University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
THE HUNTED SOLDIER.

THE sun was just rising, and his red beams gilded
the summits of the Alleghany Mountains, which
in the glory of the early morning seemed as calm
and peaceful as if their lofty heights had never looked

down upon scenes of carnage and strife, or their tangled
passes and dark ravines sheltered poor, starving, frightened
wretches, fleeing for their lives, and braving death
in any form rather than be recaptured by their merciless
pursuers. There were several of these miserable men
hiding in the mountain passes now, prisoners escaped
from Salisbury and other points, but our story now has to
do with but one, and that a young man, with a look of
determination in his eye, and the courage of a Samson in
his heart. He had suffered incredible hardships since the
day of his capsure. He had been stripped at once of his
handsome uniform by the brutal Texans, who found him
upon the field. His gold, which he carried about his person
into every battle, had been taken from him, and in this
condition he had been sent from one prison to another,
until Salisbury received him. At first he had suffered
but little mentally, for the ball which struck him down
had left him with his reason impaired, and to him it was
all the same whether friend or foe had him in keeping.
Deprived of everything which could mark his rank as an
officer, and always insisting that his name was “Rose,”
he passed for a demented creature, whom the brutal soldiery
delighted to torment. Gradually, however, his reason
came back, and he woke to the full horrors of his condition.
Then, like a caged lion he chafed and fumed, and
resolved to be free. He could not die there, knowing that
far away there was a blithesome little woman waiting for
his coming, if, indeed, she had not ceased to think of him
as among the living,—a state of things which he thought
very probable, as he became aware of the fact that no one
of his companions was acquainted with his real name. Rose
was the only cognomen by which he was known, and the
proud man shivered every time he heard that dear name
uttered by the coarse, jesting lips around him. A horrid
suit of dirty grey had been given him in place of the stolen
uniform, and though at first he rebelled against the
filthy garments, he began ere long to think how they
might aid him in his escape, inasmuch as they were the
garb of the Confederates. Day and night he studied the
best means of escape, until at last the attempt was made,
and he stood one dark, rainy night, out on the highway
a free man, breathing the pure breath of heaven, and ready
to sell his life at any cost rather than go back again
to the prison he had left. He had put his trust in God,
and God had raised him up a friend at once, who had
seen him leave the prison, and greatly aided him in his
escape, just as he had aided others, knowing the while
that by so doing he was putting his own life in jeopardy.
But a staunch Unionist at heart, he was willing to brave
everything for the cause, and it was through his instrumentality
and minute directions that Will Mather had
finally reached the shelter of the mountains which separate
North Carolina from Tennessee. He had found friends
all along the route, true, loyal men, who had periled their
lives for him; brave tender women, whose hands had
ministered so kindly to his wants, and who had so cheerfully
divided with him their scanty meals, even though
hunger was written upon their thin, haggard faces, and
stared in their sunken eyes. And Will had taken down
each name, and registered a vow that if ever he reached
the North, these noble self-denying people should be rewarded,
andif possible removed from a neighborhood
where they suffered so much from privation and from the
hands of their former friends, who, suspecting their sentiments,
heaped upon them every possible abuse. Ragged,
bareheaded, footsore and worn, he came at last, at the
close of a June day, to the entrance of a cave in the hills
to which he had been directed, and where, on the damp
earth, he slept so soundly from fatigue and exhaustion
that the morning sun was shining through the entrance
to the cave, and a robin, on a shrub growing near, was
trilling its morning song ere he awoke. The air, though
damp from the water which trickled through the rocks,
was close and stifling, and Will crept cautiously out from
his hiding-place, and sitting down upon the ground
drank in the beauty and stillness of the summer morning.
Exactly where he was he did not know, but he felt certain
that his face was toward the land where the Stars
and Stripes were waving, and a thrill of joy ran through
his veins as he thought of home and Rose, whose eyes by
this time had grown so dim with looking for him. “God
take me safely to her,” he whispered, when up the mountain
side came the sound of voices and the tramp of feet.
Creeping to the farthest side of the cave, and crawling
down beneath the shelving rock where the cool waters
were dripping, he hoped to avoid being seen. Up to
this moment Will's courage had never flagged, but now,
when the Federal lines were not many miles away, and
Rose and home seemed certain, he felt a great pang of
fear, and his white lips whispered, “God pity me! God
help me, God save me, for his own glory, if not for Rose's
sake,” then, knee-deep in the pool of water, he stood with
his body nearly double, while the voices and the feet came
nearer, and at last stopped directly in front of his hiding
place.

There were terrible oaths outside, and bitter denunciations
were breathed against any luckless Union man
who might be lurking near, and then the light from the
entrance of the cave was wholly obscured, and Will saw
that a man's back was against the opening, as if some
one were sitting there. Did they know of the cave?
Would they come in there, and if they did would they
find him? Will kept asking himself these questions,

and his breath came gaspingly as he knew that the man
whose back barred the entrance to his hiding-place was
the bitterest in his invectives against the Yankees, and
the most anxious to find them. Something in his voice
and language indicated both education and position superior
to his companions, who evidently looked up to
him as their leader, calling him “Square,” and acquiescing
readily when, after the lapse of ten or fifteen minutes, he
suggested that they go higher up the mountain to a
gorge where some of the fugitives had heretofore taken
refuge.

Five minutes more and the footsteps and voices were
heard far up the mountain, and Will breathed more
freely again, and kneeling down in the pool of water,
thanked God who had turned the danger aside, and kept
him a little longer. He did not dare leave the cave, but
he came out from under the rock, and stretching himself
upon the ground tried to wring and dry the tatters
which hung so loosely upon him.

It was two days since he had tasted food, and the long
fast began to make itself felt in the keen pangs of hunger.
Surely he could venture out toward the close of
the day, he thought, and see if there were not berries
growing in the ledges, and when the sun was setting he
crawled to the mouth of the cavern, where just in the
best place for him to see it lay a huge corn-cake and
slice of bacon, wrapped nicely in a bit of paper.

How it came there he did not stop to ask. That it
was there was sufficient for him then, and never had the
costliest dinner, served on massive silver, tasted to him
half so well as did that bit of bacon with the coarse cornbread.

Refreshed and encouraged he went back to his hiding-place,
intending to start again on his perilous journey

when the mountain path grew dark enough to warrant
him in doing so. But soon after the sunsetting a fearful
storm came up, and in the pitchy darkness of the cave
Will listened to the bellowing thunder roaring through
the mountain gorges, and saw from the opening the
forked lightning which struck more than one tall tree
near the place of his concealment. Fed by the rain
which had fallen in torrents, the stream under the projecting
rock was beginning to rise and spread itself over
the surface of the cave. It was up to his ankles now,
and it rose so rapidly that Will was thinking of leaving
the cave and groping his way as well as he could to the
westward, when his quick ear caught the sound as of
two or more persons coming stealthily up the mountain
side. Whoever they were they seemed to move
with the utmost caution, and Will's heart beat high as
he hoped it might be some brother fugitives seeking the
shelter of the cave. The gleam of a lantern, however,
and the same voice he had heard in the morning cursing
the Yankees so bitterly dispelled that illusion, and in a
tremor of terror he drew back in his watery quarters,
crawling in the darkness to the farthest end of the cavern,
and feeling the rising water flow over his knees as
he waited for what might come next.

“Stay here, Charlie, while I go in. I know he must
be here, and if he isn't drowned by this time it's just a
special Providence, that's all I have to say.”

Surely that was no unfriendly voice, notwithstanding
the oaths of the morning, but still Will did not move
until the stranger, who evidently knew every turn and
nook of the cavern, was so near to him that the light
from the dark lantern fell full upon his face and
betrayed him at once. There was a thought of Rose,
and the freedom he had almost regained, and then forgetting

the friendly tones, Will gave a low, bitter moan,
and stretching out his hands, said imploringly,

“Kill me here as well as anywhere, and let the suspense
be ended.”

“Kill you, my boy?” and the stranger spoke cheerily
as he bent over poor Will and rubbed his clammy hands.
“What should I kill you for? I've had my eyes on you
ever since yesterday evening, when I saw you creeping
under the brushwood, and knew you were hunting for
this cave. The `Refuge of Safety,' I call it, and it has
proved so to many a poor devil who like yourself has
taken shelter here. I have never known one to fail of
reaching the happy land when once they got so far as
this, so cheer up, my man. Paul Haverill can swear a
string of swears about the Yanks which will reach from
here to Richmond, if necessary, and then when the
hounds are thrown off the track he can turn round and
save the poor hunted rascal's life. You are among your
friends, so come out from this puddle. You must be
wetter than a rat. There's a spring under the rocks,
and it rises in a rain so as to fill the cave sometimes.
Here, Charlie, give us that shawl, his teeth are fairly
chattering.”

Thus talking, the stranger, who had announced himself
as Paul Haverill, led Will out to where the boy
Charlie stood, holding a bright plaid shawl in his hand,
and looking curiously at the worn, drooping, sorry figure
emerging from the cave. It was a woman's shawl,
Will knew, but it was very soft and warm, and he wrapt
it closely round him, for he was shaking with cold, and
his tattered garments were wringing wet. Very few
words were spoken, and those in a whisper, as they went
cautiously down the mountain until they reached what
seemed to be a road winding among the hills. This

they did not follow, but, striking into the field or pasture
land beside it, kept to the right, and at a safe distance
from it, lest some straggler might be abroad, and meet
them face to face. Will Mather was enough acquainted
with Southern customs not to be surprised to find here
in the mountain wilds a substantial and even handsome-looking
building, which, with its white walls and green
blinds, seemed much like the farm-houses in New England.
There was a light shining from the windows, and
a woman's brisk step was heard as they went toward the
door; Paul Haverill coughing, to give warning of his approach.

“All right!” was the pass-word by which they entered,
and Will soon stood in the wide hall which ran through
the entire building, and opened in the rear upon a broad
piazza.

“Better take him to Miss Maude's room,” the woman
said, and Will followed on to an upper chamber, which,
he would have known at once belonged to a young lady.

It was not as elegantly furnished as his own sleeping
apartment at home, but it bore unmistakable marks of
taste and refinement; while the air of pure gentle womanhood,
which pervaded it, brought Rose very vividly
before him.

“This is my niece's room, Maude De Vere,” Mr. Haverill
explained, when they were alone, and Will was drying
himself before the fire, kindled by the woman who
had admitted them, and who, Will saw, was a mulatto.
“My niece is not at home now,” he continued. “She is
in South Carolina; has been gone several months on a
visit to old Judge Tunbridge, her mother's uncle. I'm
her mother's brother, and she and the boy Charlie have
lived with me since the first year of the war. Their father
was Captain De Vere, from North Carolina, and was

killed at the first Bull Run. Nelly, their mother, never
held up her head after that. I was with her when she
died, and brought the children home. Maude is twenty
now, and Charlie fourteen. I am their guardian.
Maude is Union, Charlie secesh, but safe. They have a
great deal of property here and there, though how it
will come through the war, the Lord only knows.”

Will was glad to see that his host was inclined to talk
on without waiting for answers, and he kept quiet, while
Mr. Haverill continued:

“I dare say you wonder to find a chap like me among
people who are so bitter against you Yankees, and I
sometimes wonder at myself. I am South Carolina born,
and ought to be foremost in the rebellion; but hanged if
I can see that it is right. Why, I might as well set
up a government of my own, here on the Oak Plantation,
and refuse to come under any civilized laws Mind,
though, I don't think the South all wrong,—not a bit of
it. The North did bully us, and the election of Mr. Lincoln
was particularly obnoxious to the majority here,
but we had no right to secede, and you did your duty
trying to drive us back. For a spell I kept quiet,—didn't
take either side; or if I did, I wanted the South to beat,
as all my interests are here. But when our folks got to
abusing their prisoners so shamefully, and told so many
lies by way of deceiving us fellows who live among the hills
and only get the news once or twice a week, I changed
my politics, and after the day when I found one of my
neighbors, and the best man that ever breathed, too,
hung to a tree like a dog, with the word `Abolitionist'
pinned to his coat, I made a vow that every energy I
had should be given to caring for and helping just such
wretches as you, and if I've helped one I've helped a

thousand. Why, at least a hundred have slept in this
very room,—Maude's room; for, as I told you, she is
Union to the backbone, and led one chap across the
mountain herself. She is a regular Di Vernon, and is
not afraid of the very de'il. When she went away she
bade me put them in here, as the room least liable to
suspicion. To the folks around me I am the roughest
kind of a Secessionist, and I suppose nobody can beat
me swearing about the Yankees, just to hoodwink 'em,
you know. I suppose that's wrong; my wife would say
so; she was a saint when she was here,—she is an angel
now. Shedied five years ago,—before the war broke out;
and Lois, the woman you saw, has been my housekeeper
since. I shouldn't like the North to take her from me.
They tried it once,—when a squad of 'em ransacked my
house,—and I was sick in bed. Maude threatened to
blow their brains out: and, sir, she would have done it,
too, if the scamps hadn't let Lois alone.

“I don't agree with your folks on the nigger question,
though none of mine has run away since the Proclamation,
which I did not like. They know, too, they are
free, or will be when the Yankees come, for I took pains
to tell them, and gave them liberty to cut stick for the
Federal lines as soon as they pleased; but they staid, and
great help I find them in the business I'm carrying on.
They are constantly on the lookout for runaways or refugees,
and are quite as good as bloodhounds to scent one.
They told me about you, and I watched and saw you go
into that cave, which is on my land, and which few know
about, or if they do they think it a springhole, and never
dream that anybody can hide in there. Somebody else
must have seen you, too, for word came that a man was
hiding in the mountains, and as the acknowledged leader
of as hard a set as ever hunted a Yankee, I went with

'em to find you, and carried in my pocket that bacon
and corn bread which I managed to drop into the cave
when I sat with my back against it. I knew you must
be hungry, and it might be some time before I could
come to your aid. We didn't find the chap; but to-morrow
they'll be at it again, and so, while I help 'em hunt
for a man about your build, you will stay in the room
in Lois's charge. Maude has a good many gimcracks
here, such as books and things, which may amuse you.
She is coming home by and by. The house is very different
then. You ought to see Maude. We are very
proud of her. That's her picture, only not half so good-looking,”
and he pointed to a small oil painting hanging
above the mantel.

It was a splendid head, and the glossy black hair
bound about it in heavy braids gave it a still more regal
look. The eyes, too, were black, but very soft and gentle
in their expression, though something about them
gave the impression that they might flash and blaze brilliantly
under excitement. It was a beautiful face, and
Will did not wonder that his host was proud of
his niece,—prouder even than of the pale-faced, delicate
boy, who next day, while the hunt for the runaway went
on among the mountains, tried to entertain Will Mather
by telling him of his old home in North Carolina, and
how happy they were there before the war came and
took his father away.

“I don't see it in the light Uncle Paul and sister do,”
Charlie said. “I don't want them to catch and torment
the prisoners, or murder folks who don't think as they
do; but I do want our side to succeed, and when I hear
of a victory I say `Hurrah for the Confederacy!' I can't
help it when I think of father, who was killed by the
Yankees, and all the trouble the war has brought. I'm

willing to work like a dog for the refugees and prisoners,
and I'd die sooner than betray one, but if I was a man
I'd join Mr. Davis's army sure.”

The pale face of the boy was flushed all over, and his
dark eyes burned with Southern fire as he frankly
avowed his sentiments, and Will Mather could not repress
a smile at this noble specimen of a Southern rebel.

“I like you, my boy, for your frankness,” he said,
“and when the war is over, I shall have to send for you
to come North and be cured of your treason.”

“It is not treason,” and the boy stamped his girlish
foot. “It is not treason any more than the views held
by the Revolutionary soldiers. Didn't the colonies secede
from England, and does anybody call Washington a
traitor now? I tell you it is success which decides the
nature of the thing. If we succeed, future historians will
speak of us as patriots, as a persecuted people, who gave
our lives in defence of our homes and firesides.”

“You won't succeed, my poor boy. The Confederacy
is gasping its last breath. You will be conquered at the
last, and then what have you gained?”

“Nothing,—nothing but ruin!” and the tears poured
over the white face of this defender of Southern rights.

Soon recovering himself, however, he exclaimed,
proudly:

“We may be conquered, but not subjugated. You
can't do that with all your countless hordes of men, and
your millions of money. The North can never subjugate
the South. We may lay down our arms because we have
no other alternative, but we shall still think the same,
and feel the same as we do now.”

Here was a curious study for Will Mather, who was
surprised to find such maturity of thought and so strong
determination in one so young and frail.

“No wonder it is hard to conquer a people composed
of such elements,” he thought, and he was about to continue
the conversation when he was startled by a loud
blast from a horn among the hills.

“They've caught some one. They always do that as
a kind of exultation,” the boy exclaimed, wringing his
hands, and evincing as much distress as he had heretofore
shown bitterness against the opposing party.

It was a poor refugee from a neighboring county,
whom, in spite of Paul Haverill's precautions, they had
found in a hollow tree, and whom they brought more
dead than alive down to the Oak Plantation, amid vociferous
cries of “Tar and feather him!” “Hang him to a
sour-apple tree!” “Give him a taste of the halter!”
“Make him an example to all other sneaking Yankee
sympathizers!”

With his face as white as marble, and his lips set firmly
together, Paul Haverill stood in the midst of the noisy
group which he tried to quiet.

“Let us try him by jury,” he said, and something in
his voice reassured the frightened, haggard wretch, who
had seen his house burned down and his son shot before
his very eyes, and of course expected no mercy.

The trial by jury proved popular, and then Paul Haverill
suggested that a judge be chosen in the person of
some one who had lost a near friend in the war, and was
of course competent to mete out full justice to the criminal—“Charlie,
for instance,” and his eye fell on the
boy, who had joined the crowd and was standing close
by the prisoner. The boy caught his uncle's meaning at
once, and exclaimed:

“Yes, let me be the judge. My father was killed at
Bull Run. My mother died of grief. Surely I may
decide.”

Charlie De Vere was a favorite with the men, who
knew how staunch a Confederate he was, and, waiving the
trial for want of time, they said:

“Charlie shall decide whether we hang, drown, whip,
or tar and feather the prisoner at the bar.”

Then, with far more energy and fire than had characterized
his vindication of the South, Charlie De Vere
pleaded for the criminal, that they would let him go.
“Just this once, for father's sake, and mine, and
Maude's,” he said; and, at the mention of Maude, the
dark brows began to clear, and the scowling faces grew
more lenient in their expression, for Maude De Vere was
worshiped by the rough men of the mountains, who,
though they knew her sympathies were on the Union
side, made an exception in her favor, and held her person
and opinions sacred. For her sake, they would let
their captive go, giving him warning to leave the neighborhood
at once, nor let himself be seen again in their
midst while the war lasted.

And thus it chanced that Will Mather had a companion
in his wanderings, which were renewed the following
day; the boy Charlie acting as guide through the most
dangerous part of the way, and at last bidding him
good-bye, with great tears in his eyes, as he said:

“I hope you won't be caught; but I don't know, the
woods are full of our soldiers. Travel at night, and hide
through the day. Trust no one, but the negroes; and if
you are captured, ask for mercy in sister's name. Everybody
knows Maude De Vere.”