Cudjo's Cave

by J. T. Trowbridge

XIII.

THE OLD CLERGYMAN'S NIGHTGOWN HAS AN ADVENTURE.

Where, then, all this time, was Penn? He was himself almost as profoundly ignorant on that subject as anybody. For two or three hours he had been lost to himself no less than to his friends.

When he recovered his consciousness he found that he was lying on the ground, in the open air, in what seemed a barren field, covered with rocks and stunted shrubs.

How he came there he did not know. He had nothing on but his night-dress,—a loan from the old clergyman,—besides a blanket wrapped about him. His feet were bare, and he now perceived that they were painfully aching.

Almost too weak to lift a hand to his head, he yet tried to sit up and look around him. All was darkness; not a sign of human habitation, not a twinkling light was visible. The cold night wind swept over him, sighing drearily among the leafless bushes. Chilled, shivering, his temples throbbing, his brain sick and giddy, he sat down again upon the rocks, so ill and suffering that he could scarcely feel astonishment at his situation, or care whether he lived or died.

Where had he been during those hours of oblivion? He seemed to have slept, and to have had terrible dreams. Could he have remembered these dreams, it seemed to him that the whole mystery of his removal to this desolate spot would be explained. And he knew that it required but an effort of his will to remember them. But his soul was too weak: he could not make the effort.

To get upon his feet and walk was impossible. What, then, was left him but to perish here, alone, uncared for, unconsoled by a word of love from any human being? Death he would have welcomed as a relief from his sufferings. Yet when he thought of his home far away, in the peaceful community of Friends, of his parents and sisters now anxiously expecting his return,—and again when he remembered the hospitable roof under which he lay, so tenderly nursed, but a little while ago, and thought of the blind old clergyman, of Virginia fresh as a rose, of kind-hearted Carl, and the affectionate old negro,—he was stung with the desire to live, and he called feebly,—

"Toby! Toby!"

Was his cry heard? Surely, there were footsteps on the rocks! And was not that a human form moving dimly between him and the sky? It passed on, and was lost in the shadows of the pines. Was it some animal, or only a phantom of his feverish brain?