"Mr. Pepperill!" she called, in a scarcely audible whisper; and, looking around, Daniel saw her alarmed face at the window.
Daniel was one of the soldiers who had been detailed to guard the house. Strongly against his will, he had been compelled to enlist, in order to avoid the persecutions of his secession neighbors. Such was already becoming the fate of many whose hearts were not in the cause, whose sympathies were all with the government against which they were forced to rebel.
"What, marm?" said Pepperill, meekly.
"Is it true what that man is saying?"
"About the schoolmaster? I—I'm afeard it ar true! They've cotched him, marm, and there's men that's swore the death of him, marm."
Virginia flew to inform her father. The old man rose up instantly, forgetting his blindness, forgetting his own feebleness, and the danger into which he would have rushed, to go and plead Penn's cause.
Fortunately, perhaps, for him, the guard crossed their muskets before him, refusing to let him pass. Their orders were, not only to defend the house, but also to prevent his leaving it.
"Then I will go alone!" said Carl, who was to have been his guide. And scarcely waiting to receive instructions from Virginia and her father, he ran out, slipping between the soldiers, who had no orders to detain any person but the minister, and ran to the Academy.
The mockery of a trial was over. The prisoner had been condemned. The penalty pronounced against him was death. Already the noose was dangling from a tree, and some soldiers were bringing from the school-house a table to serve as a scaffold. Silas Ropes, who had a feather stuck in his cap, and wore an old rusty scabbard at his side, and flourished a sword, enjoying the title of "lieutenant," obtained for him through Bythewood's influence; Lysander Sprowl, who had been honored with a captaincy from the same source, and who, though a forger, and late a fugitive from justice, now boldly defied the power of the civil authorities to arrest him, trusting to that atrocious policy of the confederate government which virtually proclaimed to the robber and murderer, "Become, now, a traitor to your country, and all other crimes shall be forgiven you;"—these, and other persons of like character, appeared chiefly active in Penn's case. That they had no right whatever to constitute themselves a court-martial, and bring him to trial, they knew perfectly well. They had not waited even for a shadow of authority from their commanding officer. What they were about to do was nothing more nor less than murder.
Penn, with his hands tied behind him, and surrounded by a violent rabble, some armed, and others unarmed, was already mounted upon the table, when Carl arrived, and attempted to force his way through the crowd.