“Don’t you think, sir,” suggested Dick, who had calmly smoked his cigar throughout the colonel’s animated recital, “that that kidnaping yarn sounds a little improbable?  Is n’t there some more likely explanation?”

“Nonsense, Dick; it ’s the gospel truth!  Those infernal abolitionists are capable of anything—­everything!  Just think of their locking the poor, faithful nigger up, beating him, kicking him, depriving him of his liberty, keeping him on bread and water for three long, lonesome weeks, and he all the time pining for the old plantation!”

There were almost tears in the colonel’s eyes at the picture of Grandison’s sufferings that he conjured up.  Dick still professed to be slightly skeptical, and met Charity’s severely questioning eye with bland unconsciousness.

The colonel killed the fatted calf for Grandison, and for two or three weeks the returned wanderer’s life was a slave’s dream of pleasure.  His fame spread throughout the county, and the colonel gave him a permanent place among the house servants, where he could always have him conveniently at hand to relate his adventures to admiring visitors.

* * * * *

About three weeks after Grandison’s return the colonel’s faith in sable humanity was rudely shaken, and its foundations almost broken up.  He came near losing his belief in the fidelity of the negro to his master,—­the servile virtue most highly prized and most sedulously cultivated by the colonel and his kind.  One Monday morning Grandison was missing.  And not only Grandison, but his wife, Betty the maid; his mother, aunt Eunice; his father, uncle Ike; his brothers, Tom and John, and his little sister Elsie, were likewise absent from the plantation; and a hurried search and inquiry in the neighborhood resulted in no information as to their whereabouts.  So much valuable property could not be lost without an effort to recover it, and the wholesale nature of the transaction carried consternation to the hearts of those whose ledgers were chiefly bound in black.  Extremely energetic measures were taken by the colonel and his friends.  The fugitives were traced, and followed from point to point, on their northward run through Ohio.  Several times the hunters were close upon their heels, but the magnitude of the escaping party begot unusual vigilance on the part of those who sympathized with the fugitives, and strangely enough, the underground railroad seemed to have had its tracks cleared and signals set for this particular train.  Once, twice, the colonel thought he had them, but they slipped through his fingers.

One last glimpse he caught of his vanishing property, as he stood, accompanied by a United States marshal, on a wharf at a port on the south shore of Lake Erie.  On the stern of a small steamboat which was receding rapidly from the wharf, with her nose pointing toward Canada, there stood a group of familiar dark faces, and the look they cast backward was not one of longing for the fleshpots of Egypt.  The colonel saw Grandison point him out to one of the crew of the vessel, who waved his hand derisively toward the colonel.  The latter shook his fist impotently—­and the incident was closed.