"What is the trouble?" asked the old man, who was lying on some blankets spread for him there in the shade.
Before Penn could reply, Silas Ropes and six men came rushing down upon them. Stackridge had been out-generalled. Whilst he and his men were being diverted by a feigned attack in front, two different parties had been despatched by circuitous routes to get in his rear. In executing the part of the plan intrusted to him, Ropes had unexpectedly come upon the schoolmaster and his companion. A minute later both were seized and dragged up from the bed of the torrent.
"Ye don't escape me this time!" said Silas, with brutal exultation. "Tie him up to the tree thar; serve the old one the same. We can't be bothered with prisoners."
"What are you going to do to that helpless, blind old man?" cried Penn. "Do what you please with me; I expect no mercy,—I ask none. But I entreat you, respect his gray hair!"
The appeal seemed to have some effect even on the savage-hearted Silas. He glanced at his men: they were evidently of the opinion that the slaughter of the old clergyman was uncalled for.
"Wal, tie the old ranter, and leave him. Quick work, boys. Got the schoolmaster fast?"
"All right," said the men.
"Wal, now stand back here, and les' have a little bayonet practice."
Penn knew very well what that meant. His clothes were stripped from him, in order to present a fair mark for the murderous steel; and he was bound to a tree.
"One at a time," said Silas. "Try your hand, Griffin.Charge—bayonet!"
In vain the old minister endeavored to make himself heard in his friend's behalf. He could only pray for him.
Penn saw the ferocious soldier springing towards him, the deadly bayonet thrust straight at his heart. In an instant the murder would have been done. But when within two paces of his victim, the steel almost touching his breast, Griffin uttered a yell, dropped his gun, flung up his hands, and fell dead at Penn's feet.
At the same moment a light curl of smoke was wafted from the heaped bowlders in the chasm above, and the echoes of a rifle-crack reverberated among the rocks.
The assassins were terror-struck. They looked all around; not a human being was in sight. Distant firing proclaimed that Stackridge and his men were still engaged. The death that struck down Griffin seemed to have fallen from heaven. They waited but a moment, then fled precipitately, leaving Penn still bound, but uninjured, with the dead rebel at his feet.
Then two figures came gliding swiftly down over the rocks. Penn uttered a cry of joy. It was Pomp and Cudjo.
Pomp came reloading his rifle, while Cudjo, knife in hand, flew at the cords that confined the schoolmaster.
In his gratitude to Heaven and his deliverers, Penn could have hugged that grotesque, half-savage creature to his heart. But no time was to be lost. Snatching the knife, he hastened to release the bewildered clergyman.
"Pomp, my noble fellow!" The negro turned from looking after the retreating rebels, with a gleam of triumph on his proud and lofty features: Penn wrung his hand. "You have twice saved my life—now let me ask one more favor of you! Take Mr. Villars to your cave—do for him what you have done for me. He is a much better Christian, and far more deserving of your kindness, than I ever was."
"And you?" said Pomp, quietly.
"I will take my chance with the others." And Penn in few words explained the occurrences of the night and morning.
Pomp shrugged his shoulders frowningly. The time was at hand when he and Cudjo could no longer enjoy in freedom their wild mountain life; even they must soon be drawn into the great deadly struggle. This he foresaw, and his soul was darkened for a moment.
"Cudjo! Shall we take this old man to our den?"
"No, no! Don't ye take nobody dar! on'y Massa Hapgood."
"But he is blind!" said Penn.
"Others will come after who are not blind," said Pomp, his brow still stern and thoughtful.
"My friends," interposed the old clergyman, mildly, "do nothing for me that will bring danger to yourselves, I entreat you!"
These unselfish words, spoken with serious and benignant aspect, touched the generous chords in Pomp's breast.
"Why should we blacks have anything to do with this quarrel?" he said with earnest feeling. "Your friends down there"—meaning Stackridge and his party—"are all slaveholders or pro-slavery men. Why should we care which side destroys the other?"
"There is a God," answered Mr. Villars, with a beaming light in his unterrified countenance, "who is not prejudiced against color; who loves equally his black and his white children; and who, by means of this war that seems so needless and so cruel, is working out the redemption, not of the misguided white masters only, but also of the slave. Whether you will or not, this war concerns the black man, and he cannot long keep out of it. Then will you side with your avowed enemies, or with those 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.
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, "Iknow 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.
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.
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 findus!"
"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.
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 forestabovethe 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.