University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

But the preparations of Bunce had been foreseen
and provided for by those most deeply interested
in his progress; and scarcely had the worthy
tradesman effected his entrance fairly into the forbidden
territory, when he felt himself grappled
from behind. He struggled with an energy, due
as much to the sudden terror as to any exercise
of the free will; but he struggled in vain. The
arms that were fastened about his own, bound them
down with a grasp of steel; and after a few moments
of desperate effort, accompanied with one
or two exclamations, half surprise, half expostulation,
of “Hello, friend, what do you mean—” and,
“I say, now, friend, you'd better have done—” the

struggle ceased, and he lay supine in the hold of
the unseen person or persons—for there were more
than one—who had secured him. These persons
he could not then discern—the passage was cavernously
dark, and had evidently been as much the
work of nature as of art. A handkerchief was
fastened about his eyes, and he felt himself carried
on the shoulders of those who made nothing of the
burden. After the progress of several minutes,
in which the anxiety natural to his situation led
Bunce into frequent exclamations and entreaties,
he was set down, and a buzzing dialogue, as of
several persons, having first taken place around
him, the bandage was removed from his eyes, and
he was once more permitted their free exercise.
To his great wonder, however, nothing but women,
of all sizes and ages, met his sight. In vain
did he look around for the men who brought him.
They were no longer to be seen, and so silent had
been their passage out, that the unfortunate pedler
was compelled to satisfy himself with the belief,
that persons of the gentler sex had been in truth
his captors. Had he, indeed, given up the struggle
so easily? The thought was mortifying enough,
and yet, when he looked around him, he grew
more satisfied with his own efforts at resistance.
He had never seen such strongly built women in
his life; scarcely one of them but could easily
have overthrown him, without stratagem, in single
combat. The faces of many of them were familiar
to him but where had he seen them before? His
memory failed him utterly, and he gave himself up
to his bewilderment. He looked around, and the
scene was well calculated to affect a nervous
mind. It was a fit scene for the painter of the supernatural.
The small apartment in which they
were was formed in great part from the natural
rock; where a fissure presented itself, a huge pine
tree, overthrown so as to fill the vacuity, completed
what nature had left undone; and, bating
the one or two rude cavities left here and there in
the sides—themselves so covered as to lie hidden
from all without—there was all the compactness
of a regularly constructed dwelling. A single and
small lamp, pendant from a beam that hung over
the room, gave a feeble light, which, taken in connexion
with that borrowed from without, served
only to make visible the dark indistinct of the
place. With something dramatic in their taste,
the old women had dressed themselves in sombre
habiliments, according with the general unique of
all things around them; and, as the unfortunate
pedler continued to gaze in wonderment, his fear
grew with every progressive step in his observation.
One by one, however, the old women commenced
stirring, and, as they moved, now before
and now behind him—his eyes following them on
every side—he at length discovered, amid the
group, the small and delicate form of the very
being for whom he sought. There, indeed, was
Lucy Munro and her aunt, holding a passive
character in the strange assembly. This was encouraging;
and Bunce, forgetting his wonder in
the satisfaction which such a prospect afforded
him, endeavoured to force his way forward to
them, when a salutary twitch of the arm from one
of the beldame troop, by tumbling him backwards
upon the floor of the cavern, brought him again to
a consideration of his predicament. He could not
be restrained from speech, however, though, as he
spoke, the old women saluted his face on all hands
with strokes from brushes of fern, which occasioned
him no small inconvenience. But he had gone too
far now to recede, and in a broken manner—broken
as much by his own hurry and vehemence as
by the interruptions to which he was subjected
—he contrived to say enough to Lucy of the
situation of Colleton to revive in her an interest
of the most painful character. She rushed forward,
and was about to ask more from the beleaguered
pedler; but it was not the policy of those
having both of them in charge to permit such a
proceeding. One of the stoutest of the old women
now came prominently upon the scene, and with a
rough voice, which it is not difficult to recognise
as that of Munro, commanded the young girl
away, and gave her in charge to two attendants.
But she struggled still to hear, and Bunce all the
while speaking, she was enabled to gather most of
the particulars in his narration before her removal
was effected. The mummery had ceased, and
Bunce having been carried elsewhere, the maskers
resumed their native apparel, having thrown aside
that which had been put on for a distinct purpose.
The pedler, in another and more secure department
of the robber's hiding-place, was solaced
with the prospect of a long and dark imprisonment.

In the mean time, our little friend Chub Williams
had been made to undergo his own distinct punishment
for his share in the adventure. No sooner
had Bunce been laid by the heels, than Rivers, who
had directed the whole, advanced from the shelter
of the cave, in company with his lieutenant, Dillon,
both armed with rifles, and without saying a word,
singling out the tree on which Chub had perched
himself, took deliberate aim at the head of the unfortunate
urchin. He saw the danger in an instant,
and his first words were characteristic.

“Now don't—don't, now, I tell you, Mr. Guy—
you may hit Chub.”

“Come down, then, you rascal,” was the reply,
as with a laugh, lowering the weapon, he awaited
the descent of the spy. “And now, Bur, what
have you to say that I shouldn't wear out a hickory
or two upon you?”

“My name an't Bur, Mr. Guy—my name is
Chub, and I don't like to be called out of my name.
Mother always called me Chub.”

“Well, Chub—since you like it best, though at
best a bur,—what were you doing in that tree.
How dare you spy into my dwelling, and send
other people there? Speak, or I'll skin you alive.”

“Now, don't, Mr. Guy. Don't, I beg you.
'Taint right to talk so, and I don't like it. But is that
your dwelling, Mr. Guy, in truth. You really
live in it, all the year round? Now, you don't, do
you?”

The outlaw had no fierceness when contemplating
the object before him. Strange nature!
He seemed to regard the deformities of mind and
body, in the outcast under his eyes, as something
kindred. Was there any thing like sympathy in
such a feeling; or was it rather that perversity of
temper, which sometimes seemes to cast an ennobling
feature over violence, and to afford, here and
there, a touch of that moral sunshine, which can
now and then give an almost redeeming expression
to the countenance of vice itself. He contemplated
the idiot for a few moments with a close eye, and a
mind evidently busied in thought. Laying his
hand, at length, on his shoulder, he was about to
speak, when the deformed started back from the
touch as if in horror—a feeling, indeed, fully visible
in every feature of his face.

“Now, don't touch Chub, Mr. Guy. Mother
said you were a dark man, and told me to keep

clear of you. Don't touch me again, Mr. Guy; I
don't like it.”

The outlaw, musingly, spoke to his lieutenant—
“And this is education—who shall doubt its importance—who
shall say that it does not overthrow,
and altogether destroy the original nature. The
selfish mother of this miserable outcast, fearing that
he might be won away from his service to her,
taught him to avoid all other persons, and even
those who had treated her with kindness were
thus described to this poor dependant. To him
the sympathies of others would have been the
greatest blessing, yet she so tutored him, that, at her
death, he was left desolate. You hear his account
of me, gathered, as he says, and as I doubt not,
from her own lips. That account is true, so far as
my other relationships with mankind are concerned;
but not true as regards my connexions with her.
I furnished that old creature when she was starving,
and when this boy, sick and impotent, could do
little for her service. I never uttered a harsh
word in her ears, or treated her unkindly, yet this
is the character she gives of me, and this, indeed,
the character which she has given of all others. A
feeling of the narrowest selfishness has led her
deliberately to misrepresent all mankind; and has
been productive of a more ungracious result, in
driving one from his species, who, more than any
other, stands in need of their sympathy and association.”

While Rivers spoke thus, the idiot listened with
an air of the most stupid attention. His head fell
on one shoulder, and one hand partially sustained
it. As the former concluded his remarks, Chub
recovered a posture as nearly erect as possible,
and remarked, with as much significance as could
comport with his general expression,—“Chub's

mother was good to Chub, and Mr. Guy mustn't
say nothing agin her.”

“But, Chub, will you not come and live with me?
I will give you a good rifle—one like this, and you
shall travel everywhere with me.”

“You will beat Chub when you are angry, and
make him shoot people with the rifle. I won't have
the rifle. I don't want it. If folks say harm to
Chub, he can lick them with his fists. Chub don't
want to live with you.”

“Well, as you please. But come in and look at
my house, and see where I live.”

“And shall I see the strannger agin? I can lick
him, and I told him so. But he called me Chub,
and I made friends with him.”

“Yes, you shall see him, and—”

“And Miss Lucy too—I want to see Miss Lucy
—Chub saw her, and she spoke to Chub yesterday.”

The outlaw promised him all, and after this
there was no farther difficulty. The unconscious
idiot scrupled no longer, and followed his conductors
into—prison. It was necessary, for the farther
safety of the outlaws in their present abode, that
such should be the case. The secret of their hiding-place
was in the possession of quite too many;
and the subject of deliberation among the leaders
was now into the propriety of its continued tenure.
The country, they felt assured, would soon be
overrun with the State troops. They had no fears
of discovery from this source, prior to the affair of
the massacre of the Guard, which rendered necessary
the secretion of many in their retreat, who,
before that time, were perfectly unconscious of its
existence. In addition to this, it was now known
to the pedler and the idiot, neither of whom had
any reason for secrecy on the subject in the event

of their being able to make it public. The difficulty,
with regard to the two latter, subjected them
to some small risk of suffering from the ultimate
resource of roguery; but so much blood had been
already spilt, that the sense of the majority revolted
at the farther resort to that degree of violence,
particularly, too, when it was recollected that
they could only hold their citadel for a certain and
short period of time. It was determined, therefore,
that as long as they themselves continued in their
hiding-place, that Bunce and Chub should, perforce,
continue their prisoners. Having so determined,
and made their arrangements accordingly, the two
last made captives were assigned a cell, chosen
with reference to its greater security than the
other portions of their hold; and sufficiently tenacious
of its trust, it would seem, to have answered
well its purpose.

In the mean time the sufferings of Lucy Munro
were such as may well be understood from the
character of her feelings, as we have heretofore
surveyed their expression. In her own apartment
—her cell, we may style it, for she was in some
sort of honourable bondage, she brooded with deep
melancholy over the narrative given by the pedler.
She had no reason to doubt its correctness, and the
more she meditated upon it, the more acute became
her misery. But a day intervened, and the trial
of Ralph Colleton must take place, and without
her evidence, she was well aware there could be
no hope of his escape from the doom of felony—
from the death of shame and physical agony. The
whole picture grew up before her excited fancy—
she beheld the assembled crowd—she saw him
borne to execution, and her senses reeled beneath
the terrible conjurations of her fancy. She threw
herself prostrate upon her couch, and strove not

to think, but in vain. The mind, still active, maddened,
and she grew conscious herself—the worst
of all kinds of consciousness—that reason was no
longer secure in her sovereignty; and with a strong
effort of the still firm will, she strove rather to discover
the best mode of defeating the awful fate,
and rescuing the victim from the death suspended
above him—and she succeeded, while deliberating
on such means, in quieting the more subtle workings
of her imagination.

Many were the thoughts which came into her
brain in this examination. At one time she thought
it not impossible to convey a letter, in which her
testimony should be carefully set down; but the
difficulty of procuring a messenger, and the doubt
that such a statement would prove of any avail,
decided her to seek for other means. An ordinary
mind and a moderate degree of interest in the fate
of the individual would have contented itself with
some such step; but such a mind and such affections
were not those of the high-souled and spirited
Lucy. She dreaded not personal danger, and to
rescue the youth, whom she so much idolized, from
the doom that threatened him, she would have
willingly dared to encounter that fate itself, in
its darkest forms. She determined, therefore, to
rely chiefly upon herself in all efforts which she
could make for the purpose in view; and her object,
therefore, was to effect a return to the village
in time to appear at the trial. Yet how should
this be done? She felt herself to be a captive:
she knew the restraints upon her—and did not
doubt that all her motions were sedulously observed.
How then should she proceed? An agent was
necessary; and, while thus deliberating with herself
upon the difficulty thus assailing her at the
outset, her ears were drawn to the distinct utterance

of sounds, as of persons engaged in conversation,
from the adjoining section of the rock. One
of the voices appeared familiar, and at length she
distinctly made out her own name in various parts
of the dialogue. She soon distinguished the nasal
tones of the pedler, whose prison adjoined her own,
separated only by a huge wall of earth and rock, the
rude and jagged sides of which had been made complete,
where naturally imperfect for the purposes of
a wall, by the free use of clay, which, plastered in
huge masses into the crevices and every fissure,
was no inconsiderable apology for the more perfect
structures of civilization. Satisfied, at length, that
the two so confined were friendly, she contrived to
make them understand her contiguity, by speaking in
tones sufficiently low as to be unheard beyond the
apartment in which they were. In this way she
was enabled to converse with the pedler, to whom
all her difficulties were suggested, and to whom
she did not hesitate to say that she knew that
which would not fail to save the life of Colleton.
Bunce was not slow to devise various measures
for the further promotion of the scheme, none of
which, however, served the purpose of showing to
either party how they should get out, and but for
the ingenuity of the idiot, it is more than probable,
despairing of success, they would at length have
thrown aside the hope of doing any thing for the
youth as perfectly illusory. But Chub came in as
a prime auxiliar. From the first moment in which
he heard the gentle tones of Lucy's voice, he had
busied himself with his long nails and long fingers
in removing the various masses of clay which had
been made to fill up the sundry crevices of the intervening
wall, and had so far succeeded as to detach
a large square of the rock itself, which, with
all possible pains and caution, he lifted from the embrasure.
This done, he could distinguish objects,
though dimly, from one apartment in the other,
and thus introduced the parties to a somewhat
nearer acquaintance with one another. Having
done so much, he reposed from his labours, content
with a sight of Lucy, on whom he continued to
look with a fixed and stupid admiration. He had
pursued this work so noiselessly, and the maiden
and Bunce had been so busily employed in discussing
their several plans, that they had not observed
the vast progress which Chub had made towards
furnishing them with a better solution of their difficulties
than any of their own previous cogitations.
When Bunce saw how much had been done in one
quarter, he applied himself resolutely to similar
experiments on the opposite wall: and had the
satisfaction of discovering that, as a dungeon, the
dwelling in which they were required to remain
was sadly deficient in some few of the requisites
of security. With the aid of a small pick of iron,
which Lucy handed him from her cell, he pierced
the outer wall in several places, in which the clay
had been required to do the offices of the rock, and
had the satisfaction of perceiving, from the sudden
influx of light in the apartment, succeeding his application
of the instrument, that, with a small
labour and in little time, they should be enabled to
effect their escape, at least into the free air, and
under the more genial vault of heaven. Having
made this discovery, it was determined that nothing
more should be done until night, and having filled
up the apertures which they had made, with one
thing or another, they proceeded to consult, with
more deliberate composure, on the future progress.
It was arranged that the night should be permitted to
set in fairly—that Lucy should retire early, having
first been studious that Munro and her aunt, with
whom she more exclusively consorted—Rivers
having altogether kept out of sight since her removal—should
see her at the evening meal, without
any departure from her usual habits. Bunce undertook
to officiate as a guide, and as Chub expressed
himself willing to do whatever Miss Lucy
should tell him, it was arranged that he should
remain, occasionally making himself heard in his
cell, as if in conversation, for as long a period after
their departure as might be thought necessary to
put them sufficiently in advance of any pursuit—a
requisition to which Chub readily gave his consent.
He was the only one of the party who appeared
to regard the whole matter with comparative
indifference. He knew that a man was in
danger of his life—he felt that he himself was in
prison, and he said he would rather be out among the
pine trees—but there was no rush of feeling, such
as troubled the heart of the young girl, whose
spirit, clothing itself in all the noblest habiliments of
manhood, lifted her up into the choicest superiority
of character—nor had he that anxiety to do a service
to his fellow, which made the pedler throw aside
some of his more wordly characteristics—he did
simply as he was bid, and had no further care.
Miss Lucy, he said, talked sweetly, like his mother,
and Chub would do for Miss Lucy any thing that
she asked him. The principle of his government
was simple, and having chosen a sovereign he did
not withhold his obedience. Thus stood the preparations
of the three prisoners, when darkness—
long looked-for, and hailed with trembling emotions
—at length came down over the silent homestead
of the outlaws.