s
very sturdy. "You offer yourself as a substitute, eh, if I will spare
his life?"

"Carl!" cried Penn, "I forbid you! You shall not commit that sin for me!
Better a thousand times that I should die than that you should be a
rebel in arms against your country."

"I have no country," answered Carl, ingeniously excusing himself. "I am
vot this man says, a Tuchman. I vill enlisht mit him, and he vill shpare
your life."

"Boy, it's a bargain," said Colonel Derring, whose passion for obtaining
recruits overruled every other consideration. "Cut that fellow's cords,
lieutenant, and let him go. Come along with me, Dutchy."

Ropes obeyed, and Penn, bewildered, almost stunned, by the sudden change
in his destiny, saw himself released, and beheld, as in a dream, poor
Carl marching off as his substitute to the recruiting station.

"Now let me give you one word of advice," said Captain Sprowl in his
ear. "Don't let another night find you within twenty miles of that
halter there, if you wouldn't have your neck in it again."

"Will you give me a safe conduct?" said Penn, who thought the advice
excellent, and would have been only too glad to act upon it.

"I've no authority," said Sprowl. "You must take care of yourself."

Penn looked around upon the ferocious, disappointed faces watching him,
and felt that he might about as well have been despatched in the first
place, as to be let loose in the midst of such a pack of wolves
thirsting for his blood. He did not despair, however, but, putting on
his clothes, determined to make one final and desperate effort to
escape.

XIX.

_THE ESCAPE._

Walking off quickly across the field towards Mrs. Sprowl's house, he
turned suddenly aside from the path and plunged into the woods.

He soon perceived that he was followed. A man--only one--came through
the undergrowth. Penn stopped. "God forgive me!" he said within himself;
"but this is more than human nature can bear!" He had been, as it were,
smitten on one cheek and on the other also: it was time to smite back.
He picked up a club: his nerves became like steel as he grasped it: his
eyes flashed fire.

The man advanced; he was unarmed. Suddenly Penn dropped his club, and
uttered a cry of joy. It was his friend Stackridge.

"What! the Quaker will fight?" said the farmer, with a grim smile.

"That shows," said Penn, bursting into tears as he wrung the farmer's
hand, "that I have been driven nearly insane!"

"It shows tha