_UNDER THE BRIDGE._
"The colonel wasn't aware of your sentiments," said Sprowl, "or he
wouldn't have let him off for fifty substitutes."
"Or if you and Ropes," retorted Bythewood, "had only put through the job
with the celerity I had a right to expect of you, he would have been
strung up before the colonel had a chance to interfere." And he puffed
impatiently a cloud of smoke, whose fragrance was wafted to the nostrils
of the listener under the planks.
"Well," said Lysander, accepting a cigar from his friend, "if he gets
out of the state,"--biting off the end of it,--"and never shows himself
here again,"--rubbing a match on the stones,--"you ought to be
satisfied. If he stays, or comes back,"--smoking,--"then we'll just
finish the little job we begun."
Penn lay still as death. What his thoughts were I will not attempt to
say; but it must have given him a curious sensation to hear the question
of his life or death thus coolly discussed by his would-be assassins
over their cigars.
"Where are you bound?" asked Lysander.
"O, a little pleasure excursion," said Bythewood. "There's to be some
lively work at home this evening, and I thought I'd better be away."
"What's going on?"
"The colonel is going to make some arrests. About fifteen or twenty
Union-shriekers will find themselves snapped up before they think of it.
Stackridge among the first. 'Twas he, confound him! that helped the
schoolmaster off."
"Has the colonel orders to make the arrests?"
"No, but he takes the responsibility. It's a military necessity, and the
government will bear him out in it. Every man that has been known to
drill in the Union Club, and has refused to deliver up his arms, must be
secured. There's no other way of putting down these dangerous fellows,"
said Augustus, running his jewelled fingers through his curls.
"But why do you prefer to be away when the fun is going on?"
"There may be somebody's name in the list on whose behalf I might be
expected to intercede."
"Not old Villars!" exclaimed Lysander.
"Yes, old Villars!" laughed Augustus,--"if by that lively epithet you
mean to designate your venerable father-in-law."
"By George, though, Gus! ain't it almost too bad? What will folks say?"
"Little care I! Old and blind as he is, he is really one of the most
dangerous enemies to our cause. His influence is great with a certain
class, and he never misses an opportunity to denounce secession. That he
openly talks treason, and harbors and encourages traitors arming against
the confederate government, is cause sufficient for arresting him with
the others."
"Really," said Sprowl, chuckling as he thought of it, "'twill be better
for our plans to have him out of the way."
"Yes," said Bythewood; "the girls will need protectors, and your wife
will welcome you back again."
"And Virginia," added Sprowl, "will perhaps look a little more favorably
on a rich, handsome, influential fellow like you! I see! I see!"
There was another who saw too,--a sudden flash of light, as it were,
revealing to Penn all the heartless, scheming villany of the
friendly-seeming Augustus. He grasped the Stackridge pistol; his eyes,
glaring in the dark, were fixed in righteous fury on the elegant curly
head.
"If I am discovered, I will surely shoot him!" he said within himself.
"The old man," suggested Sprowl, "won't live long in jail."
"Very well," said Bythewood. "If the girls come to terms, why, we will
secure their everlasting gratitude by helping him out. If they won't, we
will merely promise to do everything we can for him--and do nothing."
"And the property?" said Lysander, somewhat anxiously.
"You shall have what you can get of it,--I don't care for the property!"
replied Bythewood, with haughty contempt. "I believe the old man,
foreseeing these troubles, has been converting his available means into
Ohio railroad stock. If so, there won't be much for you to lay hold of
until we have whipped the north."
"That we'll do fast enough," said Lysander, confidently.
"Well, I must be travelling," said Augustus.
"And I must be looking for that miserable schoolmaster."
So saying the young men arose from their cool seats on the
stones,--Lysander placing his hand, to steady himself, on the edge of
the butment within an inch of Penn's leg.
Darkness, however, favored the fugitive; and they passed out from the
shadow of the bridge without suspecting that they had held confidential
discourse within arms' length of the man they were seeking to destroy.
They ascended the bank, mounted their horses, and took leave of each
other,--Bythewood and his black man riding north, while Sprowl hastened
to rejoin his companions in the search for the schoolmaster.