afforded a very pleasant shade to the eyes.  I seized upon it and carried it to the poor woman, who received it with transport, clapped it immediately upon her head and drew it well down over her face.  She took up the bread and meat, telling me with many thanks, that as soon as she and her husband had eaten, they should continue on their way, not waiting for the night, as they were very anxious to find themselves further from the Kentucky border.  I wished her God speed, and watched her as she crossed the open turf, her bundle in her hand, and the great green calash nodding forward upon her head, until she disappeared within the wood.

She had scarce been ten minutes out of my sight when a very unpleasant misgiving came over me.  That great green calash that she had been so glad to receive—­what an odd and unusual head-dress it was!  Surely, it would attract attention; it would render her a marked object.  If her pursuers should once get upon her traces, it would enable them to track her from point to point.  I wished, with all my heart, it had been less conspicuous, and I began to think that my researches in the garret were not destined to be particularly fortunate.  I wished exceedingly that my friend the minister’s daughter, had been at home, that I might have taken counsel with her and have had the benefit of her experience in such matters.

As I was still standing in the doorway, ruminating upon the subject with a troubled soul, I saw in the distance the figure of a student of theology, whom I knew to be a friend of our old minister and his daughter, and thoroughly anti-slavery in principle.  I hastened after him, told him the circumstances of the case, and imparted to him my misgivings.  He promised me to put the matter into safe hands, and to have a look-out kept for the wanderers.  After a few hours he returned to me with the welcome intelligence that the fugitives had been overtaken on the turnpike road a mile or two beyond, by one of the emissaries of the underground railway in a covered cart, in which they had been comfortably stowed, and safely forwarded on their way, and that from that time forth they would be speedily and quietly passed from point to point and from friend to friend, until they reached their destination.

A weight was lifted from my heart, I could have danced for joy; and I learned with astonishment, that the agent, who had come like an angel to the relief of the poor fugitives, was no other than a little ugly negro man, who had often worked in our garden, and who was usually employed to do the roughest and dirtiest work in the neighborhood.  His crooked figure, his bandy legs, and little ape-like head, had always led me to regard him as the most unpromising specimen of his race that I had ever beheld; but from that time forth I regarded him with respect.  The poor crooked form, distorted by hard toil, contained a heart, and the little ape-like head a brain, to help his outcast brethren in the hour of need.