Cudjo's Cave Part 20

"G.o.d bless you, dear Carl! Remember that I loved you. Be always honest and upright; then, if you die the victim of wrong, it will be your oppressors, not you, who will be most unhappy. Good by, dear Carl. Bear my farewell to those we love. Don't stay and see me die, I entreat you!"

Yet Carl staid, sobbing with grief and rage.

"Why don't you hurry up this business?" cried Lysander Sprowl, angrily, coming out of the school-house. "Somebody tie a handkerchief over his eyes, and get through some time to-day."

"All right, cap'm," said Ropes. "Make ready now, boys, and take away this table in a hurry, when I give the word."

"Hold on, there! What's going on?" cried an unexpected voice, and a recruiting officer from the village made his appearance, riding up on a white horse.

The summary proceedings were stayed, and the case explained. The man listened with an air of grim official importance, his coa.r.s.e red countenance betraying not a gleam of sympathy with the prisoner. Yet being the superior in rank to any officer present (Silas called him "kunnel"), besides being the only one of them all who had been regularly commissioned by the confederate government, this man held Penn's fate in his hands.

"Hanging's too good for such scoundrels!" he said, frowning at the prisoner. "As for this particular case, there's only one thing to be said: his life shall be spared on only one condition."

Carl's heart almost stood still, in his eagerness to listen. Even Penn felt a faint--a very faint--pulse of hope in his breast. The "kunnel"

went on.

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

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

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

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

"Then you won't enlist?"

"No, sir."

"Not even to save your life?"

"Not even to save my life!"

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

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

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

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

"Von vord!" repeated the officer, with a coa.r.s.e laugh, mocking him.

"What's that, you Dutchman?"

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

"You!" The officer regarded him critically. Carl, though so young, was very st.u.r.dy. "You offer yourself as a subst.i.tute, eh, if I will spare his life?"

"Carl!" cried Penn, "I forbid you! You shall not commit that sin for me!

Better a thousand times that I should die than that you should be a rebel in arms against your country."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIX.

_THE ESCAPE._

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

He soon perceived that he was followed. A man--only one--came through the undergrowth. Penn stopped. "G.o.d forgive me!" he said within himself; "but this is more than human nature can bear!" He had been, as it were, smitten on one cheek and on the other also: it was time to smite back.

He picked up a club: his nerves became like steel as he grasped it: his eyes flashed fire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, for the last time, he made Penn the offer of a pistol. There was no leisure for idle arguments on the subject. The weapon was accepted.

The two wrung each other's hands in silence: there were tears in the eyes of both. Then Stackridge gave Dobbin a resounding slap, and the horse bounded away, bearing his rider swiftly out of sight in the woods.