roar of the conflagration.

She clung fast, hope and gladness thrilling her soul, and giving her new
strength.

To reach her, Penn had a precipitous descent of near thirty feet to
make. He did not pause to consider the difficulty of getting up again,
or the peril of encountering the bear. He jumped down over a
perpendicular ledge upon a projection ten feet below. Beyond that was a
rapid slope covered with moss and thin patches of soil, with here and
there a shrub, and here and there a tree. Striking his heels into the
soil, and catching at whatever branch or stem presented itself, he took
the plunge. Clinging, sliding, falling, he arrived at the bottom. In a
posture half sitting, half standing, and considerably jarred, he found
himself face to face with Bruin. The animal had settled down on all
fours, and now, with his surly, depressed head turned sullenly to one
side, he looked at Penn, and growled. Penn looked at him, and said
nothing. He had heard of staring wild beasts out of countenance--an
experiment that could be conducted strictly on peace principles, if the
bear would only prove as good a Quaker as himself. He resolved to try
it: indeed, all unarmed as he was, what else could he do? He might at
least, by diverting the brute's attention, give Virginia time to get
into a position of safety. So he stood up, and fixed his eyes on the
red-blinking eyes of the ferocious beast. Something Bruin did not like:
it might have been the youth's company and valiant bearing, but more
probably his observation of the fire had satisfied him that he was out
of his place. With another growl, that seemed to say, "All I ask is to
be let alone," he seceded,--turning his head still more, twisting his
body around, after it, and retreating up the gorge.

In an instant Penn was at the young girl's side: his hand clasped hers;
he drew her up over the rock.

Not a word was uttered. He was too agitated to speak; and she, after the
terror and the strain to which her nerves had been subjected so long,
felt all her strength give way. But as he lifted her in his arms, a
faint smile of happiness flitted over her white face, and her lips moved
with a whisper of gratitude he did not hear.

In spite of all the dangers behind them, and of the dangers still
before, both felt, in that moment, a shock of mutual bliss. Neither had
ever known till then how dear the other was.

Pepperill had by this time leaped down upon the bulge of the bank. There
he waited for them, shouting,--

"Hurry up! the bar'll meet the fire up thar, and be comin' down agin!"

Penn required no spur to his exertions: he knew too well the necessity
of getting speedily beyond the reach, not of the bear only, but also of
the fire, which threatened them now on three sides--below, above, and on
the farther bank of the gorge.

Clasping the burden more precious to him than life, resolved in his soul
to part with it only with life, he toiled heavily up the bank, down
which he had descended with such tremendous swiftness a few minutes
before.

But it was not in Virginia's nature to remain long a helpless
encumbrance. Seeing the labor and peril still before them, her will
returned, and with it her strength. She grasped a branch by which he was
trying in vain with one hand, holding her with the other, to draw them
both up a steep place. Her prompt action enabled him to seize the trunk
of a young tree: she assisted still, and slipping from his hands, clung
to it until he had reached the next tree above. He pulled her up after
him, and then pushed her on still farther, until Pepperill could reach
her from where he stood. A minute later the three were together on the
summit of the slope.

But now they had above them the ten feet of sheer perpendicularity down
which Dan had indiscreetly jumped, following Penn's lead. A single hand
above them would now be worth several hands below.

"What a fool I war! durned if I warn't!" said Dan, endeavoring
unsuccessfully to find a place by which he could reascend.

"Get on my shoulders!" And Penn braced himself against the ledge.

Dan made the attempt, but fell, and rolled down the bank.

Just then a grinning black face appeared above.

"Gib me de gal! gib me de gal!" and a prodigiously long arm reached
down.

"O Cudjo! you are an angel!" cried Penn, "Daniel! Here!"

Pepperill was up the bank again in a minute, at Penn's side. They lifted
Virginia above their heads. Holding on by a sapling with one hand, the
negro extended the other far down over the ledge. Those miraculous arms
of his seemed to have been made expressly for this service. He grasped a
wrist of the girl; with the other hand she clung to his arm until he had
drawn her up to the sapling; this she seized, and helped herself out.
Then once more Penn gave Daniel his shoulder, while Cudjo gave him a
hand from above; and Daniel was safe. Last of all, Penn remained.

"Cotch holt hyar!" said Cudjo, extending towards him the end of a branch
he had broken from a tree.

To this Penn held fast, assisting himself with his feet against the
ledge, while Cudjo and Dan hauled him up.

"Good Cudjo! how came you here?"

"Me see you and Pepperill a gwine inter de fire. So me foller."

"This is the old man's daughter, Cudjo."

Cudjo regarded the beautiful young girl with a look of vague wonder and
admiration.

"He remembers me," said Virginia. "I saw him the night he climbed in at
Toby's window." She gave him her hand; it trembled with emotion. "I
thank you, Cudjo, for what you have done for my father--and for me."

"Now, Cudjo! show us the nearest and easiest path. We must take her to
the cave--there is no other way."

"You must be right spry, den!" said Cudjo. "De fire am a runnin' ober
dat way powerful!"

Indeed, it had already crossed the upper end of the gorge, where the
forest brook fell into it; and, getting into some beds of leaves, and
thence into dense and inflammable thickets, it was now blazing directly
across their line of retreat.

Penn would have carried Virginia in his arms, but she would not suffer
him.

"I can go where you can!" she cried, once more full of spirit and
daring. "Just give me your hand--you shall see!"

Penn took one of her hands, Pepperill the other, and with their aid,
supporting her, lifting her, she sprang lightly up the ledges, and from
rock to rock.

Cudjo, carrying Dan's gun, ran on before, leading the way through
hollows and among bushes, by a route known only to himself. So they
reached a piece of woods, by the thin skirts of which he hoped to head
off the fire. Too late--it was there before them. It ran swiftly among
the fallen leaves and twigs, and spread far into the woods.

The negro turned back. There was a wild grimace in his face, and a
glitter in his eyes, as he threw up his hand, by way of signal that
their flight in that direction was cut off.

"Cudjo! what is to be done!" And Penn drew Virginia towards him with a
look that showed his fears were all for her.

"We can't git off down the mountain, nuther!" said Dan. "It's gittin'
into the woods down thar. It'll be all around us in no time!"

"You let Cudjo do what him pleases?" said the black.

"I can trust you! Can you, Virginia?"

"He should know what is best. Yes, I will trust him."

"Take dat 'ar!" Pepperill received his gun. "Now you look out fur
youselves. Me tote de gal."

And catching up Virginia, before Penn could stop him, or question him,
he rushed with her into the fire.

Penn ran after him, perceiving at once the meaning of this bold act. The
woods were not yet fairly kindled; only now and then the loose bark of a
dry trunk was beginning to blaze. Cudjo leaped over the line of flame
that was running along the ground, and bore Virginia high above it to
the other side. Penn followed, and Dan came close behind. They then had
before them a tract of blackened ground which the flames had swept,
leaving here and there a dead limb or mat of leaves still burning.

These little fires were easily avoided. But they soon came to another
line of flame raging on the upper side of the burnt tract. They were
almost out of the woods: only that red, crackling hedge fenced them in;
but that they could not pass: the underbrush all along the forest edge
was burning. And there they were, brought to a halt, half-stifled with
smoke, in the midst of woods kindling and blazing all around them.

"May as well pull up hyar, and take a bref," remarked Cudjo, grimly,
placing Virginia on a log too dank with decay and moss to catch fire
easily. "Den we's try 'em agin."

A horrible suspicion crossed Penn's mind; the fanatical fire-worshipper
had brought them there to destroy them--to sacrifice them to his god!

"Virginia!"--eagerly laying hold of her arm,--"we must retreat! It will
soon be too late! We can get out of the woods where we came in, if we go
at once!"

"Beg pardon, sar," said Cudjo, stamping out fire in the leaves by the
end of the log,--and he looked up through the smoke at Penn, with the
old malignant grin on his apish face.

"What do you mean, Cudjo?" said Penn, in an agony of doubt.

"Can't get back dat way, sar!"

"Then you have led us here to destroy us!"

"You's no longer trust Cudjo!" was the negro's only reply.

"Didn't we trust you? Haven't we come through fire, following you? O
Cudjo! more than once you have helped to save my life! You have helped
to save this life, dearer than mine! Why do you desert us now?"

"'Sert you? Cudjo no 'sert you." But the negro spoke sullenly, and there
was still a sparkle of malignancy in his look.

"Then why do you stop here?"

"Hugh! tink we's go trough dat fire like we done trough tudder?"

"What then are we to do?"

"You's no longer trust Cudjo!" was once more the sullen response.

Virginia, with her quick perceptions, saw at once what Penn was either
too dull or too much excited to see. Cudjo felt himself aggrieved; but
he was not unfaithful.

"_I_ trust you, Cudjo!"--and she laid her hand frankly and confidingly
on his shoulder. "Did I tremble, did I shrink when you carried me
through the fire? I shall never forget how brave, how good you are! He
trusts you too,--only he is so afraid for me! You can forgive that,
Cudjo."

"She is right," said Penn, though still in doubt. "If you know a way to
save her, don't lose a moment!"

"He knows; on'y let him take his time," said Pepperill, whose firm faith
in the negro's good will shamed Penn for his distrust. And yet Pepperill
did not love, as Penn loved, the girl whose life was in danger; and he
had not seen the evidences of Cudjo's fire-worshipping fanaticism which
Penn had seen.

Under the influence of Virginia's gentle and soothing words, the glitter
of resentment died out of the negro's face. But his aspect was still
morose.

"De fire take his time to burn out; so we's take our time too," said he.
"You try your chance wid Cudjo agin, miss?"

"Certainly! for I am sure you will take us safely through yet!" said
Virginia, without a shadow of doubt or hesitation on her face, however
dark may have been the shadow on her heart.

The negro was evidently well pleased. He examined carefully the line of
fire in the undergrowth. And now Penn discovered, what Cudjo had known
very well from the first, that there were barren ledges above, and that
the fire was rapidly burning itself out along their base. An opening
through which a courageous and active man might dash unscathed soon
presented itself. Then Cudjo waited no longer to "take bref." He caught
Virginia in his arms, and bore her through the second line of fire, as
he had borne her through the first, and placed her in safety on the
rocks above.

"Cudjo, my brave, my noble fellow!" said Penn, deeply affected, "I have
wronged you; I confess it with shame. Forgive me!"

"Cudjo hab nuffin to forgib," replied the negro, with a laugh of
pleasure "Neber mention um, massa! All right now! Reckon we's better be
gitt'n out o' dis yer smudge!"

He showed the way, and Penn and Daniel helped Virginia up the rocks as
before.

They had reached a smooth and unsheltered ledge near the ravine, a
little below the mouth of the cave, when a hideous and inhuman shriek
rent the air.

"What dat?" cried Cudjo, stopping short; and his visage in the smoky and
lurid light looked wild with superstitious alarm.

The sound was repeated, louder, nearer, more hideous than before,
seeming to make the very atmosphere shudder above their heads.

"Go on, Cudjo! go on!" Penn commanded.

The terrified black crouched and gibbered, but would not stir. Then
straightway a sharp clatter, as of iron hoofs flying at a furious
gallop, resounded along the mountain-side. By a simultaneous impulse the
little party huddled together, and turned their faces towards the fire,
and saw coming down towards them a horse with the speed of the wind.

"Stand close!" said Penn; and he threw himself before Virginia, to
shield her, shouting and swinging his hat to frighten the animal from
his course.

"Stackridge's hoss!" exclaimed Cudjo, recovering from his fright,
leaping up, and flinging abroad his long arms in the air. "Wiv some poor
debil onter him's back!"

It was so. The little group stood motionless, chilled with horror. The
beast came thundering on, with lips of terror parted, nostrils wide and
snorting, mane and tail flying in the wild air, hoofs striking fire from
the rocks. A human being--a man--was lying close to his neck, and
clinging fast: the face hidden by the tossing and streaming mane: a
fearful ride! the mystery surrounding him, and the awful glare and
smoke, enhancing the horror of it.

Approaching the group on the ledge, the animal veered, and shot past
them like a thunderbolt; clearing rocks, hollows, bushes, with
incredible bounds; nearing the ravine, but halting not; dashing into the
thickets there, missing suddenly the ground beneath his feet, striking
only the air and yielding boughs with frantic hoofs; then plunging down
with a dull, reverberant crash,--horse and unknown rider rolling
together over rocks and spiked limbs to the bottom of the ravine.

Then all was still again: it had passed like a vision of fear.

XXX.

_REFUGE._

For a moment the little group stood dumb and motionless on the ledge, in
the flare of the vast flame-curtains. They looked at each other. Penn
was the first to speak.

"Which of us goes down into the ravine?"

"Wha' fur?" said Cudjo.

"To find him!" And Penn gazed anxiously towards the thickets into which
the horse and horseman had gone down.

"Dat no good! Deader 'n de debil, shore!"

"O, may be he is not!" exclaimed Virginia, full of compassion for the
unfortunate unknown. "Do go and see, Cudjo!"

"Fire'll be dar in less'n no time. Him nuffin to Cudjo. We's best be
gwine." And the negro started off, doggedly, towards the cave.

Then Penn took the resolution which he would have taken at once but for
Virginia. "Stay with her, Daniel! I will go!"

Virginia turned pale; she had not thought of that. But immediately she
controlled her fears: she would not be selfish: if he was brave and
generous enough to descend into the ravine for one he did not know, she
would be equally brave and generous, and let him go. She clasped her
hands together so that they should not hold him back, and forced her
lips to say,--

"I will wait for you here."

"No, I be durned if ye shall! Hapgood, you stick to her: take this yer
gun, and I'll slip down inter the holler, and see whuther the cuss's
alive or dead, any how."

"O, Mr. Pepperill, if you will!" said Virginia, overjoyed.

Penn remonstrated,--rather feebly, it must be confessed, for the
determination to part from her had cost him a struggle, and the
privilege of keeping by her side till all danger was past, seemed too
sweet to refuse.

"I'll take her to her father, and hurry back, and meet you."

"All right!" came the response from Dan, already far down the rocks.

"The cave is close by," said Penn. "There is Cudjo, waiting for us!"

Coming up with the black, and once more following his lead, they
descended along the shelf of rocks, between the thickets and the
overhanging ledge. So they came to the still dark jaws of the cavern. A
grateful coolness breathed in their faces from within. But how dismal
the entrance seemed to eyes lately dazzled by the blazing woods!
Virginia clung tightly to Penn's hand, as they groped their way in.

At first nothing was visible but a few smouldering embers, winking their
sleepy eyes in the dark. Out of these Cudjo soon blew a little blaze,
which he fed with sticks and bits of bark until it lighted up fitfully
the dim interior and shadowy walls of his abode.

Penn hushed Virginia with a finger on his lips, and restrained her from
throwing herself forward upon the rude bed, where the blind old man was
just awaking from a sound sleep.

In that profound subterranean solitude the roar of the fiery breakers,
dashing on the mountain side, was subdued to a faint murmur, less
distinct than the dripping of water from roof to floor in the farther
recesses of the cave. There, left alone, lulled by the dull, monotonous
trickle,--thinking, if he heard the roar at all, that it was the
mountain wind blowing among the pines,--Mr. Villars had slept tranquilly
through all the horrors of that night.

"Is it you, Penn? Safe again!" And sitting up, he grasped the young
man's hand. "What news from my dear girl?--from my two dear girls?" he
added, remembering Virginia was not his only child.

"Toby did not come to the rock," said Penn, still holding Virginia back.

"O! did he not?" It seemed a heavy disappointment; but the patient old
man rallied straightway, saying, with his accustomed cheerfulness, "No
doubt something hindered him; no doubt he would have come if he could.
My poor, dear girl, how I wish I could have got word to her that I am
safe! But I thank you all the same; it was kind in you to give yourself
all that trouble."

"I believe all is for the best," said Penn, his voice trembling.

"No doubt, no doubt. It will be some time before I can have the
consolation of my dear girl's presence again; I, who never knew till now
how necessary she is to my happiness,--I may say, to my very life!" Mr.
Villars wiped a tear he could not repress, and smiled. "Yes, Penn, God
knows what is best for us all. His will be done!"

But now Virginia could restrain herself no longer; her sobs would burst
forth.

"Father! father!"--throwing herself upon his neck. "O, my dear, dear
father!"

Penn had feared the effect of the sudden surprise upon the old and
feeble man, and had meant to break the good news to him softly. But
human nature was too strong; his own emotions had baffled him, and the
pious little artifice proved a complete failure. So now he could do
nothing but stand by and make grim faces, struggling to keep down what
was mastering him, and turning away blindly from the bed.

Even Cudjo appeared deeply affected, staring stupidly, and winking
something like a tear from the whites of his eyes at sight of the father
embracing his child, and the white locks mingling with the wet, tangled
curls on her cheek. He was a ludicrous, pathetic object, winking and
staring thus; and Penn laughed and cried too, at sight of him.

"Luk dar!" said Cudjo, coming up to him, and pointing at the little
walled chamber that served as his pantry. "She hab dat fur her dressum
room. Sleep dar, too, if she likes."

"Thank you, Cudjo! it will be very acceptable, I am sure."

"Me clar it up fur her all scrumptious!" added the negro, with a grin.

Penn had thought of that. But now he had other business on his hands: he
must hasten to find Pepperill: nor could he keep anxious thoughts of
Stackridge and his friends out of his mind. And Pomp--where all this
time was Pomp? He had hoped to find him and the patriots all safely
arrived in the cave.

Virginia was seated on the bed by her father's side. Penn threw a
blanket over the dear young shoulders, to shield her from the sudden
cold of the cave; then left her relating her adventures,--beckoning to
Cudjo, who followed him out.

"Cudjo!"--the black glided to his side as they emerged from the
ravine,--"you must go and find Pomp."

Cudjo laughed and shrugged.

"No use't! Reckon Pomp take keer o' hisself heap better'n we's take keer
on him!"

True. Pomp knew the woods. He was athletic, cautious, brave. But he had
gone to extricate from peril others, in whose fate he himself might
become involved. Cudjo refused to take this view of the matter; and it
was evident that, while he comforted himself with his deep convictions
of Pomp's ability to look out for his own safety, he was, to say the
least, quite indifferent as to the welfare of the patriots.

Forgetting Dan and the unknown horseman in his great solicitude for his
absent friends, Penn climbed the ledges, and gazed away in the direction
of the camp, and beheld the forest there a raging gulf of fire.

Assuredly, they must have fled from it before this time; but whither had
they gone? Had Pomp been able to find them? Or might they not all have
become entangled in the intricacies of the wilderness until encompassed
by the fire and destroyed?

Penn watched in vain for their coming--in vain for some signal of their
safety on the crags above the forest. Had they reached the crags, he
thought he might discover them somewhere with a glass, so vividly were
those grim rock-foreheads of the hills lighted up beneath the red sky.

He sent Cudjo to find Dan, ran to the cave for Pomp's glass, and
returned to the ledge. There he waited; there he watched; still in vain.
Wider and wider, spread the destroying sea; fiercer and fiercer leaped
the billows of flame--the billows that did not fall again, but broke
away in rent sheets, in red-rolling scrolls, and vanished upward in
their own smoke.

And now Penn, lowering the glass, perceived what he must long since have
been made aware of, had not the greater light concealed the less. It was
morning; a dull and sunless dawn; the despairing daylight, filtered of
all warmth and color, spreading dim and gray on the misty valleys, and
on the sombre, far-off hills, under an interminable canopy of cloud.

Pepperill came clambering up the rocks. Penn turned eagerly to meet and
question him.

"Find him?"

"Wal, a piece on him."

"Killed?"

"I reckon he ar that!"

"Who is it?"

"Durned if I kin tell! He's jammed in thar 'twixt two gre't stuns, and
the hoss is piled on top, and you can't see nary featur' of his face,
only the legs,--but durned if I know the legs!"

"Couldn't you move the horse?"

"Nary a bit. His neck is broke, and he lays wedged so clust, right on
top o' the poor cuss, 'twould take a yoke o' oxen to drag him out."

"Are you sure the man is dead?"

"Shore? I reckon! He had one arm loose. I jest lifted it, and it drapped
jest like a club when I let go; then I see 'twas broke square off jest
above the elbow, about where the backbone o' the hoss comes. Made me
durned sick!"

"What have you got in your hand?"

"A boot--one o' his'n--thought I'd pull it off, his leg stuck up so kind
o' handy; didn't know but some on ye might know the boot." And Dan held
it up for Penn's inspection.

"What is this on it? Blood?"

"It ar so! Mebby it's the hoss's, and then agin mebby it's his'n; I
hadn't noticed it afore."

"I'll go back with you, Daniel. Together perhaps we can move the horse."

"Ye're behind time for that! The fire's thar. I hadn't only jest time to
git cl'ar on't myself. The poor cuss is a br'ilin'!"

"K-r-r-r! hi! don't ye har me callin'!" Cudjo sprang up the ledge.
"Fire's a comin' to de cave! All in de brush dar! Can't get in widout ye
go now!"

"And Pomp and the rest! They will be shut out, if they are not lost
already!"

"Pomp know well 'nuff what him 'bout, tell ye! Gorry, massa! ye got to
come, if Cudjo hab to tote ye!"

Yielding to his importunity, Penn quitted the ledge. On the shelf of
rock Cudjo paused to gnash his teeth at the flames sweeping up towards
them. He had long since recovered from his fit of superstitious frenzy.
He had seen the fire burning the woods that sheltered him in his
mountain retreat, instead of going intelligently to work to destroy the
dwellings of the whites; and he no longer regarded it as a deity worthy
of his worship.

"All dis yer brush be burnt up! Den nuffin' to hide Cudjo's house!"

"Don't despair, Cudjo. We will trust in Him who is God even of the
fire."

Even as Penn spoke, he felt a cool spatter on his hand. He looked up;
sudden, plashy drops smote his face.

"Rain! It is coming! Thank Heaven for the rain!"

At the same time, the wind shifted, and blew fitful gusts down the
mountain. Then it lulled; and the rain poured.

"Cudjo, your thickets are saved!" said Penn, exultantly. Then
immediately he thought of the absent ones, for whom the rain might be
too late; of the beautiful forests, whose burning not cataracts could
quench; of the unknown corpse far below in the ravine there, and the
swift soul gone to God.

"What news?" asked the old man as he entered the cave.

"It is morning, and it rains; but your friends are still away.--The man
is dead," aside to Virginia.

"Heaven grant they be safe somewhere!" said the old man. "And Pomp?"

"He is missing too."

There was a long, deep silence. A painful suspense seemed to hold every
heart still, while they listened. Suddenly a strange noise was heard, as
of a ghost walking. Louder and louder it sounded, hollow, faint,
far-off. Was it on the rocks over their heads? or in caverns beneath
their feet?

"Told ye so! told ye so!" said Cudjo, laughing with wild glee.

The fire had burnt low again, and he was in the act of kindling it, when
a novel idea seemed to strike him, and, seizing a pan, he inverted it
over the little remnant of a flame. In an instant the cave was dark. It
was some seconds before the eyes of the inmates grew accustomed to the
gloom, and perceived the glimmer of mingled daylight and firelight that
shone in at the entrance.

"Luk a dar! luk a dar!" said Cudjo.

And turning their eyes in the opposite direction, they saw a faint
golden glow in the recesses of the cave. The footsteps approached; the
glow increased; then the superb dark form of Pomp advanced in the light
of his own torch. Penn hastened to meet him, and to demand tidings of
Stackridge's party.

Pomp first saluted Virginia, with somewhat lofty politeness, holding the
torch above his head as he bowed. Then turning to Penn,--

"Your friends are all safe, I believe."

"All?" Penn eagerly asked, his thoughts on the luckless horseman. "None
missing?"

"There were three absent when I reached their camp. They had gone on a
foraging expedition. I found the rest waiting for them, standing their
ground against the fire, which was roaring up towards them at a
tremendous rate. Soon the foragers came in. They brought a basket of
potatoes and a bag of meal, but no meat. Withers had caught a pig, but
it had got away from him before he could kill it, and he lost it in the
dark. The others were cursing the rascals who had set the woods afire,
but Withers lamented the pig.

"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'you have not much time to mourn either for the
woods or the pork. We must take care of ourselves.' And I offered to
bring them here. But just then we heard a rushing noise; it sounded like
some animal coming up the course of the brook; and the next minute it
was amongst us--a big black bear, frightened out of his wits, singed by
the fire, and furious."

"Your acquaintance of the gorge, Virginia!" said Penn.

"You will readily believe that such an unexpected supply of fresh meat,
sent by Providence within their reach, proved a temptation to the
hungry. Withers, in his hurry to make up for the loss of the pig, ran to
head the fellow off, and attempted to stop him with his musket after it
had missed fire. In an instant the gun was lying on the ground several
yards off, and Withers was sprawling. The bear had done the little
business for him with a single stroke of his paw; then he passed on,
directly over Withers's body, which happened to be in his way, but which
he minded no more than as if it had been a bundle of rags. All this time
we couldn't fire a shot; there was the risk, you see, of hitting Withers
instead of the bear. Even after he was knocked down, he seemed to think
he had nothing more formidable than his stray pig to deal with, and
tried to catch the bear by the tail as he ran over him."

"So ye lost de bar!" cried Cudjo, greatly excited. "Fool, tink o'
cotchin' on him by de tail!"

"Still we couldn't fire, for he was on his legs again in a second,
chasing the bear's tail directly before our muzzles," said Pomp, quietly
laughing. "But luckily a stick flew up under his feet. Down he went
again. That gave two or three of us a chance to send some lead after the
beast. He got a wound--we tracked him by his blood on the ground--we
could see it plain as day by the glare of light--it led straight towards
the fire that was running up through the leaves and thickets on the
north. I expected that when he met that he would turn again; but he did
not: we were just in time to see him plough through it, and hear him
growl and snarl at the flames that maddened him, and which he was
foolish enough to stop and fight. Then he went on again. We followed.
Nobody minded the scorching. We kept him in sight till he met the fire
again--for it was now all around us. This time his heart failed him; he
turned back only to meet us and get a handful of bullets in his head.
That finished him, and he fell dead."

"Poor brute!" said Mr. Villars; "he found his human enemies more
merciless than the fire!"

"That's so," said Pomp, with a smile. "But we had not much time to
moralize on the subject then. The fire we had leaped through had become
impassable behind us. The men hurried this way and that to find an
outlet. They found only the fire--it was on every side of us like a
sea--the spot where we were was only an island in the midst of it--that
too would soon be covered. The bear was forgotten where he lay; the men
grew wild with excitement, as again and again they attempted to break
through different parts of the ring that was narrowing upon us, and
failed. Brave men they are, but death by fire, you know, is too
horrible!"

"How large was this spot, this island?" asked Penn.

"It might have comprised perhaps twenty acres when we first found
ourselves enclosed in it. But every minute it was diminishing; and the
heat there was something terrific. The men were rather surprised, after
trying in vain on every side to discover a break in the circle of fire,
to come back and find me calm.

"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'keep cool. I understand this ground perhaps
better than you do. Don't abandon your game; you have lost your meal and
potatoes, and you will have need of the bear.'

"'But what is the use of roast meat, if we are to be roasted too?' said
Withers, who will always be droll, whatever happens.

"Then Stackridge spoke. He proposed that they should place themselves
under my command; for I knew the woods, and while they had been running
to and fro in disorder, I had been carefully observing the ground, and
forming my plans. I laughed within myself to see Deslow alone hang back;
he was unwilling to owe his life to one of my complexion--one who had
been a slave. For there are men, do you know," said Pomp, with a smile
of mingled haughtiness and pity, "who would rather that even their
country should perish than owe in any measure its salvation to the race
they have always hated and wronged!"

"I trust," said Mr. Villars, "that you had the noble satisfaction of
teaching these men the lesson which our country too must learn before it
can be worthy to be saved."

"I showed them that even the despised black may, under God's providence,
be of some use to white men, besides being their slave: I had that
satisfaction!" said Pomp, proudly smiling. "Stackridge was right: I had
observed: I saw what I could do. On one side was a chasm which you know,
Mr. Hapgood."

"Yes! I had thought of it! But I knew it was in the midst of the burning
forest, and never supposed you could get to it."

"The fire was beyond; and it also burned a little on the side nearest to
us. But the vegetation there is thin, you remember. The chasm could be
reached without difficulty.

"'Follow me who will!' said I. 'The rest are at liberty to shirk for
themselves.'

"'Follow--where?' said Deslow. I couldn't help smiling at the man's
distress. All the rest were prepared to obey my directions; and it was
hard for him to separate himself from them. But it seemed harder still
for him to trust in me. I was not a Moses; I could not take them through
that Red Sea. What then?

"I made for the chasm. All followed, even Deslow,--dragging and lugging
the bear. We came to the brink. The place, I must confess, had an awful
look, in the light of the trees burning all around it! Deslow was not
the only one who shrank back then; for though the spot was known to some
of them, they had never explored it, and could not guess what it led to.
It was difficult, in the first place, to descend into it; it looked
still more difficult ever to get out again; and there was nothing to
prevent the burning limbs above from falling into it, or the trees that
grew in it from catching fire. For this is the sink, Mr. Villars, which
you have probably heard of,--where the woods have been undermined by the
action of water in the limestone rocks, and an acre or more of the
mountain has fallen in, with all its trees, so that what was once the
roof of an immense cavern is now a little patch of the forest growing
seventy feet below the surface of the earth. The sides are precipitous
and projecting. Only one tree throws a strong branch upwards to the edge
of the sink.

"'This way, gentlemen,' said I, 'and you are safe!'

"It was a trial of their faith; for I waited to explain nothing. First, I
tumbled the bear off the brink. We heard him go crashing down into the
abyss, and strike the bottom with a sound full of awfulness to the
uninitiated. Then, with my rifle swung on my back, I seized the limb,
and threw myself into the tree.

"'Where he can go, we can!' I heard Stackridge say; and he followed me.
I took his gun, and handed it to him again when he was safe in the tree.
He did the same for another; and so all got into the branches, and
climbed down after us. The trunk has no limbs within twenty feet of the
bottom, but there is a smaller tree leaning into it which we got into,
and so reached the ground.

"'Now, gentlemen,' said I, when all were down, 'I will show you where
you are.' And opening the bushes, I discovered a path leading down the
rocks into the caverns, of which this cave is only a branch. Then I made
them all take an oath never to betray the secret of what I had shown
them. Then I lighted one of the torches Cudjo and I keep for our
convenience when we come in that way, and gave it to them; lighted
another for my own use; invited them to make themselves quite at home in
my absence; left them to their reflections;--and here I am."

Still the mystery with regard to the unknown horseman was in no wise
explained. Pomp, informed of what had happened, arose hastily. Penn
followed him from the cave. Pepperill accompanied them, to show the way.
It was raining steadily; but the thickets in which lay the dead horse
and his rider were burning still.

"As I was going to Stackridge's camp," said Pomp, "I thought I saw a man
crawling over the rocks above where the horse was tied. I ran up to find
him, but he was gone. Peace to his ashes, if it was he!"

"Won't be much o' the cuss left but ashes!" remarked Pepperill.

Pomp ascended the ledges, and stood, silent and stern, gazing at the
destruction of his beloved woods.

The winds had died. The fires had evidently ceased to spread. Portions
of the forest that had been kindled and not consumed were burning now
with slow, sullen combustion, like brands without flame. Stripped of
their foliage, shorn of their boughs, and seen in the dull and smoky
daylight, through the rain, they looked like a forest of skeletons, all
of glowing coal, brightening, darkening, and ever crumbling away.

All at once Pomp seemed to rouse himself, and direct his attention more
particularly at the part of the woods in which the patriots' camp had
been.

"Come with me, Pepperill, if you would help do a good job!"

They started off, and were soon out of sight. As Penn turned from gazing
after them, he heard a voice calling from the opposite side of the
ravine. He looked, but could see no one. The figure to which the voice
belonged was hidden by the bushes. The bushes moved, however; the figure
was descending into the ravine. It arrived at the bottom, crossed, and
began to ascend the steep side towards the cave. Penn concealed himself,
and waited until it had nearly emerged from the thickets beneath him,
and he could distinctly hear the breath of a man panting and blowing
with the toil of climbing. Then a well-known voice said in a hoarse
whisper,--

"Massa Hapgood! dat you?"

And peering over the bank, he saw, upturned in the rain and murky light,
among the wet bushes, the black, grinning face of old Toby.

He responded by reaching down, grasping the negro's hand, and drawing
him up.

The grin on the old man's face was a ghastly one, and his eyes rolled as
he stammered forth,--

"Miss Jinny--ye seen Miss Jinny?"

Penn did not answer immediately; he was considering whether it would be
safe to conduct Toby into the cave. Toby grew terrified.

"Don't say ye hain't seen her, Massa Penn! ye kill ol' Toby if ye do! I
done lost her!" And the poor old faithful fellow sobbed out his
story,--how Virginia had disappeared, and how, on discovering the woods
to be on fire, he had set out in search of her, and been wandering he
scarcely knew where ever since. "Now don't say ye don't know nuffin'
about her! don't say dat!" falling on his knees, and reaching up his
hands beseechingly, as if he had only to prevail on Penn to _say_ that
all was well with "Miss Jinny," and that would make it so. Such faith is
in simple souls.

"I'll say anything you wish me to, good old Toby! only give me a
chance."

"Den say you _has_ seen her."

"I _has seen her_," repeated Penn.

"O, bress you, Massa Penn! And she ar safe--say dat too!"

"_She ar safe_," said Penn, laughing.

"Bress ye for dat!" And Toby, weeping with joy, kissed the young man's
hand again and again. "And ye knows whar she ar?"

"Yes, Toby! So now get up: don't be kneeling on the rocks here in the
rain!"

"Jes' one word more! Say ye got her and ol' Massa Villars safe stowed
away, and ye'll take me to see 'em; den dis ol' nigger'll bress you and
de Lord and dem, and be willin' fur to die! only say dat, massa!"

"Ah! did I promise to say all you wished?"

"Yes, you did, you did so, Massa Penn!" cried Toby, triumphantly.

"Then I suppose I must say that, too. So come, you dear old simpleton!
Cudjo!" to the proprietor of the cave, who just then put out his head to
reconnoitre, "Cudjo! Here is your friend Toby, come to pay his master
and mistress a visit!"

"What business he got hyar?" said Cudjo, crossly. "We's hab all de wuld,
and creation besides, comin' bime-by!"

"Cudjo! You knows ol' Toby, Cudjo!" said Toby, in the softest and most
conciliatory tone imaginable.

"Nose ye!" Cudjo snuffed disdainfully. "Yes! and wish you'd keep fudder
off!"

"Why, Cudjo! don't you 'member Toby? Las' time I seed you! ye 'member
dat, Cudjo!"

"Don't 'member nuffin'!"

"'Twan't you, den, got inter my winder, and done skeert me mos' t' def
'fore I found out 'twas my ol' 'quaintance Cudjo, come fur Massa Penn's
clo'es! Dat ar wan't you, hey?" And Toby's honest indignation cropped
out through the thin crust of deprecating obsequiousness which he still
thought it politic to maintain.

Penn got under the shelter of the ledge, and waited for the dispute to
end. It was evident to him that Cudjo was not half so ill-natured as he
appeared; but, feeling himself in a position of something like official
importance, he had the human weakness to wish to make the most of it.

"Your massa and missis bery well off. Dey in my house. No room dar for
you. Ain't wanted hyar, nohow!" turning his back very much like a
personage of lighter complexion, clad in brief authority.

"Ain't wanted, Cudjo? You don't know what you's sayin' now. Whar my ol'
massa and young missis is, dar ol' Toby's wanted. Can't lib widout me,
dey can't! Ol' massa wants me to nuss him. Ye don't tink--you's a nigger
widout no kind ob 'sideration, Cudjo."

"Talk o' you nussin' him when him's got Pomp!"

"Pomp! what can Pomp do? Wouldn't trust him to nuss a chick sicken!"
Toby talked backwards in his excitement.

"Ki! didn't him take Massa Hapgood and make him well? Don't ye know
nuffin'?"

Toby seemed staggered for a moment. But he rallied quickly, and said,--

"He cure Massa Hapgood? He done jes' nuffin' 't all fur him. De fac's
is, I had de nussin' on him for a spell at fust, and gib him a start.
Dar's ebery ting in a start, Cudjo."

"O, what a stupid nigger!" said Cudjo. "Hyar's Massa Hapgood hisself!
leab it to him now!"

"You are both right," said Penn. "Toby did nurse me, and give me a good
start; for which I shall always thank him."

"Dar! tol' ye so, tol' ye so!" said Toby.

"But it was Pomp who afterwards cured me," added Penn.

"Dar! tol' you so!" cried Cudjo, while Toby's countenance fell.

"For while Toby is a capital nurse" (Toby brightened), "Pomp is a
first-rate doctor" (Cudjo grinned). "So don't dispute any more. Shake
hands with your old friend, Cudjo, and show him into your house."

Cudjo was still reluctant; but just then occurred a pleasing incident,
which made him feel good-natured towards everybody. Pomp and Pepperill
arrived, bringing the bag of meal and the basket of potatoes which the
bear-hunters had forsaken in the woods, and which the rain had preserved
from the fire.

XXXI.

_LYSANDER TAKES POSSESSION._

Gad the "Sleeper" (he had earned that title) had been himself placed
under guard for drinking too much of the prisoners' liquor, and
suffering them to escape. Miserable, sullen, thirsty, he languished in
confinement.

"Let 'em shoot me, and done with it, if that's the penalty," said this
chivalrous son of the south; "only give a feller suthin' to drink!"

But that policy of the confederates, which opened the jails of the
country, and put arms in the hands of the convicts, and pardoned every
felon that would fight, might be expected to find a better use for an
able-bodied fellow, like Gad, than to shoot him.

The use they found for him was this: He had been a mighty hunter before
the Lord, ere he became too besotted and lazy for such sport; and he
professed to know the mountains better than any other man. Accordingly,
on the recommendation of his friend Lieutenant Ropes, it was resolved to
send him to spy out the position of the patriots. It was an enterprise
of some danger, and, to encourage him in it, he was promised two
things--pardon for his offence, and, what was of more importance to him,
a bottle of old whiskey.

"I'll see that you have light enough," said Ropes, significantly.

It was the evening of the firing of the forests. How well the lieutenant
fulfilled his part of the engagement, we have seen.

Gad put the bottle in his pocket, and set off at dark by routes obscure
and circuitous to get upon the trail of the patriots. How well _he_
succeeded will appear by and by.

The burning of the forests caused a great excitement in the valley,
especially among those families whose husbands and fathers were known to
have taken refuge in them. Who had committed the barbarous act? The
confederates denounced it with virtuous indignation, charging the
patriots with it, of course. There was in the village but one witness
who could have disputed this charge, and he now occupied Gad's place in
the guard-house. It was the deserter Carl.

All the morning Gad's return was anxiously awaited. No doubt there were
good reasons why he did not come. So said his friend Silas; and his
friend Silas was right: there were good reasons.

"Anyhow, I kep' my word--I giv him light enough, I reckon!" chuckled
Silas.

That was true: Gad had had light enough, and to spare.

The rain continued all the morning. Perhaps that was what detained the
scout; for it was known that he had a great aversion to water.

In the afternoon came one with tidings from the mountain. It was not
Gad. It was old Toby.

He was seized by some soldiers and taken before Captain Sprowl, at the
school-house.

"Toby, you black devil, where have you been?" This was Lysander's
chivalrous way of addressing an inferior whom he wished to terrify.

Now, if there was a person in the world whom Toby detested, it was this
roving Lysander, who had disgraced the Villars family by marrying into
it. However, he concealed his contempt with a politic hypocrisy worthy
of a whiter skin.

"Please, sar," said the old negro, cap in hand, "I'se been lookin' for
my ol' massa and my young missis."

"Well, what luck, you lying scoundrel?"

"O, no luck 't all, I 'sure you, sar!"

"What! couldn't you find 'em? Don't you lie, you ----." (We may as well
omit the captain's energetic epithets.)

"O, sar!"--Toby looked up earnestly with counterfeit grief in his
wrinkled old face,--"dey ain't nowhars on de face ob de 'arth!"

"Not on the face of the earth!"

"If dey is, den de fire's done burnt 'em all up. I seen, down in a big
holler, a place whar somebody's been burnt, shore! Dar's a man, and a
hoss on top on him, and de hoss's har am all burnt off, and de man's
trouse's-legs am all burnt off too, and one foot's got a fried boot onto
it, and tudder han't got nuffin' on, but jes' de skin and bone all
roasted to a crisp; and I 'specs dar's 'nuff sight more dead folks down
in dar, on'y I didn't da's to look, it make me feel so skeerylike!"

All which, and much more, Toby related so circumstantially, that Captain
Sprowl was strongly impressed with the truth of the story. Great,
therefore, was the joy of the captain. Perhaps the patriots had been
destroyed: he hoped so! Still more ardently he hoped that Virginia had
perished with her father. For was he not the husband of Salina? and the
snug little Villars property, did he not covet it?

"Can you show me that spot, Toby?"

"'Don'o', sar: I specs I could, sar."

"Don't you forget about it! Now, Toby, go home to your mistress,--my
wife's your mistress, you know,--and wait till you are wanted."

"Yes, sar,"--bowing, and pulling his foretop.

Captain Sprowl did not overhear the irrepressible chuckle of
satisfaction in which the old negro indulged as he retired, or he would
have perceived that he had been trifled with. We are apt to be extremely
credulous when listening to what we wish to believe; and Lysander's
delight left no room in his heart for suspicion. All he desired now was
that Gad should appear and confirm Toby's report; for surely Gad must
know something about the dead horse and the dead man under him; and why
did not the fellow return?

As for Toby, he hastened home as fast as his tired old legs could carry
him, chuckling all the way over his lucky escape, and the cunning
answers by which he had mystified the captain without telling a
downright falsehood. "Ob course, dey ain't on de face ob de 'arth, long
as dey's inside on't! Hi, hi, hi!"

He did not greatly relish reporting himself to Salina: nevertheless, he
had been ordered to do so, not only by the captain, but by those whose
authority he respected more.

Salina, though so bitter, was not without natural affection, and she had
suffered much and waited anxiously ever since Toby, terrified into the
avowal of his belief that Virginia was in the burning woods, had set out
in search of her. She was not patient; she was wanting in religious
trust. She had not slept. All night and all day she had tortured herself
with terrible fancies. Instead of calming her spirit with prayer, she
had kept it irritated with spiteful thoughts against what she deemed her
evil destiny.

There are certain natures to which every misfortune brings a blessing;
for, whatever it may take away, it is sure to leave that divine
influence which comes from resignation and a deepened sense of reliance
upon God. Such a nature was the old clergyman's. Every blow his heart
had received had softened it; and a softened heart is a well of interior
happiness; it is more precious to its possessor than all outward gifts
of friends and fortune. Such a nature, too, was Virginia's. She too,
through all things, kept warm in her bosom that holy instinct of faith,
that blessed babe named Love, ever humbly born, whose life within is a
light that transfigures the world. To such, despair cannot come; for
when the worst arrives, when all they cherished is gone, heaven is still
left to them; and they look up and smile. To them sorrow is but a
preparation for a diviner joy. All things indeed work together for their
good; since, whether fair fortune comes, or ill, they possess the
spiritual alchemy that transmutes it into blessing.

This love, this faith, Salina lacked. She fostered in their place that
selfishness and discontent which sour the soul. Every blow upon her
heart had hardened it. Every trial embittered and angered her. Hence the
swollen and flaming eyes, the impatient and scowling looks, with which
she met the returning Toby.

"Where is Virginia?"

"Dat I can't bery well say, Miss Salina," replied Toby, scratching his
woolly head. He would never sacrifice his family pride so far as to call
her Mrs. Sprowl.

"How dare you come back without her?" And she heaped upon him the
bitterest reproaches. It was he who, through his cowardice, had been the
cause of Virginia's night adventure. It was he who had ruined everything
by concealing her departure until it was too late. Then he might have
found her, if he had so resolved. But if he could not, why had he
remained absent all day?

Under this sharp fire of accusations Toby stood with ludicrous
indifference, grinning, and scratching his head. At length he scratched
out of it a little roll of paper that had been confided to his wool for
safe keeping, in case he should be seized and searched. It fell upon the
floor. He hastily snatched it up, and gave it, with obsequious alacrity,
to Mrs. Sprowl. She took, unrolled it, and read. It was a pencilled note
in the handwriting of Virginia.

"Dear Sister: Thanks to a kind Providence and to kind friends, we are
safe. I was rescued last night from the most frightful dangers in the
burning woods. I had come, without your knowledge, to get news of our
dear father. I am now with him. He has excellent shelter, and devoted
attendants; but the comforts of his home are wanting, and I have learned
how much he is dependent upon us for his happiness. For this reason I
shall remain with him as long as I can. To relieve your mind we send
Toby back to you. V."

That evening Captain Sprowl entered the house of the absent Mr. Villars
with the air of one who had just come into possession of that little
piece of property. He nodded with satisfaction at the walls, glanced
approvingly at the furniture, curved his lip rather contemptuously at
the books (as much as to say, "I'll sell off all that sort of rubbish"),
and expressed decided pleasure at sight of old Toby. "Worth eight
hundred dollars, that nigger is!" He had either forgotten that Mr.
Villars had given Toby his freedom, or he believed that, under the new
order of things, in a confederacy founded on slavery, such gifts would
not be held valid.

"Well, Sallie, my girl,"--throwing himself into the old clergyman's easy
chair,--"here we are at home! Bring me the bootjack, Toby."

"I don't know about your being at home!" said Salina, indignantly.

And it was evident that Toby did not know about bringing the bootjack.
He looked as if he would have preferred to jerk the chair from beneath
the sprawling Lysander, and break it over him.

"I suppose Toby has told you the news? Awful news! a fearful
dispensation of Providence! Pepperill came in this afternoon and
confirmed it. We thought he had deserted, but it appears he had only got
lost in the woods. He reports some dead bodies in a ravine, and his
account tallies very well with Toby's. We'll wear mourning, of course,
Sallie."

Lysander stroked his chin. Mrs. Lysander tapped the floor with her
impatient foot, gnawed her lip, and scowled.

"Come, my dear!" said the captain, coaxingly; "we may as well understand
each other. Times is changed. I tell ye, I'm going to be one of the big
men under the new government. Now, Sal, see here. I'm your husband, and
there's no getting away from it. And what's the use of getting away from
it, even if we could? Let's settle down, and be respectable. We've had
quarrels enough, and I've got tired of 'em. Toby, why don't you bring
that bootjack?"

Lysander swung his chair around towards Salina. She turned hers away
from him, still knitting her brows and gnawing that disdainful lip.

"Now what's the use, Sal? Since the way is opened for us to live
together again, why can't you make up your mind to it, let bygones be
bygones, and begin life over again? When I was a poor devil, dodging the
officers, and never daring to see you except in the dark, I couldn't
blame you for feeling cross with me; for it was a cursed miserable state
of things. But you're a captain's wife now. You'll be a general's wife
by and by. I shall be off fighting the battles of my country, and you'll
be proud to hear of my exploits."

Salina was touched. Weary of the life she led, morbidly eager for
change, she was a secessionist from the first, and had welcomed the war.
Moreover, strange as it may seem, she loved this worthless Lysander. She
hated him for the misery he had caused her; she was exceedingly bitter
against him; yet love lurked under all. She was secretly proud to see
him a captain. It was hard to forgive him for all the wrongs she had
suffered; but her heart was lonely, and it yearned for reconciliation.
Her scornful lip quivered, and there was a convulsive movement in her
throat.

"Go away!" she exclaimed, violently, as he approached to caress her. "I
am as unhappy as I can be! O, if I had never seen you! Why do you come
to torture me now?"

This passion pleased Lysander: it was a sign that her spirit was
breaking. He caught her in his arms, called her pet names, laughed, and
kissed her. And this woman, after all, loved to be called pet names, and
kissed.

"Toby! you devil!" roared Lysander, "why don't you bring that bootjack?"

The old negro stood behind the door, with the bootjack in his hand,
furious, ready to hurl it at the captain's head. He hesitated a moment,
then turned, discreetly, and flung it out of the kitchen window.

"Ain't a bootjack nowars in de house, sar!"

"Then come here yourself!"

And the gay captain made a bootjack of the old negro.

"Now shut up the house and go to bed!" he said, dismissing him with a
kick.

After Toby had retired, and Salina had wiped her eyes, and Lysander had
got his feet comfortably installed in the old clergyman's slippers, the
long-estranged couple grew affectionate and confidential.

"Law, Sallie!" said the captain, caressingly, "we can be as happy as two
pigs in clover!" And he proceeded to interpret, in plain prosaic detail,
those blissful possibilities expressed by the choice poetic figure.

It was evident to Salina that all his domestic plans were founded on the
supposition that the slippers he had on were the dead man's shoes he had
been waiting for. Was she shocked by this cold, atrocious spirit of
calculation? At first she was; but since she had begun to pardon his
faults, she could easily overlook that. She, who had lately been so
spiteful and bitter, was now all charity towards this man. Even the
image of her blind and aged father faded from her mind; even the pure
and beautiful image of her sister grew dim; and the old, revivified
attachment became supreme. Shall we condemn the weakness? Or shall we
pity it, rather? So long her affections had been thwarted! So long she
had carried that lonely and hungry heart! So long, like a starved, sick
child, it had fretted and cried, till now, at last, nurture and warmth
made it grateful and glad! A babe is a sacred thing; and so is love. But
if you starve and beat them? Perhaps Salina's unhappiness of temper owed
its development chiefly to this cause. No wonder, then, that we find her
melancholy, morbid, unreasonable, and now so ready to cling again to
this wretch, this scamp, her husband, forgiving all, forgetting all (for
the moment at least), in the wild flood of love and tears that drowned
the past.

"O, yes! I do think we can be happy!" she said--"if you will only be
kind and good to me! If not here, why, then, somewhere else; for place
is of no consequence; all I want is love."

"Ah!" said Lysander, knocking the ashes from his cigar, "but I have a
fancy for this place! And what should we leave it for?"

"Because--you know--there is no certainty--I believe father is alive
yet, and well."

"Not unless Toby lied to me!--Did he?"

"Pshaw! you can't place any reliance on what Toby says!"--evasively.

"But I tell you Pepperill confirms his report about the dead bodies in
the ravine! Now, what do you know to the contrary?" Lysander appeared
very much excited, and a quarrel was imminent. Salina dreaded a quarrel.
She broke into a laugh.

"The truth is, Toby did fool you. He couldn't help bragging to me about
it."

O Toby, Toby! that little innocent vanity of yours is destined to cost
you, and others besides you, very dear! Lysander sprang upon his feet;
his eyes sparkled with rage. Salina saw that it was now too late to keep
the secret from him; there was no way but to tell him all. She showed
Virginia's note. Virginia and her father alive and safe--that was what
maddened Lysander!

But where were they?

Salina could not answer that question; for the most she had been able to
get out of Toby was only a vague hint that they were hidden somewhere in
a cave.

"No matter!" said Lysander, with a diabolical laugh showing his clinched