Without any reference to earlier stories not unknown to them, and bolder as to Austria than those who then dwelt in the White House, the newspapers now openly and unanswerably welcomed this distinguished stranger to the heart of Washington.  Unknowingly, when they gave her this publicity, they threw around her also protection, secrecy.  As she read, the Countess St. Auban smiled.  She knew that now there would be no second vehmgerichte.  The government now would not dare!

What interested her more was the story at that time made current, of an unsuccessful attempt which had been made by a southern slave owner to reclaim his property in a northern state.  The facts recounted that a planter of Maryland, with two relatives, had followed an escaped slave to the settlement of Christianville, Pennsylvania, where a little colony of fugitives had made common cause together.  In this case, as was prescribed under the law, the slave owner had called to his aid a United States marshal, who in turn had summoned a large posse of his own.  These had visited the home of the fugitive and called upon him to surrender himself to his owner.  This the fugitive had refused to do, and he was backed in this refusal by a considerable party of men of his own race, some of them free men, and some fugitive slaves, who had assembled at his house.

“I’ll have my property,” asserted the slave owner, according to the report, “or I’ll eat my breakfast in hell.”  One of the Marylanders had then fired upon the slave, and the fire was returned in general by the negroes.  The old planter, a man of courage, was struck to the ground, killed by the blacks, his two relatives disabled, and several other men on both sides were wounded.  The fugitive himself was not taken, and the arresting party was obliged to retire.  Naturally, great exultation prevailed among the triumphant blacks; and this, so said numerous despatches, was fostered and encouraged by comment of all the northern abolitionist press.

Josephine St. Auban pondered over this barbarous recountal of an event which would seem to have been impossible in a civilized community.  “It comes,” said she, musing, “it comes! Ca ira!  There will be war!  Ah, I must hasten.”

She turned to other papers, of private nature, in her desk.  In a half hour more, she had gone over the last remittance reports of the agents of her estates in Europe.  She smiled, nodded, as she tapped a pencil over the very handsome totals.  In ten minutes more, she was ready and awaiting the call of Carlisle and Kammerer in her reception-room.  In her mind was a plan already formulated.

At heart frank and impulsive, and now full of a definite zeal, she did not long keep them waiting to learn her mind.

“Are you still for the cause of freedom, and can you keep a secret, or aid in one?” she broke in suddenly, turning toward Carlisle.  Looking at him at first for a time, inscrutably, as though half in amusement or in recollection, she now regarded him carefully for an instant, apparently weighing his make-up, estimating his sincerity, mentally investigating his character, looking at the flame of his hair, the fanatic fire of his deep set eye.