corrupting it by violence and illegal voting.  If slavery wins in Kansas and Nebraska, it will control the Union forever.  The greatest battle in our history is about to be fought out in Kansas, a battle to see whether this nation shall be a slave nation, in every state and every town, or free.  Dunlap and I and thousands of others are going down there to take the state of Kansas into our own hands, peacefully if we can, by violence if we must.  We are willing to die to make the United States a free nation.  Come with us!”

“But we don’t expect to die,” urged Dunlap, seeing that this looked pretty serious to me.  “We expect to live, and get farms, and make homes, and prosper, after we have shown the Border Ruffians the muzzles of those rifles.  Thatcher, bring the passengers in!”

3

Thatcher went out of the room the back way.

“We call this a station,” went on Dunlap, “because it’s a stopping-place on the U. G. Railway.”

“What’s the U. G. Railway?” I asked.

“Don’t you know that?” he queried.

“I’m only a canal hand,” I answered, “going to a farm out on the prairie, that I was euchred into taking in settling with a scoundrel for my share of my father’s property; and I’m pretty green.”

Thatcher came in then, leading the little black boy by the hand, and following him was the negro woman carrying a baby at her breast, and holding by the hand a little woolly-headed pickaninny about three years old.  They were ragged and poverty-stricken, and seemed scared at everything.  The woman came in bowing and scraping to me, and the two little boys hid behind her skirts and peeked around at me with big white eyes.

“Tell the gentleman,” said Thatcher, “where you’re going.”

“We’re gwine to Canayda,” said she, “‘scusin’ your presence.”

“How are you going to get to Canada?” asked Thatcher.

“The good white folks,” said she, “will keep us hid out nights till we gits thar.”

“What will happen,” said Thatcher, “if this young man tells any one that he’s seen you?”

“The old massa,” said she, “will find out, an’ he’ll hunt us wif houn’s, an’ fotch us back’, and then he’ll sell us down the ribber to the cotton-fiel’s.”

I never heard anything quite so pitiful as this speech.  I had never known before what it must mean to be really hunted.  The woman shrank back toward the door through which she had come, her face grew a sort of grayish color; and then ran to me and throwing herself on her knees, she took hold of my hands, and begged me for God’s sake not to tell on her, not to have her carried back, not to fix it so she’d be sold down the river to work in the cotton-fields.

“I won’t,” I said, “I tell you I won’t.  I want you to get to Canada!”

“God bress yeh,” she said.  “I know’d yeh was a good young gemman as soon as I set eyes on yeh!  I know’d yeh was quality!”

“Who do you expect to meet in Canada?” asked Thatcher.