Success attended his efforts for more than two weeks; but alas, after having got back north of Richmond, on his way home to Alexandria, he was captured and put in prison; his master being informed of the fact, came on and took possession of him again.  At first he refused to sell him; said he “had money enough and owned about thirty slaves;” therefore wished to “take him back to make an example of him.”  However, through the persuasion of an uncle of his, he consented to sell.  Accordingly, John was put on the auction-block and bought for $1,300 by Green McMurray, a regular trader in Richmond.  McMurray again offered him for sale, but in consequence of hard times and the high price demanded, John did not go off, at least not in the way the trader desired to dispose of him, but did, nevertheless, succeed in going off on the Underground Rail Road.  Thus once more he reached his old home, Alexandria.  His mother was in one place, and his six brothers and sisters evidently scattered, where he knew not.  Since he was five years of age, not one of them had he seen.

If such sufferings and trials were not entitled to claim for the sufferer the honor of a hero, where in all Christendom could one be found who could prove a better title to that appellation?

It is needless to say that the Committee extended to him brotherly kindness, sympathized with him deeply, and sent him on his way rejoicing.

Of his subsequent career the following extract from a letter written at London shows that he found no rest for the soles of his feet under the Stars and Stripes in New York: 

I hope that you will remember John Thompson, who passed through your hands, I think, in October, 1857, at the same time that Mr. Cooper, from Charleston, South Carolina, came on.  I was engaged at New York, in the barber business, with a friend, and was doing very well, when I was betrayed and obliged to sail for England very suddenly, my master being in the city to arrest me.

    (LONDON, December 21st, 1860.)

[Illustration:  Escaping from Alabama on top of a car.]

JEREMIAH COLBURN.—­Jeremiah is a bright mulatto, of prepossessing appearance, reads and writes, and is quite intelligent.  He fled from Charleston, where he had been owned by Mrs. E. Williamson, an old lady about seventy-five, a member of the Episcopal Church, and opposed to Freedom.  As far as he was concerned, however, he said, she had treated him well; but, knowing that the old lady would not be long here, he judged it was best to look out in time.  Consequently, he availed himself of an Underground Rail Road ticket, and bade adieu to that hot-bed of secession, South Carolina.  Indeed, he was fair enough to pass for white, and actually came the entire journey from Charleston to this city under the garb of a white gentleman.  With regard to gentlemanly bearing, however, he was all right in this particular.  Nevertheless, as he had been a slave all his days, he found that it required no small amount of nerve to succeed in running the gauntlet with slave-holders and slave-catchers for so long a journey.