oor-bell he put into the arms of a nice-looking
mulatto woman of thirty a little youngster about two years old.

A new servant, with some trepidation, showed them up to "Massa's" study.
We had weeded John's dialect of that word before he went away, but he
had been six months since then in a servile atmosphere. He stood at the
open study-door. My father stopped shaving, and let the lather dry on
his face, as he shielded with his hand the eyes he in vain tried to
believe. Yes, veritably, John Peterson!

But John Peterson could not speak. He choked visibly; and then, pointing
to the two beside him, blurted out,--

"I's done did it, Massa!" and broke entirely down.

Again it was AEnon generally, and there was more baptizing done.

John had made a march somewhat like Sherman's. He had crossed the entire
States of Virginia and Maryland, carrying two non-combatants, and no
weapon of his own but a knife,--subsisting his army on the enemy all the
way,--using negro guides freely, but never sending them back to their
masters,--and terminating his brilliant campaign with an act of bold,
unconstitutional confiscation. He couldn't have found a Chief-Justice in
the world to uphold him in it at that time.

Hiding by day and walking by night, with his boy strapped to his back
and his wife by his side, he had come within thirty miles of the
Maryland line, when one night the full moon flashed its Judas lantern
full upon him, and, being in the high-road, he naturally enough "tuk a
scar'." Freedom only thirty miles off,--that vast territory behind him,
three times traversed for her dear sake and Love's,--a slave-owner's
stable close by,--a wife and a baby crouching in the thicket,--God above
saying, "The laborer is worthy of his hire." No Chief-Justice in the
world could have convinced that man.

With an inspired touch,--the _tactus eruditus_ of a bitter memory and a
glorious hope,--John felt for and found the best horse in the stable,
saddled him, led him out without awakening a soul, and, mounting, took
his wife before him with the baby in her arms. A pack of deerhounds came
snuffing about him as he rode off; but, for a wonder, they never howled.

"Oh, Massa!" said John, "when I see dat, I knowed we was safe anyhow.
Dat Lor' dat stop de moufs of dem dogs was jus' de same as Him dat shut
de moufs of de lions in Dannelindelinesden." (I write it as he
pronounced it. I think he thought it was a place in the Holy Land.)
"When I knowed