. Villars has
been carried away by the soldiers you sent. If you cannot pray for
yourself, then there is none to pray for you."

Scarce had he spoken, when out of the darkness behind him came a voice,
saying with solemn sweetness, as if an angel responded from the
invisible profound,--

"I will pray for him!"

He turned, and saw in the lantern's misty glimmer a spectral form
advancing. It drew near. It was a female figure, shadowy, noiseless; the
right hand raised with piteous entreaty; the countenance pale to
whiteness,--its fresh and youthful beauty clothed with sadness and
compassion as with a veil.

It was Virginia. All the way through the dismal galleries of the cave,
and down Cudjo's stairs, she had followed the executioner and his
victim, in order to plead at the last moment for that mercy for which
Penn had pleaded in vain.

Struck with amazement, Pomp gazed at her for a moment as if she had been
really a spirit.

"How came you here?"

She laid one hand upon his arm; with the other she pointed upwards; her
eyes all the while shining upon him with a wondrous brilliancy, which
was of the spirit indeed, and not of the flesh.

"Heaven sent me to pray for him--and for you."

"For me, Miss Villars?"

"For you, Pomp!"--Her voice also had that strange melting quality which
comes only from the soul. It was low, and full of love and sorrow. "For
if you slay this man, then you will have more need of prayers than he."

Pomp was shaken. The touch on his arm, the tones of that voice, the
electric light of those inspired eyes, moved him with a power that
penetrated to his inmost soul. Yet he retained his haughty firmness, and
said coldly,--

"If there had been mercy for this man, Penn would have obtained it. The
hardest thing I ever did was to deny him. What is there to be said which
he did not say?"

"O, he spoke earnestly and well!" replied Virginia. "I wondered how you
could listen to him and not yield. But he is a man; and as a man he gave
up all hope when reason failed, and he saw you so implacable. But I
would never have given up. I would have clung to your knees, and
pleaded with you so long as there was breath in me to ask or heart
to feel. I would not have let you go till you had shown mercy to
this poor man!"--(Deslow had crawled to her feet: there he knelt
grovelling),--"and to yourself, Pomp! If he dies repenting, and you kill
him unrelenting, I would rather be he than you. When we shut the gate o