seemed to be the right words
at the right time. A hushed attention fell upon the audience, inside and
out. Then there was applause inside, which called forth howls from the
outside, and when I stepped from the platform, I was overwhelmed with
congratulations, and more astonished than any one, to learn that I could
speak in public.

T.H. Barrett, a young civil engineer, was chairman of the committee on
resolutions, and brought in a set which thrilled the audience. They were
a most indignant denunciation of the destruction of the office, an
enthusiastic endorsement of the course of the _Visiter_, and a
determination to re-establish it, under the sole control of its editor.
They were passed singly by acclamation until the last, when I protested
that they should take time to think--should consider if it were not
better to get another editor. There could be no peace with me in the
editorial chair, for I was an abolitionist and would light slavery and
woman-whippers to the death, and after it. There was a universal
response of "Good! Good! give it to 'em, and we'll stand by you."

This was the beginning of the final triumph of free speech, but the end
was yet in the dim distance, and this I knew then as well as afterwards.
T.H. Barrett, who carried that meeting, is the man who fought the last
battle of the Rebellion at the head of his negro troops away down in
Texas, ten days after Lee's surrender, and before that news had reached
him, Brown was charged with cowardice, in having kept back among the
women, and I had to explain on his account.

CHAPTER XL.

A FAMOUS VICTORY.

The day after the Stearns House meeting, I was thought to be dying. All
that medical skill and loving hands could do was done to draw me from
the dark valley into which I seemed to have passed; while those men who
had planted themselves and their rifles between me and death by
violence, came on tip-toe to know if I yet lived. When I was able to be
out it was not thought safe for me to do so--not even to cross the
street and sit on the high green bank which overlooked the river. Harry
was constantly armed and on guard, and a pistol shot from his house,
night or day, would have brought a score of armed men in a very short
time.

A printing company had been formed to re-establish the _Visiter_. In it
were forty good men and true, and they sent an agent to Chicago to buy
press and type. The St. Cloud _Visiter_ was to begin a new life as the
mout