At the dinner table Mrs. Ware’s eyes rested with loving anxiety
upon her first-born. “She is surely growing thinner and paler,” was
her motherly thought. “Poor child! If she would only give up to her
love how much happier she would be! It’s just eating out her heart,
I know it is! If Jeff would take hold of her as Amos did of me--”
and she glanced across the table at her husband, who in the grave
responsibility of his middle age seemed far enough removed from the
impetuous and masterful lover of her girlhood.
Quickly trailing upon the thought came recollection of that ride of
which she had told Rhoda and Jeff, and then a wave of memories of
his ardent courtship swept over and softened her heart. The coldness
and resentment of the last few months were buried, for the moment,
underneath their warmth and color, and her eyes sought his face again
with more of fondness in their expression than he had seen there in
many a day. Then her mind went back to her daughter.
“But I reckon that wouldn’t answer with Rhoda, after all,” she told
herself. “She’s so different. But I really believe she’s beginning to
feel more like giving up. The way she looked when she read his last
letter to me and when we talked about him yesterday--yes, she’s surely
finding out how much she really cares. If Jeff were to come up again
now, perhaps--I’ll write to him and tell him to come!”
The persuasion that perhaps the matter would come out all right added
to the good feeling toward her husband already induced by her memories,
and when they rose from the table she moved to his side and looked up
into his face with a little glow of tenderness and affection in her
own. With quick response he rested a hand upon her shoulder.
“Which way are you going this afternoon, Amos?” she asked.
“First to the Winslows, after I keep my office hour. Harriet is sick.”
“Oh, poor little thing! I’ll go over with you. I must write a letter
now, but if you’ll call me when you’re ready to go I’ll come down at
once and we can drive past the post-office.”
It was the first time in many weeks that she had wished to drive with
him and he stooped and kissed her, saying, “I’ll be glad to have you,
Emily.”
With her letter in her pocket Rhoda hurried away, past the post-office,
to the meeting of the sewing circle, at Mrs. Hardaker’s home. The
members had planned to put in a particularly busy afternoon, for
the coming of spring would be sure to bring with it an increase in
the number of refugees and they must have ready plenty of clothing
suitable for warm weather.
Charlotte went back to her room and was soon absorbed in a composition
that seemed to perplex her much. She wrote a few lines or words upon
sheet after sheet, then frowned and shook her head and tore up and
threw aside one after another until her table was littered with them.
But at last, after much knitting of her brows and tapping with her gold
pencil, she appeared satisfied with what she had done and copied it, in
a few lines across the middle of the page, upon a sheet of the paper
borrowed from Rhoda.
As she read it again, her eyes twinkled and her chin tilted to its most
rebellious angle. “I reckon mother would put her foot down hard if
she knew about it,” she said to herself, and then pursed her lips and
whistled a few notes. “And Rhoda would think it a very shocking thing
for me to do. But I don’t care, I’m going to. I reckon father wouldn’t
mind--indeed, I’m sure he’d be pleased. Yes, father would be glad
enough if Jeff should-- So it’s all right.” She giggled softly and the
look of amusement deepened on her face as she addressed the envelope.
“There!” she exclaimed as she sealed the letter, “now there’ll be
some fun!” Springing to her feet she danced about the room, stopping
in front of the mirror after a few steps to practise tilting her
hoopskirts, without seeming to do so, at a higher angle than she had
ever dared before.
Mrs. Ware, starting downstairs, in bonnet and shawl, with her letter in
her pocket, heard a shriek from Charlotte’s room. “What’s the matter,
dearie?” she called in quick alarm, and opened the door.
Charlotte was standing on a chair in front of her closet door, her
skirts drawn up to her knees, her two plump calves and slender ankles
and trim little feet trembling with the agitation which shrilled in her
voice: “Oh, mother, there’s a mouse in my closet!”
“Oh, is that all, honey! My heart was in my throat, for I thought you
must have half-killed yourself. Get Bully Brooks and shut him up in
your room. He’s getting to be a fine mouser. Dress yourself, honey, and
look for him. I’d bring him up for you, but your father’s waiting for
me and I must hurry. Good-by, dear. I’ll be back in two or three hours.”
With anxious haste and many apprehensive glances at the harboring
closet, now closed and locked, Charlotte dressed herself and hurried
down stairs. “Do you know where Bully Brooks is?” she asked of Lizzie
in the kitchen.
“Dat good-fo’-nuthin’ cat?” teased Lizzie, with a broad grin at
Charlotte’s pantomimic threats of displeasure and retaliation. “I done
see him jess now streakin’ out to’d de bahn wif his tail in de air,
like he was totin’ a flag at de head of a percession.”
Charlotte sped down the walk to the barn and looked all about and
called softly, “Bully Brooks! Bully Brooks!” The door leading from the
barn into the woodshed was open and she thought, “Maybe he’s gone in
there.”
“My! What a lot of wood we’ve used this winter!” she said to herself.
“The last time I was in here, last fall, the shed was nearly full. And
now there’s only that pile in the middle.” She moved toward the back of
the inclosure, her gaze searching the corners, then falling upon the
irregularly piled sticks at the back of the neat cords.
“There he is!” she exclaimed softly, as she saw a gray tail sticking
out from between the logs. Speedily she bore down upon him. “Here, ‘yo’
good-fo’-nuthin’ cat,’” she muttered, “come out here.” She made a grab
for his tail, but he whisked it suddenly aside, and went on, threading
his way between the chunks of wood, his head stretched out and nostrils
working.
“Oh, you think you smell something, do you? Well, just come right along
with me and see what you can smell in my room.” But she could not quite
reach him, and she began tossing to one side the smaller sticks. In a
moment her eyes fell upon the boarding of the hidden room. “What can
that be?” she wondered, pausing in her work. With Charlotte, to have
her curiosity aroused was only to fire her determination to have it
assuaged. So now she eagerly threw out of the way the remaining pieces
and saw plainly the tiny house. “There’s a door in it!” she whispered,
and straight-way stepped up and peeped in.
There she saw the negro runaway asleep upon the straw pallet. On the
bench were the remains of his dinner, with pans and plates and cups
which she recognized as having come from their own cupboard.
For a moment she stared, bewildered. Then, as the boy stirred in his
sleep, she picked up Bully Brooks, shut the door softly and hurried
back to her room. Her thoughts darted at once to the heart of the
mystery.
“They’re stealing niggers, that’s what they’re doing, father and Rhoda!
My! It’s worse than stealing horses, or money!” Her face was hot with
indignation and her eyes blazing. “They ought to be arrested, even if
they are my father and sister. Why, it might be one of Jeff’s niggers
they’re stealing. Just think of it! Nigger thieves! They ought to be
punished--they deserve to go to prison--and they would, too, if it was
known!”
She stopped in the midst of her fuming as an idea flashed across her
mind. It took her breath away for a moment. Then she drew back from it
with a little feeling of repugnance. But in a moment more her busy,
resentful thought was hovering around it, experimenting with it,
considering it with more and more of favor.
“There’s no telling how many slaves they’ve hidden in there and sent on
to Canada. Thousands of dollars worth, it’s likely. And their owners
just raking the country and spending money trying to find them. Oh,
it’s a shame the way these black abolitionists act! Father and Rhoda
are just as bad as any of them. Nigger thieves! O, my! And that nigger
out in the woodshed, he belongs to somebody just exactly the same as
if he was a horse or a cow. He ought to be taken back. He’s somebody’s
property, and it’s wrong and against the law to steal him, or to help
anybody else to steal him. If I don’t tell somebody that he’s here, so
he can be taken back to his owner, I’ll be a nigger-thief, just the
same as they are.”
She tied her bonnet under her chin, adjusted her cape around her
shoulders, took a last look in the glass, and turned toward the door.
Her eyes chanced to fall upon the letter, lying on the table.
“O, my goodness, I’m about to forget that!” she exclaimed, seizing the
missive. She giggled and tilted her chin and said aloud, “Yes, I shall,
I shall do it!” Then she touched her lips to the superscription and
airily waved the envelope toward the south. With another gay little
laugh she tucked it into her pocket. And so it happened that when the
mail-bag left the Hillside post-office that afternoon it carried three
letters for Jefferson Delavan.
As she came out of the post-office Charlotte found herself face to face
with her admirer, Billy Saunders. “Is Susie at home?” she asked.
“Yes, and expecting you. Are you going there?” He turned and walked up
the street at her side. Her cheeks still showed a heightened color and
the fires of her indignation glowed in her eyes. “You’re looking mighty
pretty this afternoon, Charlotte. What’s happened?”
“What’s happened, indeed!” Charlotte tossed her head. “Does there have
to be a wedding, or a funeral, or a steamboat accident before I deserve
a compliment?”
“No, indeed! You always deserve more compliments than I have sense
enough to think of. But you look excited, as if something unusual had
happened.”
Charlotte turned toward him, her heart swelling with excitement over
the momentous secret she had discovered. At this final moment it was
chiefly the childish need of sharing her knowledge that urged her to
speech. “Say, Billy, can you keep a secret?”
“As well as you can, I reckon.”
“I’ve just got to tell somebody, or I’ll fly into a thousand pieces!”
“Don’t do that!” he begged in mock alarm. “Out with it, and save the
pieces!”
“Well, then, there’s a nigger in our woodpile!”
A flash crossed his face. “What do you mean?” he ejaculated, stopping
short.
“Just what I say. He’s hid among the wood in our woodshed. There’s a
little house there.”
“Well--” he hesitated over his answer as they walked on. “I reckon it’s
all right,” he hazarded. But he was thinking rapidly. Here, in all
likelihood, was the proof for which the pro-slavery sympathizers had
long been watching. Dr. Ware’s outspoken sentiments and his activity in
the anti-slavery movement had caused them to suspect he was connected
with Underground operations.
“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” he asked jocularly. “When did you
see him and what was he doing?”
“Do I usually dream around in the daytime, Billy Saunders? I saw him
about an hour ago and he was sound asleep. And if you think I don’t
know a nigger when I see one you can go and look for yourself!”
They had reached the Saunders gate and he lifted his hat in farewell.
“Remember you’re to keep that secret,” she called after him, in
appeasement of a sudden compunction.
“Oh, I can keep a secret as well as you can,” he laughed back. Secretly
a little troubled by his answer, but saying to herself defiantly,
“Well, they deserve whatever happens, anyway!” she went into the
house. He quickened his steps to the office of the United States
marshal.
At the home of Mrs. Hardaker the members of the anti-slavery sewing
circle were busy over their needles when Rhoda, from her seat near
a front window, saw Horace dash up the street in a buggy. Springing
out, he came up the front walk almost on a run. He saw her face at the
window and beckoned. She went out and met him at the front door.
“Is there any U. G. baggage at your house, Rhoda?” he asked at once in
low, anxious tones.
“Yes. A young man came late last night and has been sleeping all day.”
“Then that’s it! I just now discovered that Marshal Hanscomb was on the
track of something, and I was afraid it might be there! I’ve got a case
in court that will be called in ten minutes, but I borrowed this buggy
from my client and rushed over here. Is your father at home?”
“No. I’ve got to go and get him away.” She was hurrying into her bonnet
and wrap.
“You’d better let me--”
“No, no. You can’t leave your case. That would be too suspicious. I’ll
manage it.”
“Don’t walk home--take this buggy.” They were already rushing to the
gate and he went on as he assisted her to the seat: “There’s not a
minute to lose. Hanscomb’s getting ready now to start out with his
men.”
She was soon in the cross street upon which backed their row of
outbuildings. Here a wide door gave entrance to the woodshed. It was
kept padlocked and she had to waste a few minutes finding Jim to unlock
the door. The young negro, dazed by this sudden awakening to danger,
was hustled into the buggy, a small, uncovered, box-seated vehicle.
Rhoda made him double up in the little space at her feet and covered
him with a carriage rug. Then over her own lap and down over him she
spread an ample robe, which Jim hastily tucked in at the sides.
“I’ll try to reach Gilbertson’s with him,” she said to the faithful
black man as the horse sprang forward at her whip’s touch. She made
a détour around several blocks and struck into the street leading to
the country in the first valley beyond the house. This lost several
minutes at the start, but she reflected that if the marshal should
arrive in time to see her driving straight away from the house he might
be suspicious enough to make chase at once. As it was, one of his men,
on guard at their gate, saw her buggy as it turned from a cross street
into the country road, but, at the moment, thought nothing of it.
Looking back, she saw the men ride up to their gate and knew that they
would search the house.
“They’ll have their trouble for their pains,” she thought. “But wasn’t
it a narrow chance! You poor boy, I’m going to save you, anyway!”
She wondered what hint had come to the marshal’s ears, and decided it
must have been suspicion rather than actual knowledge that had brought
him to search their house at this particular time. Most likely the
fugitive had been seen on his way to their house by some of the many
eyes ever on the alert for such as he, and her father’s reputation as a
strong anti-slavery man and abolitionist had given Marshal Hanscomb a
pretext.
“But he’ll never think of looking in the woodpile,” she told herself
with a smile of satisfaction. “That secret is perfectly safe, for
nobody knows it but us and Horace. Our little hiding place will be as
safe as ever, even if they do search the house!”
She looked back anxiously from the top of the high hill, whence the
road entered a sparsely wooded belt of country, and saw that the horses
were still hitched at their side gate. “I’m getting a good start,
even if they do follow me,” she reflected, “and I guess I can make
Gilbertson’s.”
But the horse was a slow traveler and, although she urged him
constantly with voice and whip, to Rhoda’s anxious eyes they seemed to
cover the ground at but a snail’s pace. She thought they must have been
on the road nearly an hour when, from the top of a long, sloping hill,
she glanced backward and saw a party of four mounted men crossing the
rise she had just left behind. She recognized it at once as Marshal
Hanscomb and his aids. They were riding at a much faster pace than her
horse could equal and she knew that in a few minutes they would surely
overtake her and, in all probability, stop her and search the buggy.
For one brief flash the thought crossed her mind what that would
mean--arrest, trial, and afterward imprisonment. But that fleeting
picture was instantly gone and in its place came the vision of the lad
at her feet being carried back to scourging and slavery. As she urged
the horse down the hill at a reckless pace she remembered that he was
about to be sold “down south”--that land of fears and terrors which to
the negroes of the border states was a doom almost as awful as was the
fiery gulf which threatened the impenitent sinner. It occurred to her
that the hill was the same one where she had met the slave, Andrew, on
that momentous day of the previous summer.
“If I can make the bottom, and get him safe on that path to the cave
before they see him-- O, God, help me!” She thought of the boy’s old
slave mother, waiting and trusting for his promised help to rescue her
from bondage, and lashed her horse again. With a firm hand she held the
lines, her eyes on the road ahead and her touch guiding the horse along
the safest track. With a jerk they stopped short at the bottom of the
hill and she pulled away the coverings.
“Get up, quick!” she warned. “They’ve followed us, and you must hide.
Climb that fence--do you see that path over there? Run down that--it
will bring you to a thicket of hazel bushes. Behind them, in the hill,
there is a cave. You’ll be safe there, until I or some one comes for
you. But don’t stir out of it until you hear the word, ‘Canada,’ three
times. They’re right behind us--run fast!”
He needed no more warning, but was over the fence and speeding like a
deer along the faint pathway. There was no foliage now to screen his
figure and he would have to get beyond the bend in the hill, where the
path dropped downward again, before he would be safe from sight. Rhoda
gave one quick backward glance--they had not yet come into view. The
fleeing mulatto reached the big rock, turned it, and disappeared. With
a little catch in her breath she gathered up her lines, straightened
the carriage robes and urged her horse forward again. There was no need
of haste now, and the sooner the interview with the marshal was over
the sooner he would go back and leave her free to bring the boy from
his hiding place and go on her way. So she let the horse slowly climb
the rise, while she heard the pursuing party clattering down the other
slope. Presently they were beside her.
“Miss Ware, by authority of the law, I shall have to search your
buggy,” said the marshal’s voice, at the wheel. One of his men rode to
the horse’s head and seized the bridle.
“What for?” she asked, with well-simulated surprise.
“You are under suspicion of concealing in it a fugitive slave. I know
that he was hidden in your woodshed”--Rhoda’s heart sank and she felt
her eyelids quiver--“as late as this afternoon. But you got him out
before we reached there, and came out on this road by a roundabout way.
We’ve had our eyes on your father for a long time. And now I reckon
we’ve caught him, and you too!”
Rhoda looked at him and was able to command a smile. “Excuse me,” she
said politely, “but how many did you say you thought I had concealed in
this buggy?”
“Only one,” the marshal answered curtly. “You can get out if you want
to while we examine it.”
She jumped to the ground and stood by, smiling, while they took out the
rugs and looked under the seat.
Disappointed glances passed from one to another. Evidently, they had
felt sure they would find the missing slave in her buggy. Rhoda took
off her wrap and shook it ostentatiously. “You see, I haven’t got him
concealed about my clothing. You can search my pocket too, if you
like,” she added innocently.
“You’ve beat us this time, young lady,” he responded angrily, “but we
know what your father is up to, and you with him, and we’ll get you
yet.”
She turned upon him with dignity. “May I ask, Mr. Hanscomb, that
you will finish your examination of this little buggy where there is
scarcely room for one, as soon as possible, so that I can go on. I am
on an errand for my father, and I would like to finish it and get home
before dark. Perhaps you would like to look under the horse’s collar
and split open the whip-stock.”
The marshal flushed with annoyance. “All right. You can go on now. But
you’d better be careful about taking in any more niggers.”
She drove slowly on up the hill and they brought their horses’ heads
together for a conference. She was trembling with anxiety lest it might
occur to them to search the woodland on the west of the road, and she
wanted to know what they were going to do before she would have to pass
out of sight down the other side of the hill. To gain time she dropped
her whip, and jumped out to get it. Then she adjusted a buckle in the
harness and examined a thill strap. A stolen glance let her see that
they were starting back toward the town.
But now a new anxiety filled her. Did they know of the cave? Would they
think of it as a possible hiding place? The cave was such a little
one,--it was of no interest to any one but children--perhaps they had
never heard of it, or had forgotten it if they had. She longed to look
around and see if they stopped, but she feared to show interest in
their movements, lest she might renew their suspicions. Had the boy
left footprints as he ran from the buggy to the fence? She tried to
remember whether the ground there was hard or muddy, but could recall
nothing. In an agony of apprehension she reached the top of the hill
and started down the descent.
“I must know, whatever happens,” she presently said to herself.
Stopping the horse she sprang out and ran back a little way, to
where her eyes could command the opposite hill. The horsemen were
disappearing over its crest. Her knees were shaking as she hurried back
to the buggy, but she pulled herself together and considered what would
be the best plan to get the fugitive out of the cave and on to the next
station. For she feared to go back openly now, lest some member of the
marshal’s party might return. A little farther on, she remembered,
was a cross way and striking off from this, a short distance to the
westward, an old wood road which ended near the cave. “It used to be
there,” she thought anxiously, “but I haven’t been down it since--oh, I
don’t know when! I’ll have to take chances on its being there yet.”
But on the cross road she met farmer Gilbertson, in a big, deep-bedded
wagon filled with a load of loose hay. She told him of her narrow
escape.
“You better drive in and get him in your little buggy,” he advised,
“and I’ll wait out here and take him home with me, under the hay. It’ll
be safe enough--this road ain’t traveled much.”
It was not long until Rhoda was driving homeward again, deep joy in her
heart that the fugitive had escaped such imminent danger, but wondering
much how the marshal had discovered the secret of their woodshed.