h breathless silence
the reappearance of the stranger, who, regardless of his own safety, had
thus risked his life to save another's. Three cheers broke the stillness
that had fallen on the company, as the brave man was seen coming through
the window and slowly descending to the ground holding under one arm the
inanimate form of the child. Another cheer and then another, made the
welkin ring, as the stranger, with hair burned and eyebrows closely
singed, fainted at the foot of the ladder. But the child was saved.

The stranger was Jerome. As soon as he revived, he shrunk from every
eye, as if he feared they would take from him the freedom which he had
gone through so much to obtain.

The next day, the fugitive took a vessel, and the following morning
found himself standing on the free soil of Canada. As his foot pressed
the shore, he threw himself upon his face, kissed the earth, and
exclaimed, "O God! I thank thee that I am a free man."

CHAPTER XXVII. TRUE FREEDOM

THE history of the African race is God's illuminated clock, set in the
dark steeple of time. The negro has been made the hewer of wood and the
drawer of water for nearly all other nations. The people of the United
States, however, will have an account to settle with God, owing to their
treatment of the negro, which will far surpass the rest of mankind.

Jerome, on reaching Canada, felt for the first time that personal
freedom which God intended that all who bore his image should enjoy.
That same forgetfulness of self which had always characterized him now
caused him to think of others. The thoughts of dear ones in slavery were
continually in his mind, and above all others, Clotelle occupied his
thoughts. Now that he was free, he could better appreciate her condition
as a slave. Although Jerome met, on his arrival in Canada, numbers who
had escaped from the Southern States, he nevertheless shrank from all
society, particularly that of females. The soft, silver-gray tints on
the leaves of the trees, with their snow-spotted trunks, and a biting
air, warned the new-born freeman that he was in another climate. Jerome
sought work, and soon found it; and arranged with his employer that the
latter should go to Natchez in search of Clotelle. The good Scotchman,
for whom the fugitive was laboring, freely offered to go down and
purchase the girl, if she could be bought, and let Jerome pay him in
work. With such a prospect of future happiness in view, this in