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“Where—?” he finally spoke, in a low tone.

The man raised his finger to his lip, and looked at Quantrell with the intensest meaning.

"I know you, surely," Quantrell said, almost breathless; “you are-"

"Silence!" whispered the man, with a stately motion, far above his roughly marked face and ignoble dress-"silence, by your mother's spirit! Let me pass."

John Brown took this person's arm and hobbled painfully from the cell.

When Quantrell turned again, with a countenance ghastly in its wonder, he found Booth and the nearly helpless fellow-prisoner of Brown conversing strongly :

"Spiritualist, are you?" sounded the voice of Booth. "Well, if I had you to do with, I would take you at your word, and, like the witches who dealt with spirits of old, I would burn you at a pile of fagots!"

The man, shot all to pieces, but cool as a red fall apple punctured by the wasps, answered, as well as he could talk:

"Kind fellow you are! Now, if I were to meet a bad, black eye like yours, going through a woods, I would give you a broom!"

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A broom!" said Booth, looking puzzled at Stevens, the disabled captive; "what would I want with a broom?"

"To get a-straddle of it," concluded Stevens, "like the witches you ride with, and go to hell!"

At these invincible sounds the young priest, Fenwick, crossed himself hastily, while Booth and Beall looked down at Stevens with strong hate.

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Keep out of such company, my boy," Stevens remarked to Quantrell; "they have no progress in them."

"Progress-what is that?"

“Heaven is nothing but progress," Stevens said; “my education was nothing: don't you suppose heaven will be a school to me? The spirits of my love will be around my desk; old angel friends will teach me music; I shall read, and know, and progress onward. That's my belief. My sweetheart left it to me when she passed away."

As they left the jail, Quantrell asked the kind-eyed jailer:
'Who serves the meals to Captain Brown?"

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"An old Dutch baker out in the town; he sends the captain's meals in by his people."

Lloyd Quantrell was silent.

He knew, however, that the person with the tray of victuals he had seen in the jail was either Hannah Ritner or her ghost.

He hastened to the baker's house, on a back street; they knew nothing of any person answering to the name, or description, or disguise, of Hannah Ritner.

Katy's ring was lost again: would she ever find it by "searching for it down a brook"?

CHAPTER XXVI.

OATH-PLIGHT AND TROTH-PLIGHT.

AT the south end of Charlestown a small limestone brook relieved the sunny situation and watered some Virginia lawns, and near its turnpike bridge and ford was a mill and tannery, agreeable to the sight and smell, with the dripping water-wheel and the cordpiled bark. Here, wandering together, Quantrell and his three companions came upon a large wagon, and in it were Luther and Katy Bosler, and Nelly Harbaugh.

Lloyd rushed upon the party, and his later friends were surprised to see him not only kiss the slight, childish, large-eyed lass, but also kiss her sluggish-eyed, bovine-moving brother.

"Dear Katy, where did you come from?”

Luther answered, as Katy sprang again to Lloyd's arms:

"Lloyd, we are huckstering a little. Te rules is against coming to Harper's Ferry from Maryland, so we cross te pridge at Berlin and cross te mountain at Keyes's Ferry, and we sell to te soldiers here."

“Breaking the laws, bruder? And you a minister!"

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Such laws as Fergeenia has on this occasion," replied Luther, dryly, "are te laws of insanity. Tere is no tariff petween te States of our Union, and I am an American citizen. If Fergeenia had petter laws, John Brown could have stayed at home."

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"What, sir!” exclaimed Mr. Beall. “Is this your return for Virginia hospitality?”

"I am feeding Fergeenia, I think," replied Luther, plainly. "Tere

fore, I am not guilty of any inhospitality. What one thinks, he is responsible to himself and his Maker for."

"There are things thought," exclaimed Booth, sternly, "which are worse than bold crimes."

Assuredly," answered Luther, "and that is why I have no tisguises. I do not come here and agree with everypody and pe a spy. I say te man who is in te jail, to-day, is truer to justice than te judge upon te bench! Te plood he shed I do not approve of— put we, Lloyd, haf seen innocent plood shed too. Remember te old daddy on te mountain, dying to get to freedom-"

"O Lloyd," cried Katy, "your fader has pought Ashby, and we've prought him to Charlestown; he's in a Tunker family's house, close py!"

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And here's a letter from your father, Lloyd," Nelly Harbaugh cried, returning a most respectful and admiring look Mr. Booth gave her. We expected to find you, before long."

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As Lloyd read the letter, Booth engaged Nelly Harbaugh in conversation, and Hugh Fenwick, the semi-fledged priest, talked, with deference, to Katy Bosler; while Mr. Beall interrogated Luther Bosler in his intense, unrelieved way, and with a fierceness his low tones just concealed. The letter said:

"My son, I have bought you another slave at your request. I present him to you, according to such law as there is for property in our fellow-kind. Your own money I keep for you. The cube of human bondage is Golgotha. Find that word in your dictionary, and don't forget it! I sincerely hope John Brown will be hangedas he is too valuable to live-like the prize steer. To spare his life would give Virginia another generation to patronize this Union. I hear that you are enlisted among the cavalier train-bands; I expected as much from you, my son, and I would rather see you walk promptly to your place, in the files of slavery and disunion, than to remain of an.uncertain mind. The quicker every arms-bearing man is resolved, the speedier will be the issue. The request I make of you is, not to bestow your heart anywhere at present; and, as for your hand, remember that your mother's pride of family was her only sin. Your father, ABEL QUANTRELL."

When Lloyd, with feelings of affection, anger, and distress, folded this letter, he was drawn to Luther Bosler's side, and to Mr. Beall, browbeating Luther. The words he heard were:

"I can have you whipped, and drummed across the river, for the sentiments you express!"

"Do so. Us Tunker brethren are numerous in this valley. They have never aroused to the voice of conscience upon this subject. Perhaps they might, if you would whip one of their ministers, like a slave."

Luther's countenance, as he spoke calmly before the pinched, pallid, and tortured arrogance of the Anglo-Celt, bore no ill resemblance to one of the rougher Christian disciples under the whip

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Stop them!" commanded Nelly Harbaugh to Booth; "Luther is my friend, and shall not be imposed upon by that man.”

"For you I will interfere," answered Booth; "your friend must be a gentleman."

By the aid of Fenwick, who saw Katy's anxiety, Booth and Quantrell appeased the combatants, and they went to see the negro Ashby, whose unfortunate arrival had given Quantrell a new subject of annoyance.

He was at a Dunker family's humble house on an unfrequented cross-street, and, as they entered, an officer came close after to the door, to arrest a negro suspected of having voluntarily given aid to John Brown, and borne arms under him, and accused also of invading the State of Virginia to carry off a person held to ceaseless servitude—to wit, the author of his own being. The penalty for the first of these offenses was death; of the second, imprisonment for life. The negro Ashby, sustained by his religious ecstasy, heard of the fate awaiting him with a dignity surprising to Lloyd Quantrell.

"Mosster," he said to Lloyd, "I'm yours, and I don't want you to lose the money I'm bought with; but I'm tired of life. My ole mommy died when she heard of daddy's end. I wants to go in de cell with Green and Copeland and be hanged, and go to glory!"

"He ought to be hanged!” spoke Beall, with smothered fire of indignation. "He confesses to bearing arms."

"Oh,” cried Katy Bosler, "hard man! He saved my dear Lloyd's life. When you come to die, maype a black man's love may pe your only friend!”

"Mr. Booth," cried Nelly Harbaugh, "you go to the door and deceive the constable, while Lloyd gets the negro off.-He's worth all you paid for him, Lloyd; and, if he's hanged, the law won't pay you."

"You shall be obeyed," answered Booth; "if the constable persists, I'll throw him out of the house, and my Richmond company will stand by me!"

Quantrell started with the negro through the back garden, and led him by the winding creek to the railway, and on toward the north; and, meantime, Katy Bosler threw herself upon Mr. John Beall, and by sighs and entreaties prevailed upon his modesty, until Booth came in and reported the officer to have been thrown off the scent. Luther Bosler had gone off to attend to his market collections, and Mr. Booth, seeing Mr. Beall's predicament with Katy, claimed a kiss for his good offices also, which Katy called on Nelly Harbaugh to bestow. In a little while Beall's sense of Virginia hospitality overcame his severity, and he took a gentle interest in Katy, whose merciful nature had also greatly affected "Father" Hugh Fenwick.

Nelly Harbaugh, with a strong interest in these young worldly men, influenced Katy to prevail over Luther and let them both remain in Charlestown till his return with another load of provisions.

Luther's merchant instincts were now fully aroused, in view of this unexpected home-market and the calls of his approaching married life, and he kissed his affianced good-by and started toward Harper's Ferry, with Beall and Booth in his wagon.

Lloyd and his new slave had walked two or three miles, and then they left the railroad near a mill, and continued through the autumn fields, Lloyd meditating how to get his dependent across the Potomac into Maryland. They finally came in sight of a peculiarlyshaped brick house in a grove of trees, secluded from the surrounding farms, but from its limestone swells could be seen the broad gateway of the rivers at Harper's Ferry, as they broke the mountain ramparts through.

"Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction," Quantrell said; "and yonder it seems to be."

"Dis is Walnut Grove, mosster," spoke Ashby, out of his desolate meditations, pointing to the house with the blood-red end and the cool white piazzas suspended in the middle; "de Bealls lives yer."

"Who are these Bealls," asked Lloyd - "so serious and intense?"

"I've heerd," replied the negro, "dat de first of dem was a ole Scotch Covenanter, who come to America after killing a archbishop

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