lead 'em straight on. His indignation at his arrest and at the
evident incredulity of his hearers and judges was not a whit less hearty
and genuine than his curses on their cowardice in postponing any attack
or risk of fighting until the arrival of militia, or soldiers, or help
of some kind, in strength to overpower the little band in the armory, to
make resistance useless, and an attack, if that was necessary, safe
enough to secure some valiant man to lead it on.

My story was soon told, I was a traveller; my train had been stopped; I
had started off on foot, meaning to walk over the hill to the Ferry, and
expecting there to meet the train to go on to Baltimore. The
interruptions were plentiful, and the talk blatant. I showed a ticket, a
memorandum-book giving the dates and distances of my recent journey, and
a novel (I think it was one of Balzac's) in French, and on it was
written in pencil my name and address. That was the key-note of plenty
of suspicion. How could they believe any man from a Northern city
innocent of a knowledge of the plot now bursting about their ears? Would
not my travelling-companions from the same latitude be ready to help
free the slaves? and if I was set at liberty, would it not be only too
easy to communicate between the little host already beleaguered in the
armory engine-house and the mythical great host that was gathered in the
North and ready to pour itself over the South? Of course all this, the
staple of their every-day discussions, was strange enough to my ears;
and I listened in a sort of silent wonderment that men could talk such
balderdash. Any serious project of a great Northern movement on behalf
of Southern slaves was then as far from credible and as strange to my
ears as it was possible to be. It seemed hardly worth while to answer
their suggestions; I therefore spoke of neighbors of theirs who were
friends of mine, and of other prominent persons in this and other parts
of Virginia who were acquaintances, and for a little time I hoped to be
allowed to go free; but after more loud talk and a squabble that marked
by its growing violence the growing drunkenness of the whole party,
court and guard and spectators all, I was ordered along with the other
prisoners to be held in custody for the present. We were marched off,
first to one house and then to another, looking for a convenient prison,
and finally found one in a shop. Here--it was a country store--we sat
and smoked and drank a