"He must have been the man!" said Lysander, suddenly stopping his horse. "What sort of a chap was with him? Did he look like a Union-shrieker?"
"Now I think of it," said Penn, "if that man wasn't a Unionist at heart, I am greatly mistaken. His sympathies are with the Lincolnites, I know by his looks!" He neglected to add, however, that the man was black.
Sprowl was excited.
"It was some tory, piloting the schoolmaster! Boys, we must wheel about! It never'll do for us to go home as long as we can hear of him alive in the state. Remember the pay promised, if we catch him."
"Luck to you!" cried Penn, riding on, while Sprowl turned back in ludicrous pursuit of his own worthy friend, Mr. Augustus Bythewood, and his negro man Sam.
Penn lost no time laughing at the joke. His heart was too full of trouble for that. It had seemed to him, at each moment of delay, that the blind old minister was even then being torn from his home—that he could hear Virginia's sobs of distress and cries for help. He urged his horse into a gallop once more, and struck into a path across the fields. He rode to the edge of the orchard, dismounted, tied the horse, and hastened on foot to the house.
The guard was gone from the piazza, and all seemed quiet about the premises. The kitchen was dark. He advanced quickly, but noiselessly, to the door. It was open. He went in.
"Toby!" No answer. "Carl! Carl!" he called in a louder voice. No Carl replied. Then he remembered—what it seemed so strange that he could even for an instant forget—that Carl was in the rebel ranks, for his sake.
He had seen a light in the sitting-room. He found the door, and knocked. No answer came. He opened it softly, and entered. There burned the lamp on the table—there stood the vacant chairs—he was alone in the deserted room.
"Virginia!"