He started at his own voice, which sounded, in the hollow apartment, like the whisper of a ghost.
He was proceeding still farther, wondering at the stillness, terrified by his own forebodings, feeling in his appalled heart the contrast between this night, and this strange, furtive visit, and the happy nights, and the many happy visits, he had made to his dear friends there only a few short months before,—pausing to assure himself that he was not walking in a dream,—when he heard a footstep, a flutter, and saw, spring towards him through the door, pale as an apparition, Virginia. Speechless with emotion, she could not utter his name, but she testified the joy with which she welcomed him by throwing herself, not into his arms, but upon them, as he extended his hands to greet her.
"What has happened?" said Penn.
"O, my father!" said the girl. And she bowed her face upon his arm, clinging to him as if he were her brother, her only support.
"Where is he?" asked Penn, alarmed, and trembling with sympathy for that delicate, agitated, fair young creature, whom sorrow had so changed since he saw her last.
"They have taken him—the soldiers!" she said.
And by these words Penn knew that he had come too late.