“Much obliged!” the young man exclaimed.  “I was thinking that I’d have to take a trip to Hopedale, myself.”

“I knew he’d come around,” Sarah laughed.

But all unknown to these good people, the divinities were at that moment very busy.

That was the 26th of May, 1835, a date of much importance in the calendar of the Traylors.  It had been a clear, warm day, followed by a cloudless, starry night, with a chilly breeze blowing.  Between eleven and twelve o’clock Sarah and Samson were awakened by the hoot of an owl in the dooryard.  In a moment they heard three taps on a window-pane.  They knew what it meant.  Both got out of bed and into their clothes as quickly as possible.  Samson lighted a candle and put some wood on the fire.  Then he opened the door with the candle in his hand.  A stalwart, good-looking mulatto man, with a smooth shaven face, stood in the doorway.

“Is the coast clear?” he whispered.

“All clear,” Samson answered, in a low tone.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” said the negro, as he disappeared in the darkness, returning presently with two women, both very black.  They sat down in the dim light of the cabin.

“Are you hungry?” Sarah asked.

“We have had only a little bread and butter to-day, madame,” said the mulatto, whose speech and manners were like those of an educated white man of the South.

“I’ll get you something,” said Sarah, as she opened the cupboard.

“I think we had better not stop to eat now, madame,” said the negro.  “We will be followed and they may reach here any minute.”

Harry, who had been awakened by the arrival of the strangers, came down the ladder.

“These are fugitive slaves on their way north,” said Samson.  “Take them out to the stack.  I’ll bring some food in a few minutes.”

Harry conducted them to their hiding-place, and when they had entered it, he brought a ladder and opened the top of the stack.  A hooped shaft in the middle of it led to a point near its top and provided ventilation.  Then he crawled in at the entrance, through which Samson passed a pail of food, a jug of water and some buffalo hides.  Harry sat with them for a few moments in the black darkness of the stack room to learn whence they had come and whither they wished to go.

“We are from St. Louis, suh,” the mulatto answered.  “We are on our way to Canada.  Our next station is the house of John Peasley, in Tazewell County.”

“Do you know a man of the name of Eliphalet Biggs who lives in St. Louis?” Harry asked.

“Yes, suh; I see him often, suh,” the negro answered.

“What kind of a man is he?”

“Good when he is sober, suh, but a brute when he is drunk.”

“Is he cruel to his wife?”

“He beats her with a whip, suh.”

“My God!” Harry exclaimed.  “Why don’t she leave him?”

“She has left him, suh.  She is staying with a friend.  It has been hard for her to get away.  She has been a slave, too.”