_CONDEMNED TO DEATH._
Early the next morning Virginia Villars overheard the soldiers
conversing on the piazza. The mention of a certain name arrested her
attention. She listened: what they said terrified her. Penn Hapgood had
been apprehended during the night, and his trial by drum-head
court-martial was at that moment proceeding.
"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.
"Feller-citizens and soldiers!" cried Lieutenant Ropes, standing on a
chair beside the scaffold, "this here man has jest been proved to be a
traitor and a spy, and he is about to expatiate his guilt on the
gallus."
Two men then mounted the table, passed the noose over Penn's neck, drew
it close, and leaped down again.
"Now," said Ropes, "if you've got any confession to make 'fore the table
is jerked out from under ye, you can ease your mind. Only le' me
suggest, if you don't mean to confess, you'd better hold yer tongue."
Penn, pale, but perfectly self-possessed, expecting no mercy, no
reprieve, made answer in a clear, strong voice,--
"I can't confess, for I am not guilty. I die an innocent man. I appeal
to Heaven, before whose bar we must all appear, for the justice you deny
me."
In his shirt sleeves, his head uncovered, his feet bare, his naked
throat enclosed by the murderous cord, his hands bound behind him, he
stood awaiting his fate. Carl in the mean time struggled in vain to
break through the ring of soldiers that surrounded the extemporized
scaffold,--screamed in vain to obtain a hearing.
"Let him go, and you may hang me in his place!"
The soldiers answered with a brutal laugh,--as if there would be any
satisfaction in hanging him! But the offer of self-sacrifice on the part
of the devoted Carl touched one heart, at least. Penn, who had
maintained a firm demeanor up to this time, was almost unmanned by it.
"God bless you, dear Carl! Remember that I loved you. Be always honest
and upright; then, if you die the victim of wrong, it will be your
oppressors, not you, who will be most unhappy. Good by, dear Carl. Bear
my farewell to those we love. Don't stay and see me die, I entreat you!"
Yet Carl staid, sobbing with grief and rage.
"Why don't you hurry up this business?" cried Lysander Sprowl, angrily,
coming out of the school-house. "Somebody tie a handkerchief over his
eyes, and get through some time to-day."
"All right, cap'm," said Ropes. "Make ready now, boys, and take away
this table in a hurry, when I give the word."
"Hold on, there! What's going on?" cried an unexpected voice, and a
recruiting officer from the village made his appearance, riding up on a
white horse.
The summary proceedings were stayed, and the case explained. The man
listened with an air of grim official importance, his coarse red
countenance betraying not a gleam of sympathy with the prisoner. Yet
being the superior in rank to any officer present (Silas called him
"kunnel"), besides being the only one of them all who had been regularly
commissioned by the confederate government, this man held Penn's fate in
his hands.
"Hanging's too good for such scoundrels!" he said, frowning at the
prisoner. "As for this particular case, there's only one thing to be
said: his life shall be spared on only one condition."
Carl's heart almost stood still, in his eagerness to listen. Even Penn
felt a faint--a very faint--pulse of hope in his breast. The "kunnel"
went on.
"Let him take his choice--either to hang, or enlist. What do you say,
youngster? Which do you prefer--the death of a traitor, or the glorious
career of a soldier in the confederate army?"
"It is impossible for me, sir," said Penn, in a voice of deep feeling
and unalterable conviction--"it is impossible for me to bear arms
against my country!"
"But the Confederate States shall be your country, and a country to be
proud of!" said the man.
"I am a citizen of the United States; to the United States I owe
allegiance," said Penn. "So far from being a traitor, I am willing to
die rather than appear one."
"Then you won't enlist?"
"No, sir."
"Not even to save your life?"
"Not even to save my life!"
"Then," growled the man, turning away, "if you will be such a fool, I've
nothing more to say."
So it only remained for Penn to submit quietly to his fate. The
executioners laid hold of the table, and waited for the order to remove
it.
But just then Carl, breaking through the crowd, threw himself before the
officer's horse.
"O, Colonel Derring! hear me--von vord!"
"Von vord!" repeated the officer, with a coarse laugh, mocking him.
"What's that, you Dutchman?"
"You vill let him go, and I shall wolunteer in his place!" said Carl.
"You!" The officer regarded him critically. Carl, though so young, was
very sturdy. "You offer yourself as a substitute, eh, if I will spare
his life?"
"Carl!" cried Penn, "I forbid you! You shall not commit that sin for me!
Better a thousand times that I should die than that you should be a
rebel in arms against your country."
"I have no country," answered Carl, ingeniously excusing himself. "I am
vot this man says, a Tuchman. I vill enlisht mit him, and he vill shpare
your life."
"Boy, it's a bargain," said Colonel Derring, whose passion for obtaining
recruits overruled every other consideration. "Cut that fellow's cords,
lieutenant, and let him go. Come along with me, Dutchy."
Ropes obeyed, and Penn, bewildered, almost stunned, by the sudden change
in his destiny, saw himself released, and beheld, as in a dream, poor
Carl marching off as his substitute to the recruiting station.
"Now let me give you one word of advice," said Captain Sprowl in his
ear. "Don't let another night find you within twenty miles of that
halter there, if you wouldn't have your neck in it again."
"Will you give me a safe conduct?" said Penn, who thought the advice
excellent, and would have been only too glad to act upon it.
"I've no authority," said Sprowl. "You must take care of yourself."
Penn looked around upon the ferocious, disappointed faces watching him,
and felt that he might about as well have been despatched in the first
place, as to be let loose in the midst of such a pack of wolves
thirsting for his blood. He did not despair, however, but, putting on
his clothes, determined to make one final and desperate effort to
escape.