nessee."

"Ah! cavalry?" suggested Lysander, well pleased.

"I should prefer cavalry service to any other," answered Penn.

"There's where you right," said Sprowl; and he proceeded to enlighten
Penn on the prospects of raising a cavalry company in Curryville.

"Did you meet any person on the road, travelling north?"

"What sort of a person?"

"A young feller, rather slim, brown hair, blue eyes, with a half-hung
look, a perfect specimen of a sneaking abolition schoolmaster."

"I--I don't remember meeting any such a person," said Penn, as if
consulting his memory. "I met _two_ men, though, this side of old Bald.
One of them was a rather gentlemanly-looking fellow; but I think his
hair was black and curly."

"The schoolmaster's har is wavy, and purty dark, I call it," said one of
Sprowl's companions.

"He must have been the man!" said Lysander, suddenly stopping his horse.
"What sort of a chap was with him? Did he look like a Union-shrieker?"

"Now I think of it," said Penn, "if that man wasn't a Unionist at heart,
I am greatly mistaken. His sympathies are with the Lincolnites, I know
by his looks!" He neglected to add, however, that the man was black.

Sprowl was excited.

"It was some tory, piloting the schoolmaster! Boys, we must wheel about!
It never'll do for us to go home as long as we can hear of him alive in
the state. Remember the pay promised, if we catch him."

"Luck to you!" cried Penn, riding on, while Sprowl turned back in
ludicrous pursuit of his own worthy friend, Mr. Augustus Bythewood, and
his negro man Sam.

Penn lost no time laughing at the joke. His heart was too full of
trouble for that. It had seemed to him, at each moment of delay, that
the blind old minister was even then being torn from his home--that he
could hear Virginia's sobs of distress and cries for help. He urged his
horse into a gallop once more, and struck into a path across the fields.
He rode to the edge of the orchard, dismounted, tied the horse, and
hastened on foot to the house.

The guard was gone from the piazza, and all seemed quiet about the
premises. The kitchen was dark. He advanced quickly, but noiselessly, to
the door. It was open. He went in.

"Toby!" No answer. "Carl! Carl!" he called in a louder voice. No Carl
replied. Then he remembered--what it seemed so strange that he could
even for an instant forget--that Carl was in the rebel ranks, for his
sake.

He had seen a light in the sitting-room. He foun