is attic
ladder to a chamber, where there was a narrow bed, with soft, clean
sheets and pillows, the first the prisoner had seen in the New World.

"You can sleep here in perfect security," said Robert. "I will see that
you are not molested by any one."

The wayworn traveller threw himself on the bed and fell asleep.

Stevens went below and told his wife of the fugitive. Ester Stevens was
the daughter of General Goffe, the regicide, who had been hunted for
years by Charles II. for signing the death warrant of the king's father
and serving in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and Mrs. Stevens could
sympathize with a political fugitive. They ran some risk in keeping him
in their house; but as a majority of the colonists had been in sympathy
with the Duke of Monmouth, for James II. had few friends in Virginia and
Thomas Hull none, their risk was not as great as it might seem.

The fugitive late next day awoke, and Robert carried his breakfast to
him. The colony was wild with excitement over the escape of an indented
slave and the killing of the overseer. Thomas Hull represented the
crime to be as heinous as possible, to arouse a sympathy for himself and
a hatred for the escaped slave. Some people were outspoken in the belief
that the escaped slave should be killed; others were in sympathy with
him. They reasoned that Hull had been a hard master, and that this poor
fellow was no criminal, but a patriot, for which he had been adjudged to
ten years' penal servitude.

Many of the searchers came to the mansion house of Stevens; but he
managed to put them off the track.

For five days and nights George Waters remained in the attic. On the
sixth night Robert Stevens came to him and said:

"You must now set out on your journey."

"But Cora--can I see her?"

"She will accompany you. Here is a suit of clothes more befitting one of
your rank and station, than the garb of an indented slave." He placed a
riding suit with top boots and hat in the apartment. When he had attired
himself, Robert next brought him some arms, a splendid gun and a brace
of pistols of the best make.

"You may have need of these," said the planter. "You will also find
holsters in the saddle."

"And does Cora know of this?"

"I have told her all."

The father shuddered. In the pride of his soul, he remembered that he
was a slave, had felt the lash, and was humiliated.

Under a wide-spreading chestnut near the planter's mansion, stood three
horses rea