he other person, a tall, lean man, wheeled and dashed after
the dark object ahead, which Levin, following also hard, found to be a
large covered wagon--something between the dearborn or farmer's and the
family carriage.

"Bill," the Quaker called to the driver, "spare not thy whip till Dover
be well past. Here is one who says kidnappers are raiding even the
capital of Delaware. I'm concerned for thee!"

The driver began to whip his horses into a gallop, and cries, as of
several persons, came out of the close-curtained vehicle.

"What's in there?" Levin asked the Quaker, who had rejoined him;
"niggers?"

"No, friend," the Quaker crisply answered, "only Christians."

They crossed a mill-stream, and soon afterwards a smaller run, without
speaking, and came to a little log-and-frame cabin in a fork of the
road, where Levin's horse tried to run in.

"Ha, friend! Is it not Derrick Molleston's loper thee has--the same that
he gets from Devil Jim Clark? What art thou, then? I feel concerned for
thee."

"A Christian, too, I hope," answered Levin, forcing his nag up the road.

"Then thee is better than a youth in this dwelling we next pass," the
Quaker said, pointing to a brick house on the left; "for there lived a
judge whose son bucked a poor negro fiddler in his father's cellar, and
delivered him to Derrick Molleston to be sold in slavery. I hear the
poor man tells it in his distant house of bondage."

"What's this?" Levin inquired, seeing a strange structure of beams on a
cape or swell to the right, in sight of the dark forms of a town on the
next crest beyond.

"A gallows," said the Quaker, "on which a horse-thief will be hanged
to-morrow. To steal a horse is death; to steal a fellow-man is nothing."

As he spoke, the mysterious carriage turned down a cross street of Dover
and stole into the obscurity of the town.

"Ha! ha!" exclaimed the Quaker; "if Joe Johnson had not stopped to feed
at Devil Jim's, he might have overtaken my brother's wagon full of
escaping slaves. I tell thee, friend, because I'm scarce concerned for
thee now."

CHAPTER XXXV.

COWGILL HOUSE.

Long after midnight, Dover was in bed, except at one large house on the
Capitol green, where light shone through the chinks and cracks of
curtains and shutters, and some watch-dog, perhaps, ran along curiously
to see why.

The stars and clouds in the somewhat troubled sky looked down through
the leafless trees upon the pretty town and St