then they would manage to secure a pig.  A friend also would occasionally serve them with a meal.  Their sufferings at best were fearful; but great as they were, the thought of returning to Slavery never occurred to them, and the longer they stayed in the woods, the greater was their determination to be free.  In the belief that their owner had about given them up they resolved to take the North Star for a pilot, and try in this way to reach free land.

Kit, an old friend in time of need, having proved true to them in their cave, was consulted.  He fully appreciated their heroism, and determined that he would join them in the undertaking, as he was badly treated by his master, who was called General Washington, a common farmer, hard drinker, and brutal fighter, which Kit’s poor back fully evinced by the marks it bore.  Of course Isaac and Henry were only too willing to have him accompany them.

In leaving their respective homes they broke kindred ties of the tenderest nature.  Isaac had a wife, Eliza, and three children, Isaac, Estella, and Ellen, all owned by Fitchhugh.  Henry was only nineteen, single, but left parents, brothers, and sisters, all owned by different slave-holders.  Kit had a wife, Matilda, and three children, Sarah Ann, Jane Frances, and Ellen, slaves.

* * * * *

SEPTEMBER 28, 1856.

ARRIVAL OF FIVE FROM THE EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND.

CYRUS MITCHELL, alias JOHN STEEL; JOSHUA HANDY, alias HAMBLETON HAMBY; CHARLES DULTON, alias WILLIAM ROBINSON; EPHRAIM HUDSON, alias JOHN SPRY; FRANCIS MOLOCK, alias THOMAS JACKSON; all in “good order” and full of hope.

The following letter from the fearless friend of the slave, Thomas Garrett, is a specimen of his manner of dispatching Underground Rail Road business.  He used Uncle Sam’s mail, and his own name, with as much freedom as though he had been President of the Pennsylvania Central Rail Road, instead of only a conductor and stock-holder on the Underground Rail Road.

    9 mo. 26th, 1856.

RESPECTED FRIEND:—­WILLIAM STILL, I send on to thy care this evening by Rail Road, 5 able-bodied men, on their way North; receive them as the Good Samaritan of old and oblige thy friend, THOMAS GARRETT.

The “able-bodied men” duly arrived, and were thus recorded on the Underground Rail Road books as trophies of the success of the friends of humanity.

Cyrus is twenty-six years of age, stout, and unmistakably dark, and was owned by James K. Lewis, a store-keeper, and a “hard master.”  He kept slaves for the express purpose of hiring them out, and it seemed to afford him as much pleasure to receive the hard-earned dollars of his bondmen as if he had labored for them with his own hands.  “It mattered not, how mean a man might be,” if he would pay the largest price, he was the man whom the store-keeper