[Illustration:  The flag placed on Pardee Butler’s raft.]

CHAPTER VIII.

At Port William I had already become acquainted with a Bro.  Hartman.  He had leased a saw-mill, and was running it, and I had bought lumber of him.  Having reached Port William, I went to Bro.  H. and said, “I want to obtain lodging of you to-night; but as I do not want to betray any man into trouble, I must first tell you what has befallen me.”  I then told him my mishap at Atchison, and said:  “Now if you do not want to lodge such a man, please say so, and I will go somewhere else.”  He replied:  “You shall lodge with me if it cost me every cent I am worth.”  He then went on to say that he had leased that mill of men who were very bitter, and very ultra in their views, and that they might be angry with him, and turn him out of the mill.  But at last he said:  “There is Bro.  Oliphant living in the bluffs; he is under no such embarrassment,” and Bro.  Hartman took me there.  The next day was the Lord’s day, and Oliver Steele was to preach the first sermon in that little village on that day.  Oliver Steele was a notable citizen of Platte county, Missouri.  His name appears in the early days of the Millennial Harbinger as a citizen of Madison county, Kentucky.  Bro.  Steele complains of the Reformers of Kentucky, that they are too much wedded to Old Baptist usages to be true to the primitive and apostolic order of things.  Then Bro.  Steele came to Platte county, Missouri, and had become one of its most wealthy and influential citizens.  He was an eminent example of a courtly and courteous “Old Virginia gentleman,” and was loved by the rich and loved by the poor, he was loved by white folks and black; loved by the mothers and their babies; and the people patronized his preaching, not because he was a great preacher, for he certainly was not, but because they loved the man.  He was an old Henry Clay Whig, and like that great Kentucky statesman was an Emancipationist.  Bro.  S. was to come over the river and preach the first sermon in this new town, and it was a great event to the people.  On returning to Port William in the morning Bro.  Hartman said that I must take dinner with him, and he would introduce me to Bro.  Steele.  It was not until twenty-five years afterwards, and only after Sister Hartman had died, that Bro.  Hartman told me what so much altered his feelings.  She was a sweet Christian woman, and when Bro.  H. went to her she said to him:  “Husband, don’t you know that in the last great day the Lord will say, ’I was a stranger and ye took me in’; and don’t you remember how the good Samaritan showed mercy to the man that fell among thieves?  Now we believe that this man is an innocent man; and what will the Lord say to us if we turn him out of doors?”