THE RED ANVIL
 
 THAT WAS VERY RUDE OF US BOTH, BESS SAID." 
 
 Page S3-
 
 THE RED 
 
 A Romance of Fifty 
 Years Ago 
 
 By 
 
 Charles Reginald Sherlock 
 
 Author of "Your Uncle Lew" 
 m^H^MH-4 l-l I I I I I I l-M-M-4 M I I I I I M 
 
 With Frontispiece by WALTER RUSSELL 
 
 _t_._t. .t.-.t J...t .t...u .j-..tr -t t I t I- t- *j 4^*1 4* *t" t l "l ^ fr ^ ^ ^ ^ *"*f"* 
 
 -^*-*l> f T T r * * * 
 
 . . . Safe on freedom s vantage ground 
 
 Our feet are planted : let us there remain 
 
 In unrevengeful calm, no means untried 
 
 Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied, 
 
 The sad spectators of a suicide. 
 
 They break the links of Union : shall we light 
 
 The fires of hell to weld anew the chain 
 
 On that red anvil where each blow is pain ? 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIIR 
 
 ^H-^H-M-M-^MH- 
 
 iorfc 
 Frederick A. Stokes Company 
 
 Publishers
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1902, 
 BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 PUBLISHED IN MAY, 1902
 
 TO MY MOTHER AND MY WIFE 
 
 TO HER WHOSE GIFTS WERE TO 
 ME A HOPE, TO HER WHOSE 
 COURAGE IS MY STRENGTH, TO A 
 BLESSED MEMORY AND A PRESENT 
 HELP THIS BOOK IS AFFECTION 
 ATELY DEDICATED BY THE AU 
 THOR.
 
 The Red Anvil. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE next time you chance to pass that way make 
 it a point to know Smithboro better. Should it be 
 your good fortune to find the place under a sum 
 mer s sun, say in July or August, gladness will 
 possess your soul that you broke your journey 
 there. A spirit of perfect restfulness pervades its 
 elm-embowered streets. All about where the shad 
 ows of the spreading branches of those majestic 
 trees lie upon the gravelled roads, the flagged path 
 ways, the shingles and the clapboards, are calm and 
 contentment. Calm and contentment are of the 
 air of Smithboro, as if the old village, like a man in 
 the fullness of his years with life s finished work 
 behind him, were keeping vigil there that he might 
 complete a brave career with as brave an end. It 
 is a noble survival awaiting the final stroke. 
 
 Smithboro has not always stood thus beckoning 
 us to the beyond. It had a voice once that sounded 
 by no means faint and feeble in the national coun-
 
 2 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 cil. It was a cry in the wilderness, without ques 
 tion, but in Washington, where the foundations of 
 the Republic were already beginning to rock under 
 the shock of inevitable rebellion, it fell ominously 
 on ears deafened by the roar of the coming storm. 
 In all the land there was no protest against the 
 Fugitive Slave Law louder than that which Smith- 
 boro put forth. 
 
 " I tell you what it is, boys," Lyman Disbrow, 
 the picture-taker, had declared to a knot of earnest 
 men at the Lafayette Hotel, " I tell you what it is. 
 You re makin hist ry here in Smithboro, an you 
 don t know it. A hundred years from now they ll 
 be readin bout Smithboro jest as we do bout 
 Philippi, an Thermopylae, an Bunker Hill, an 
 Waterloo, an Vera Cruz. So that s why I keep 
 tellin you, if you want to have your pictures in the 
 fust reader, long with Julius Caesar, Esquire, an 
 Mr. Horatius at the bridge, an Gen. Mad Anthony 
 Wayne, an the Duke of Wellington, an Gen. 
 Scott, the sooner you come round to the wagon 
 the better for all consarned. It ain t your money I 
 want doggone it, no ; it s for hist ry and the glory 
 of Smithboro I m wastin my breath. Pictures are 
 made when the sun shines, an it s gettin mighty 
 cloudy in these diggin s mighty cloudy."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 3 
 
 The peculiar emphasis the picture-taker laid on 
 the final word of this little advertisement of his 
 business was not to be overlooked in such a gather 
 ing. 
 
 "Spit out what you mean, Lyme Disbrow," said 
 one of those who listened, in a rasping voice. 
 " Taint no secret in Smithboro, no sir, that a nig 
 ger come in on the Underground last night, who s 
 goin to stay right here in Smithboro long nough 
 to ring the meetin -house bell to-morrer. We re 
 goin to show what we think of slave-huntin round 
 here, jest for onct. And if you vvere s good a man s 
 your brother, the preacher, Lyme Disbrow, you d 
 take a hand in it to-morrer long with the rest on 
 us." 
 
 " Every man to his trade," was Disbrow s unim- 
 passioned reply to this arraignment of his patriot 
 ism. " Mine s takin pictures, an when it s cloudy 
 the machine won t work. It s none o my funeral 
 how many runaway niggers come to Smithboro. 
 Doggone it, no ! You see I can move out any time 
 if I don t like the looks o things. That s where a 
 feller on wheels s got the bulge on the feller with 
 the go-devil." 
 
 " P raps some folks ll be run aout of Smithboro if 
 they don t git one side or t other party dum quick,
 
 4 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 This from the same quarter of the hotel piazza, as 
 the preceding assault. 
 
 " Likely s not," Disbrow rejoined without ap 
 parent resentment that his neutrality touching the 
 "higher law," which was swaying Smithboro, was 
 likely to result in anything so disastrous to his per 
 sonal safety ; " but I had thought my feet was on 
 the rock. I ve always said I b lieved a white man 
 was as good s a nigger any day, so long s he be 
 haved himself. An as for bein run out of town, 
 when that catastrophe happens, I ll set up in busi 
 ness somewhere on Genesee Street. Maybe there 
 are them among you who thinks all there is on 
 earth is here in Smithboro. Doggone it, no ! 
 Genesee Street runs clean through New York State 
 from Albany to Buffalo. That s the main road. 
 Out there you see the cars go by, look up at the 
 telegraph poles, an hear the news. Boys, it s a 
 good thing to git away from Smithboro once in a 
 dog s age. We live an learn if we don t live in 
 Smithboro all the time." 
 
 As a sign that he had nothing more to say on the 
 subject in hand Lyme Disbrow knit his brows, 
 drew down the lids of his eyes, puckered his lips, 
 and then whistled a few measures of the old jingle 
 which went with the words :
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 5 
 
 " He s bound to run all night, 
 He s bound to run all day, 
 I ll bet my money on the bob-tail nag, 
 Somebody bet on the bay." 
 
 When Lyme Disbrow whistled he had no more 
 breath to waste on words. The measure of Smith- 
 boro s provincialism which he had taken in his 
 closing observation, however, fitted nobody s ideas 
 but his own, and consequently its sting was lost on 
 the listening villagers. The force of Lyme Dis- 
 brow s remarks frequently missed the comprehen 
 sion of the common throng; but as Smithboro did 
 not know, it did not care how far its present im 
 pulses carried it. 
 
 A wayward urchin hurling stones over the sheer 
 sides of a precipice, heedless of the harm they do 
 as they bound from ledge to ledge, is no more reck 
 less of results than was this sequestered village 
 of hardly one thousand souls, challenging, as it 
 did, the great powers of the Government and of 
 the Government s laws, to defeat the laws Smith 
 boro would make unto itself. This is what Smith 
 boro did out of the goodness of its heart, out of the 
 purity of its purposes, out of what it conceived to be 
 the highest of patriotic motives. This was Smith 
 boro, then, as now, elm-embowered and self-
 
 6 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 contained, just as it had been set down among the 
 Madison hills by the sturdy pioneers who founded it. 
 Off the beaten track, it lay nestling in what it 
 regarded as the garden spot of all the world, as 
 content as a hermit of eld in its chosen isolation. 
 
 Hence it was that Lyinan Disbro\v s little fling 
 that Smithboro might possibly profit by a closer 
 connection with Genesee Street that great artery 
 of traffic through which the life of New York State 
 pulsed and beat passed unheeded. Truth to 
 tell, it was Smithboro s preference to shut out the 
 shriek of the locomotive and those other disturbing 
 noises that belong to progress. 
 
 Smithboro found glory enough in its connection 
 with the Underground Railroad. Was it not in 
 touch with the whole world through this mysteri 
 ous linking of a thousand heart strings? No 
 bands of steel throbbing with trafficking mankind 
 could match its unique achievements. 
 
 The Underground Railroad! What a marvellous 
 institution it was! Through its length, reaching 
 from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian frontier, 
 here was a thoroughfare that did not represent the 
 ballasting of a foot of track, the driving of a single 
 spike, the laying of an inch of iron. Without 
 locomotives to draw its cars, without cars to be
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 7 
 
 drawn, without rails to draw them on, the 
 Underground Railroad was a line of communication 
 as noiseless as a dream, as potential as an earth 
 quake. Unsurveyed, unmapped, unrouted, its 
 tortuous course w r as like an unblazed path in the 
 trackless forest, leading from serfdom to liberty. 
 Over it there passed a phantom pageant of hunted 
 fugitives, criminals in the eye of the law, for no 
 better reason than that in the providence of God 
 their skins were black instead of white. By day, 
 by night, they kept the weary way, as men and 
 women will when under the lash of pursuit ; help 
 less creatures who peered into every human face 
 they saw with prayerful terror lest the next step 
 should plunge them back into hopeless captivity. 
 A cryptic railroad this whose only code was one of 
 danger signals a symbol simply of patriotic out 
 lawry. The North Star s beams were head-lights 
 flashing along its hidden way. It coupled human 
 
 o o 
 
 hearts in trains and ground beneath the silent 
 wheels of hope the supine law. From Arcadian 
 everglade and bayou to the borderland of the 
 Arctic wastes it clove a path over which Freedom 
 took its long pilgrimage. It joined the lazy zephyr 
 of the cypress swamp with the frosty blast of the 
 North. It twined the myrtle with the jasmine.
 
 8 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Along its stretches wafted the orange grove s pleasant 
 perfume to be lost at last in the balsam-laden air of 
 the Promised Land. Its mile posts led the wanderer 
 singing from canebrake and cotton field to where 
 he stood in mute awe of Niagara s roar. This was 
 the poetic side. Tragedy, too, it had, bitter and 
 barbaric, for wherever the cross is carried we find 
 the stain of blood. 
 
 To-day the Underground Railroad is but a 
 cluster of memories sweetened by the odours of the 
 pomegranate and the rose. A highway no longer, 
 above its sacred soil there springs a wealth of 
 blooms of North and South, in whose luxuriant 
 tangle the last vestige of sectional strife lies 
 forever strangled. From it let us hope we may be 
 able to pluck the simple flower of romance. 
 
 We shall take our bearings from Smithboro, for 
 Smithboro was more than a way station on the 
 Underground Railroad.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IF you would have Smithboro in your eye stand 
 with your back against the giant elm, which rears 
 itself in stately authority at the Northwest corner 
 of the village green, and deliberately circumnavigate 
 its great trunk. Everything that concerns us in 
 the pursuit we have undertaken comes into view in 
 this adaptation of the panoramic process to the 
 optical faculty. It is a better eerie for our purposes 
 than the band-stand in the middle of the grass 
 plot, a distinctly modern structure in which both 
 the carpenter and painter went the chromatic scale 
 one better, making it octagonal in form and in 
 colour as diverse. Face north at the foot of the 
 big tree and the vision sweeps down a long street, 
 which at its end (if that is the end we see) seems 
 to tunnel into the side of a green hill. As a 
 matter of fact the village street, turned country 
 road at that point, swings around the green hill 
 and takes its way along the bank of Otselic Creek 
 to Morristown, the county seat. Toward the
 
 io THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 south, the opening stretches out as far as the eye 
 can reach. Thither lies Canasango and the rail 
 road, not the Underground, but the iron wedge 
 with which the Vandcrbilts even as early as that 
 had begun to split the State in twain like an apple. 
 East and west, when you cast your eyes in those 
 directions, they will gratefully range under an 
 arboureal shelter of interlaced leaves down spaces 
 that about equal in extent three or four city 
 blocks. Fronting on the four sides of the green 
 are the business places of Smithboro, all in a row by 
 themselves ; three churches, no two of which 
 adjoin, thus emphasizing the fact that harmony 
 possible in trade rivalry is impossible in the realm 
 of religion ; the fire-engine house, supporting a 
 shining bell in a tiny cupola affixed to the apex of 
 its angled roof, and, beneath it, the only gilded 
 signboard in Smithboro, which bears the legend, in 
 graceful curve, " Deluge Fire-Engine Company, No. 
 I ; " the tavern, built of unhewn stone with its 
 gables to the street, its long, two-storied piazza, held 
 up by rounded posts hinting at Colonial origin ;and, 
 all by itself on one side of the square, a dwelling 
 of the pretensions of a mansion, built in manor- 
 house style, with a Corinthian-columned facade 
 fro\vnin<j on the neighbouring cottages out of a
 
 THE RED ANVIL. n 
 
 garden of trellised vines and tall rose bushes. We 
 shall have to do with this mansion, and its owner, 
 as we shall have to do with the little blind alley 
 beside the little white church, which lets into thr 
 open space of the green at its farther side. Tin- 
 church, too, is to play its part in this drama of ours, 
 and so are the tavern and the engine-house. 
 
 They will tell you in Smithboro, if you ask the 
 question, that this blind alley, accessible from the 
 street and ending abruptly three rods back at a 
 board fence, is village property. To this day, how 
 ever, it is called Disbrow s Corner. This name it 
 derived from its periodical occupancy fifty years 
 ago by Lyme Disbrow and his picture-gallery on 
 wheels. In fact no one in Smithboro can recall the 
 time when the alley was otherwise used. When the 
 picture-taker was away on his travels the alley 
 stood idle. 
 
 Lyme Disbrow had taken the picture of every 
 body in Smithboro and of everybody in Morristown 
 and Canasango as well, and there is not a family 
 album in those parts to-day that does not contain 
 choice examples of his skill as a disciple of Da- 
 guerre. 
 
 As turn about is fair play, suppose we see how he 
 
 looked under the lens.
 
 12 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 On Sunday in Smithboro, in the days when Lyme 
 Disbrow was in the land of the living, the village 
 wore a smarter outside than on any other day of the 
 seven. The villagers kept the Holy Sabbath of 
 course, for it was always a devout community, but 
 on that day it had a large influx of worshippers from 
 the neighbouring country to enliven its streets. 
 Most of them came to pray and remained to curse. 
 It was on Sunday, more than on the days of the 
 week, that Smithboro formulated its philippics 
 against negro bondage as an institution, and the 
 Government s heartless recognition of it. 
 
 We start with a Sunday when the place was 
 ringing with the news that the bell in the meeting 
 house was to be tolled by " a nigger who had come 
 in on the Underground " just to show in what light 
 regard the law of the land, which forbade the har. 
 bouring of fugitive slaves, was held in Smithboro. 
 
 Lyme Disbrow s picture-wagon was standing in 
 the alley and Lyme Disbrow sat on its steps smok 
 ing a pipe. Staring you full in the face as you 
 came upon him from either side was the bold em 
 blazonment of his art, embellishing in huge lettering 
 the two sides of the wasron : 
 
 SECURE THE SHADOW ERE THE SUBSTANCE FADES.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 13 
 
 This motto was the only decorative feature of 
 the van. The painter had laid on the colour with a 
 lavish hand, doing marvellous things with his brush 
 in shading the crimson letters with green, while the 
 ornamentation, beginning in a festoon of yellow 
 roses and ending in a pudgy cupid in pink, ex 
 hausted every other resource of his palette. This 
 abode of art in which Lyme Disbrow was the pre 
 siding genius was a lumbering affair, half house, 
 half wacron, with four little wheels all of one size 
 
 o 
 
 under its long bottom. No axles in that part of the 
 country held up anything like it. At rest it was 
 entered from the rear through a door reached by 
 two steps fixed to an iron framework, and in motion 
 it was guided from the front through a broad window 
 provided with a sliding sash. An arched roof cov 
 ered the wagon, and this was furnished with a 
 skylight, through which the luminous medium of the 
 picture-taker s art shone when he was at work. At 
 cither side of the door in the rear were framed 
 some of the choicer examples of the picture-taker s 
 artistic productions, with a simple scroll making an 
 nouncement of the prices at which they could be 
 procured. 
 
 To a considerable portion of the patronage to 
 which Lyme Disbrow appealed the art he practised
 
 i 4 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 was a black art. To hold the sun s rays in thrall 
 certainly appeared to be an uncanny thing. There 
 were dark recesses in the wagon, too, beyond which 
 no one save the picture-taker ever passed, and there, 
 the superstitious folk would have it, Lyme Disbrow 
 brewed a devil s broth. In the fumes of the collo 
 dion which hung about the place like a mist there 
 was proof enough for them that he worked in a 
 diabolical mystery. There were folks who believed 
 in ghosts who had never seen any object of super 
 natural aspect more convincing than Lyme Disbrow 
 when he cowled his head in the black cloth behind 
 his picture-taking apparatus. Lyme took no trouble 
 to strip himself of the wizard s mantle with which 
 such as these showed an inclination to clothe him, 
 for he found in this belief a form of protection 
 against prying eyes that no amount of watchfulness 
 would have guaranteed. 
 
 What had he to hide except the secrets of his 
 trade? Who can tell ? Possibly all that was going 
 on inside the four sides of his van was not reflected 
 on the ground-glass of his camera. These times, 
 we must remember, are not our times. 
 
 So he went his way. So he sat smoking his pipe 
 as we found him not five minutes ago. The bell i:i 
 the steeple sticking up straight above his nondc-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 15 
 
 script vehicle had not as yet given tongue to the 
 defiance to hear which every ear in Smithboro 
 opened wide, this quiet Sunday morning. 
 
 " This is a great day for the Disbrows," the pict 
 ure-taker said by way of salutation to one of the 
 early comers to the meeting house, a tall man of 
 clerical cut, whose years were perhaps five and 
 thirty. This was the Rev. Abner Disbrow, " the 
 fighting parson of Smithboro," whose call it was to 
 serve his Master in that little church whither his 
 steps were tending. The men were brothers, but 
 in their outward semblance there was nothing in the 
 slightest degree consanguine, unless it was a fleet 
 ing light of humour that shot into their eyes and 
 seemed to explode there. The serious cast in the 
 preacher s face was obviously not a birthmark. 
 His was one of the faces, often the stamp of his 
 sacred profession, wherein it was seen deep thought 
 had "sicklied o er" the kindlier lights. Mr. Dis 
 brow was a man who took things to heart, and his 
 heart s interests were always mirrored in his face. 
 Therein you could read as in a book the state of his 
 active, vigorous, but naturally happy mind. Until 
 you knew him as well as the people of Smithboro 
 did you were apt to misjudge the import of those 
 harsher lines, and, knowing the two men as brothers
 
 16 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 wonder over their apparently diverse temperaments. 
 But their own common mother had endowed them 
 both with a disposition that Lyman carried on his 
 sleeve while Abner carried it in his heart. 
 
 " We stand for the eternal fitness of things," 
 Lyme Disbrow had said in explaining their unfrater- 
 nal disparity. " You see Ab, he was born with his 
 head in the clouds, so s he wouldn t have to shin 
 up trees when he wanted to pull down the truths 
 from heaven ; while me, they made me a runt, jest 
 knee high to a grasshopper, so s I could grovel 
 round mong the earthworms. If Ab came to my 
 picture-shop he d have to bend like a barrel hoop to 
 get through the door; if I went to his gospel-shop 
 I d have to stand on a pile o hymn books to git 
 my head above the pew. That s the long an the 
 short o the Disbrow family." 
 
 As he squatted this Sunday morning on the steps 
 of his wagon Lyme Disbrow hardly looked the dwarf 
 he had pictured himself. In reality he was of fair 
 stature, except when he matched his height beside 
 that of the preacher, who was uncommonly tall. A 
 perceptible bow to his legs and an abnormal eleva 
 tion of his shoulders created the illusion. He was 
 the elder of the two brothers by ten years, though 
 in his clean-shaven, priest-like face there was less
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 17 
 
 sign of age than showed in the bearded chin of the 
 clergyman, whose black hair was gently dusted with 
 silver. Not a fleck of gray could be found on Lyme 
 Disbrow s head of curly brown. 
 
 Replying to his brother s dubious glorification of 
 the family name the preacher said : 
 
 " My sins on my own head, Lyman. If you refer 
 to the hand that will ring the bell to-day, I shall 
 bear the brunt of whatever shame or glory there may 
 be in this our crowning act of defiance to that most 
 infamous of laws. I am sorry, Lyman, you can t 
 share my pride in it. Perhaps the sound of the 
 bell will carry farther than my voice. If it s treason 
 let them make the most of it." 
 
 " Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," 
 was Lyme s unconsoling word. 
 
 " They ll make it hanging next, I dare say," said 
 the preacher as he sauntered into the meeting 
 house. 
 
 "There s a Christian martyr for your money," 
 Lyme went on to say as another villager came 
 within the blue zone of tobacco smoke which hung 
 over the path in the still air of the summer day. 
 " Ab there says maybe hangin ll be the next thing 
 they ll do to stop this nigger business, an he talks 
 bout it as if he d snap his fingers at the gallus.
 
 i8 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Guess he would, too, seein as how he s got Disbrow 
 blood in his veins." 
 
 " Don t b lieve you d care a mite," responded the 
 villager, " how many niggers they d kill. Nobuddy 
 ever hearn toll that ye set much store by niggers, 
 eh? " Having said which the author of the asper 
 sion on the picture-taker s pro-slavery sentiments 
 went off into a boisterous fit of laughter. 
 
 "Oh, I m as tender-hearted as the next man," 
 Lyme Disbrow said, " an allus thought it was a 
 waste o good hemp to make hangmen s nooses of 
 it ; but you don t git the idee. You won t live 
 long nough to see any niggers dancin on nuthin ; 
 a nigger s wuth money good money. I m talkin 
 bout hangin white men ; they don t pear to be 
 wuth much o anythin compared to niggers." 
 
 " Some white men aren t," came the biting an 
 swer, and its clumsy inference fairly represented 
 Lyme Disbrow s standing in the community. 
 
 As he sat there on his wagon steps and smoked, 
 the village folk gathered in force on the four sides 
 of the green. The rallying points were in front of 
 the three churches. At first the little groups were 
 formed of men, but by and by a few women came to 
 swell the throng. This was before a single blow of 
 the bell clappers had called Smithboro to worship.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 19 
 
 It was evident enough that a severe strain was on the 
 good people of the village. Wherever they stood 
 there was a nodding of heads and a shaking of fingers. 
 The little throng about the door through which 
 Mr. Disbrow had passed grew more rapidly than the 
 others, was recruited, in fact, by men and women 
 who, in twos and threes, crossed the green from in 
 front of the other churches to become a part of the 
 animated scene it furnished. The fact was not to 
 be missed, indeed, that on that spot the vision of the 
 entire village was bending with an intent interest 
 that betokened it as a storm centre. 
 
 Lyme Disbrow puffed complacently away at his 
 pipe at the edge of this nervous crowd, which now 
 spread out so far as to overlap the alley between 
 his wagon and the meeting house. He had pulled 
 a silver watch from his vest pocket, and was prying 
 its case open with his thumb-nail, when Mr. Dis 
 brow stepped from within the meeting-house vesti 
 bule and stood out in the sunlight in his bare head. 
 
 There was an instant hush of the whispered 
 words, and an expectant flash of eyes upon the 
 preacher s face, as if in it was to be read a momen 
 tous message. Across the green two women, one 
 of whom dragged a panting boy by the hand, came 
 running in an agony of fear lest they be too late.
 
 20 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 There was enough humour in this episode to relieve 
 the tension of the moment, and it had that effect, 
 for the villagers let their faces relax into a wave of 
 fitful laughter. 
 
 " Ain t it about time for meetin ? " asked a 
 freckly woman of Lyme, who still pried his watch- 
 case with his thumb-nail. 
 
 "Jest bout," rejoined the picture-taker. " Look 
 out there he comes. The elephant now goes 
 round, the band begins to play, an the boys round 
 the monkey s cage had better keep away." 
 
 Before he had half finished this doggerel, the 
 whole crowd wheeled about, and facing the mansion 
 on the opposite side of the green watched the prog 
 ress of a venerable gentleman, with a silk hat in one 
 hand and the other drawn through the arm of a 
 middle-aged negro, walking from the gateway of 
 trellised rose bushes to the door of the meeting 
 house. An enthusiast in the crowd would have 
 started a cheer, and audibly suggested it, but this 
 demonstration was silenced by the uplifted hand of 
 the waiting preacher. Way was made for the es 
 corted negro, to whom Mr. Disbrow reached out a 
 welcoming hand, as the man put his bare feet on 
 the church step. Without loss of time he went 
 inside with the preacher, and while every neck
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 21 
 
 craned to follow him, his venerable custodian turned 
 on the threshold to say : 
 
 " Just a moment, good friends, just a moment. 
 They will call this law-breaking in Washington. I 
 am satisfied that they should do so. Under their 
 vile law I brand myself a law-breaker, I, Peter 
 Gerritt ; and to the solemn summons our hunted 
 brother will now toll forth from this bell, dedicated 
 to God s service, let us answer with our presence, 
 that we may in this fashion shame those who would 
 by human law undo the law of God Almighty." 
 
 Thus saying Peter Gerritt, the best-beloved man 
 in Smithboro, led his townspeople into the meeting 
 house, to the pealing bell, every stroke of which 
 proclaimed through the tugging muscles of a 
 fugitive slave the right of man, of whatever colour, 
 to the rewards of his own labour. 
 
 As the last wayfarer disappeared within the doors 
 of the different churches, Lyme Disbrow sprayed a 
 pipeful of ashes on the flags under his feet and went 
 into his wagon whistling.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IN the course of two hours or so, the little meet 
 ing house was emptied of an excited throng of 
 townspeople. With a degree of decorum becoming 
 the day they took their various ways home, but the 
 dramatic element in the scene just enacted had too 
 deeply stirred their emotions to allow their separa 
 tion to partake of the commonplace. Never before 
 that time had a fugitive slave been paraded as a 
 token of popular resistance to the law of the land. 
 Smithboro had taken an initiative the consequences 
 of which only grim prophesy could foretell. Here 
 tofore, as bold as had been the operations of the 
 Underground Railroad, there had been a pretense 
 of keeping the runaway negroes under cover while 
 they were hurried forward from Smithboro to the 
 shores of Lake Ontario, a matter of fifty miles, 
 where they embarked at Mexico Point for places of 
 refuge in Canada. So far as the Smithboro station 
 was concerned this was the last stage of the journey, 
 and, albeit it was reputed to be a well-travelled
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 23 
 
 path, not everybody who kept his eyes open could 
 say when, by whom and by what methods the law 
 was being circumvented. For example, there were 
 those who, while sympathizing with the underground 
 movement, did not actively engage in it ; and they 
 took pains to be in no position to betray its peril 
 ous secrets. Of this class of people there were 
 many in Smithboro, whose complaisance, it may be 
 observed, was much more aggravating to the 
 avowed advocates of pro-slavery measures than the 
 most desperate machinations of the Abolitionists. 
 It was, as a matter of fact, the prevalence of silent 
 acquiescence in the village that made Smithboro a 
 focal point in Abolition activities. 
 
 Such an event as we have just witnessed was 
 bound to have inflamed the wrath of those who 
 stood with the law upon the great issue. Clem 
 Jones, the landlord of the Lafayette Hotel, was, of 
 all among this minority, most outspoken. 
 
 " Clement Jones," he said that morning, " is for 
 one dead set agin this sort o thing. The law s the 
 law," he went on, "and as long s we ve got it, obey 
 it. That s my way. An though I don t like the 
 hull paraphernalia I just knuckle down and pay my 
 taxes and what I don t like I votes agin at town 
 meetin .
 
 24 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Clem and his adherents had been in council on 
 the tavern steps and were in a high state of fever 
 that anything so monstrously inimical to the fair 
 name of Smithboro as the bell ringing should have 
 been successfully carried out. There was a sus 
 picion that personal interest entered into Mr. 
 Jones s declaration of principles, because it hap 
 pened that to a considerable extent the people 
 who would lift up the black man would stamp un 
 der foot the black bottle. The Abolition trade at 
 the bar of the Lafayette Hotel was hardly an avail 
 able asset. 
 
 Hence there had been a deal of wild talk on the 
 tavern steps. This was listened to with keenest in 
 terest by a knot of untidy boys, the unruly juvenile 
 element of Smithboro, who alone gave it expression 
 later on when, scattered about the green opposite 
 the meeting house, they waited the dismissal of the 
 congregation, to hoot and jeer the runaway negro 
 as he came out under the guidance of Peter Gerritt. 
 " Nigger, nigger, never die, 
 Black face and chiny eye, 
 Crooked nose and crooked toes, 
 That s the way the nigger grows." 
 
 In this urchin chorus these youthful miscreants 
 broke forth to the obvious disturbance of the spec-
 
 THE RED ANVIL- 25 
 
 tacle s solemnity. They were driven back only to 
 reassemble to the same rallying cry. Not until 
 Lyme Disbrow, emerging from his wagon with a 
 long-lashed whip which he flourished above his 
 head in ominous circles, followed the boys hotfoot 
 across the green were they thoroughly routed, and 
 were Mr. Gerritt and his evidently cowed charge 
 able unmolested to make their way out of sight be 
 hind the rose bushes. 
 
 Lyme came back laughing, as he had gone forth, 
 and to the oft-repeated congratulations and praises 
 of the church folks, answered : 
 
 " They don t mean no harm. Doggone it, no ! 
 Boys will be boys." 
 
 Then he tossed his whip into the open door of 
 the wagon and joined his brother, the preacher, 
 who had come out of the church too late to have 
 witnessed the little comedy. 
 
 A man whose face was spotted with purple, due 
 to rage fuming within him, rushed up to Mr. Dis 
 brow to say that the demonstration of hostility to 
 the fugitive was in his opinion a forerunner of com 
 ing trouble. 
 
 " Taint the boys of this here teown," he said, 
 "that s done this here. It s men who egged the 
 boys on, that s what tis. And "for the first time
 
 26 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 noticing Lyme "you re one on em, 1 jest betcher. 
 You can t fool this chicken no haow, Mr. Lyman 
 Disbrow. You blieve in takin a whip to niggers 
 jest as you did to them boys yender." 
 
 The preacher made a gesture of gentle rebuke 
 and gravely shook his head in a way that plainly in 
 dicated his disbelief in this aspersion on the family 
 honour. 
 
 " Brother Benson " were his words, " let s not 
 count anybody an enemy of our cause until he is 
 proved to be so. We have too many already." 
 
 " Then why don t that brother o yourn jine us in 
 our holy work, thet s what I say. He s nuther one 
 thing nor t other, and that s wuss than bein a slave- 
 hunter, thet s what I say." 
 
 This interrogatory of Benson s showed that neu 
 trality, whichever way it leaned, was of all attitudes 
 in Smithboro the most unpopular. 
 
 Lyme Disbrow whistled the matter down the 
 wind, thereby giving notice that he was not in an 
 argumentative mood, and his brother, finding con 
 troversy ill-attuned to his contemplation of the 
 occasion, with a kindly admonition to the wrathful 
 Benson, moved off arm in arm with the picture- 
 taker towards his home. 
 
 The brothers seldom spoke to each other upon
 
 THR RED ANVIL. 27 
 
 the question of slavery and the plans adopted in 
 Smithboro to hasten its suppression. As they went 
 along, had not Lyme asked if Abner had so worded 
 his sermon that day that the government at Wash 
 ington would think itself specially invited to come 
 and arrest him, conversation would have taken a 
 less timely turn. As it was, and the preacher said 
 so, he had refrained from making the occasion as 
 theatrical as the opportunity afforded. There had 
 been a dread significance in the appearance of the 
 negro with his hands on the bell rope that, to a man 
 of Mr. Disbrow s deep consciousness, beggared the 
 power of mere words. The incident, portentous in 
 itself, carried its own message. He had felt that it 
 would have belittled the event to have attempted 
 to emphasize it with theatrical rhetoric. He had 
 therefore delivered, he said, a plain, unimpassioned, 
 deliberate sermon the truths of which, as he saw 
 them, he hoped might take hold on those listeners 
 who had been brought to the church more by idle 
 curiosity than by patriotic sympathy. 
 
 " I strove, as I have always striven since I en- 
 tered on this crusade," the preacher explained, " to 
 touch the consciences of the people, not to arouse 
 their passions. What is more, I try to keep the 
 principles we are holding above such single in-
 
 28 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 stances of cruel wrong as may come to our notice. 
 I would not exalt the case of this wretched fugitive, 
 whose presence among us to-day marks a mile-stone 
 in the progress of anti-slavery. I would not send 
 him on his way in a frenzy of delight that he had 
 cheated the law. Miserable man, perhaps there 
 was small danger of that, for he sat throughout the 
 morning in a state of mortal dread, suspicious even 
 of his friends, I should say. But he was, and all 
 others like him are, but a means to an end." 
 
 Mr. Disbrow spoke with so much fervour 
 that the picture-taker confined himself to the 
 remark : 
 
 " It s a bad case any way you put it, Ab, an no- 
 buddy knows how it all will end, if an end there is 
 to be." 
 
 Thereupon Lyme took from his brass-buttoned, 
 blue swallow-tail a letter, the contents of which soon 
 engrossed the attention of both brothers. In it 
 was an announcement that the son of the picture- 
 taker and the nephew of the preacher was on the 
 point of graduation at the Albany medical college, 
 and that in something less than a fortnight he would 
 "hang out his shingle" under the umbrageous shade 
 of the Smithboro elms. 
 
 " I ought to have asked about Win long before,
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 29 
 
 Lyman," said Mr. Disbrow, his face lighting up 
 with a new glow of interest, "but my mind has been 
 so full of other things, so full of other things apart 
 from my own affairs that I quite forgot. It s really 
 too bad, Lyman. So we re to have a full-fledged 
 doctor in the family. You ll go to Albany, I sup 
 pose, to see Win graduate ? " 
 
 Lyme shook his head. 
 
 " The boy ll have to do without his venerable 
 parent this time, an I guess he s nough of a Dis 
 brow to worry through it. It s a good breed, an 
 there s no better puppy in the litter than Winfield 
 Scott Disbrow you ll say that yourself, Ab, I 
 know." 
 
 To this outburst of parental pride the preacher 
 gave cordial assent, for Win Disbrow had been 
 more son than nephew to him, a sharer of his hum 
 ble habitation from the boy s childhood to sturdy 
 youth, while his father played the rover. The 
 preacher knew that the gratification of the young 
 man s ambition, to practise medicine, after he had 
 pursued his preliminary studies with Dr. Nehemiah 
 Sampson, had been at considerable cost of money 
 to his father. The obvious propriety, therefore, of 
 having the picture-taker present on the day of 
 graduation was on that account not urged.
 
 30 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " I ve cut down the trees, he ll have to peel the 
 bark," was Lyrne s way of putting it. Then he 
 added: " An I m no great shakes at bein a cut 
 up at general trainin , so d better stay in the wagon 
 lookin for folks to cross the shadow of the noonday 
 sun." 
 
 By this time the brothers were outside the preach 
 er s gate. A stretch of greensward within, dotted 
 here and there with flowering bunches of bleedirig- 
 hearts and peonies, surrounded a white clapboarded 
 house of simplest architecture, whose front and sides 
 blazed out in a riot of colour from among the masses 
 of climbing roses. In this cosy nest dwelt Mr. and 
 Mrs. Disbrow, and, unblessed as they were with a 
 child of their own, the joy of both their hearts was 
 Elizabeth Malcolm, lately come to their protection 
 from a broken home in Massachusetts that the 
 preacher s wife had once called her own. They 
 were sisters bound by the strongest ties of 
 affection. A difference of thirteen years in their 
 ages, even less than their temperaments, made 
 them contrasting pictures of womanhood. At 
 thirty-five Mrs. Disbrow was old beyond her years. 
 All of her husband s burdens she had heaped upon 
 her back until she bent under the load like a Nor 
 mandy market-woman. In her countenance were
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 31 
 
 reflected all his cares, all his sorrows, and all his 
 joys, and of these latter, delight in the happiness 
 of Elizabeth was a crown of glory. No woman 
 ever lived within a man more than did the preacher s 
 wife, so completely indeed, that, until the advent of 
 her sister, the home she was making lacked every one 
 of those compensating balances which, even at a 
 sacrifice of perfect domesticity, sweeten the conjugal 
 state. Of late, or since he had taken up the Aboli 
 tion cause with so much earnestness, Mrs. Disbrow 
 was haunted by a fear for the safety of her husband 
 that was sitting at his hearth as a death s head sits 
 at a feast. Yet she would not have him retreat, for 
 she believed in him as she believed in the gospel he 
 expounded. She was a person without middle 
 ground, and is there any who is to be more com- 
 miserated with ? This is why she could with diffi 
 culty abide her husband s brother. It was a 
 crime, heinous and unpardonable, that Lyman did 
 lot lift up his brother s hand in the Abolition cause. 
 Lyme was no stranger to Mrs. Disbrow s aversion. 
 Hence he hesitated to enter the gate at which the 
 two men stopped. But being at war with no one 
 the picture-taker regarded peace with Mrs. Disbrow 
 :is not a total impossibility, so he went in. The 
 women had not attended church that morning, be-
 
 32 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 cause Mrs. Disbrow had collapsed in the face of 
 what she had magnified into an ordeal, and Eliza 
 beth had remained at home to console and minister 
 to her. 
 
 The visit of the picture-taker to the Disbrow 
 household brought Elizabeth Macolm into his life. 
 At a glance (for Lyme Disbrow could look through 
 a grindstone), he saw that two sisters could not be 
 more unlike. Elizabeth s view of things was much 
 like his own. She was one of those who looked on 
 the bright side. This was as plain as day to him as 
 he carried her in his watchful eye for the first ten 
 minutes of their acquaintance. 
 
 " We won t need no guide to perlite deportment 
 to get long together," Lyme said to the young 
 woman with a touch of gallantry in his manner that 
 the preacher remarked was equal to Peter Gerritt at 
 his best. 
 
 " I m going to call you Uncle Lyme, if you don t 
 mind," remarked Elizabeth, as she walked straight 
 up to him and planted a kiss on his cleanly shaven 
 cheek. At this he straightened up as much as his 
 rounded shoulders would allow and looked as 
 much like a knight in armour as he could. 
 
 " If you come to me under the head of nieces," 
 Lyme said next, having posed as long as he thought
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 33 
 
 proper, " you ve got to be Liz beth to me, though 
 that s a long name to shout when it comes to hand- 
 in out Christmas presents." 
 
 " I like Bess better, Uncle Lyme." 
 
 The picture-taker liked the girl. She was hale 
 and hearty to the core. He was not long in mentally 
 assorting her form and feature, as his craft had 
 it to the meagre possibilities of the accessories 
 of his wagon. A professional experience covering 
 many years had not been thrown away on Lyme 
 Disbrow. While he may have been as unknowing 
 as an oyster of what constituted a Grecian type or 
 a Phidian pose, he had by the practice of photography 
 acquired a certain sense of artistic values that gave 
 his judgment of feminine loveliness some worth. 
 This was conceded for thirty or forty miles around 
 Smithboro, through which region his camera enjoyed 
 a celebrity that stood the test of comparison with 
 the greater fame of the city photographers. No 
 wedding within reach of Lyme Disbrow s wagon 
 was complete without a grouping of the high con 
 tracting parties, the groom standing behind his 
 seated bride, with his left hand lovingly resting on 
 her left shoulder, a pose delicately suggestive of the 
 very essence of connubial felicity. Madison county 
 is to-day as full of these early masterpieces as Italy 
 is of Madonnas.
 
 34 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 In the trained eye of the picture-taker, therefore, 
 Bess Malcolm was a pleasing sight. Though others 
 did not apply the same process of analysis not 
 being so artistic they were as free to say she 
 deserved admiration. She was a slender, willowy 
 girl, with cheeks as round and as lustrous in their 
 tinting as a damson plum, and a mass of brownish 
 hair that heaped up about her shapely head like a 
 snowdrift. If perchance any details such as these 
 escaped you, the arch way in which she carried 
 her head at one side, as if it were cocked to hear the 
 tinkle of a distant bell, gave her a charm that was 
 leaving no swain in the village heart-whole. To the 
 endowments of nature, Bess added a rarer feminine 
 gift, that of being able to put a yard of ribbon or a 
 bit of lace to the best use. " City airs," this faculty 
 had been spitefully called by the other girls in the 
 village, for after Bess came among them they knew 
 full well that their supremacy had gone. Bess s 
 home had not been so far from Boston that she had 
 not felt its enlivening influence, and she could no 
 more help bringing it with her than she could help 
 dimpling her rosy chin. 
 
 Lyme s pleasant meditations upon these things 
 came to a sudden end when Mrs. Disbrow entered 
 the room ; but just as suddenly he felt himself
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 35 
 
 restored to a firm footing, even there, by the 
 unreserved way in which Bess announced to her 
 sister that she and Uncle Lyme were to be friends. 
 Lyme Disbrow was alert enough to see that if he 
 had conquered the good opinion of the girl, it was 
 in despite of a preconceived dislike. 
 
 "We ll try to make an Abolitionist of him," 
 Bess cried, " and I don t believe that he s a hopeless 
 case." 
 
 "Doggone it, no!" rejoined the picture-taker; 
 " nuthin s hopeless. When I used to sell lightnin 
 rods an patent churns, there was a feller over 
 near Cider Holler who thought if he d stick up a rod 
 or churn by dog-power he d be invitin the wrath o 1 
 high heaven. Well one fine day it come on to rain 
 down that way, and goshallfishhooks ! the fust thing 
 he knew, his barn was a pile of ashes, an the cream 
 he d been churnin by hand was soured by the 
 thunder. This proves you never can tell what 
 heaven ll do when it comes on to storm." 
 
 " That sounds like a parable, Lyme," Mr Disbrou- 
 remarked. "You are not going to turn preacher, 
 too ? " 
 
 " Doggone it, no ! not yit awhile ; but I jest want 
 you to know, Ab, I ve had a squint jest asquint--
 
 36 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 at heaven to-day. But it hain t come on to storm, 
 not yit." 
 
 Lyme Disbrow s eyes were on Bess s face as lie 
 spoke.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE last seen of the negro who had tolled the 
 meeting-house bell that Sunday morning was when 
 the door of Peter Gerritt s house was shut behind 
 him. If to-day you sought his name you would find 
 it buried in oblivion. Various attempts in that 
 direction were certainly made at the time by the 
 bolder advocates of the law s enforcement, naturally 
 by Clem Jones, whose frequent disappearances from 
 the Lafayette Hotel were coming to be regarded with 
 more or less suspicion. It was not only a current 
 rumour in the village that he kept up an uninter 
 rupted line of communication with the pro-slavery 
 people at Syracuse, but the story was likewise 
 abroad that he not infrequently harboured under his 
 roof spies in the pay of Southern planters, whose 
 business it was to block traffic on the Underground 
 Railroad. 
 
 But nothing came of these attempts at discovery, 
 nor, for the time being, of the sensational episode 
 that on the face of it looked so much like a defiance
 
 38 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 of Government power impossible to lie ignored at 
 Washington. Iti this failure to magnify the bell-ring 
 ing into an event of stupendous consequence there 
 was undoubtedly disappointment on both sides on 
 the part of the Abolitionists that a challenge of 
 law so carefully planned should have been lost sight 
 of, and on the part of the contrary-minded that an 
 offense so flagrant should not have brought down 
 the law like a mailed fist upon the malefactors 
 heads. 
 
 On the tavern steps one week after these occur 
 rences the voice of the people was for war on the 
 Fugitive Slave Law. The Sunday before, as we 
 have seen, the tavern steps gave out a different pro- 
 nunciamento. The tavern steps were an open 
 forum. 
 
 " Maybe they ain t got round to it," Lyme was 
 saying to the flustered crowd. " You see they re 
 mighty busy down there in Washington. The Under 
 ground s a long road, let me tell you, an as I read the 
 papers there s hell to pay all long it. Smithboro 
 ain t the hull universe, though some of you folks 
 think tis, an nuther thing, if you want to make 
 this here Abolish movement look like a harvest 
 moon why don t you stir your stumps ? Why don t 
 you rear up on your hind legs ? Who cares whether
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 39 
 
 a nigger or Clem Jones rings the meetin -house bell ! 
 They don t care at Washington. Doggone it, no ! " 
 
 " What would you do ; you re so darnation 
 smart?" put in Simeon Benson, who, had he the 
 wit, would never have let a chance pass to corner 
 the picture-taker. 
 
 "What would I do?" answered Lyme contem 
 platively, as he struck a light and applied it to his 
 pipe. " Let s see, what would I do ? " 
 
 " Nuthin , I betcher," Benson said ; " that s bout 
 all ye kin do anyway. That s what I say." 
 
 " Maybe tis nuthin that I d do," Lyme went 
 on, " but jest for greens I d take a tintype of Sime 
 Benson, if my lens would stand the strain, an then 
 I d send it to President Fillmore with the com 
 pliments of Smithboro. I guess that d bring a 
 sheriff s posse here in double-quick time to clean 
 out the hull town." 
 
 Simeon Benson was beyond peradventure the 
 most vociferous Abolitionist in the village, the first- 
 comer to every meeting held to further the cause, 
 the last to go. It might seem to be a perilous thing 
 to make him the butt of ridicule in Smithboro, but 
 Lyme s pleasantry did not pass without a laugh. 
 
 " I vote in favour of that "ere," one of the villagers 
 had the temerity to remark.
 
 40 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 "That s what I might do fust off," continued 
 Lyme, " an after that I d have a little fun with 
 <t\e godlike Daniel." 
 
 The mention of Daniel Webster s nickname at 
 .such a time, and in such a place, did not miss fire. 
 Hated as he was by every friend of emancipation, 
 the knowledge that he was even then abroad in the 
 land, bringing the irresistible force of his eloquence 
 to bear in an effort to uphold the iniquitous law, 
 had served to spread more or less dismay through 
 the free states. Webster, leaving his post as Sec 
 retary of State, had put on the armour of slavery and 
 gone forth as a champion of its vested rights, facing 
 the very people whose protest against his course 
 was ringing like a clarion from east to west. 
 
 " Webster s to be in Syracuse, maybe some on 
 you know," added Lyme, drawing inspiration from 
 the evident interest provoked by the mention of 
 the man. " Why don t you git him to come here to 
 Smithboro, an then make him walk chalk ? " 
 
 " How d we git him to come? " inquired one. 
 
 " Mightn t we sick Clem Jones on ter do it?" 
 was the wise suggestion of another. 
 
 " Git Lyme Disbrow to fetch him," Sime Benson 
 proposed. " Daniel Webster 11 do most anything 
 fur Lyme Disbrow. That s what I say."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 4I 
 
 " Leave Lyme alone, Sime," said the next speaker. 
 He s talking sense. Jiminy crickets ! If we 
 could only do it, we d make the hull on em mighty 
 sick." 
 
 " The best way I can think on," Lyme proceeded 
 to say, as he watched the effect of his badinage, " the 
 best way is to give out that Daniel Webster dassent 
 come to Smithboro. Pull a pig s tail if you want to 
 have him go ahead." 
 
 " Then when we had him here, what would we 
 do, Lyme ? " 
 
 "Might duck him in the mill-pond, eh ?" some 
 one said. 
 
 " Tar and feathers s purty good for sich like " was 
 the suggestion of a merciless villager. 
 
 " By cracky, that s what ! " cried another, and 
 there followed in response a chorus of earnest 
 affirmatives. 
 
 These impressionable people, under the stress of 
 their emotions, were actually cogitating the possi 
 bility of such a ridiculous proceeding. 
 
 Lyme thought it time to back water. 
 
 "Doggone it, no!" he ejaculated. "Tar and 
 feathers s too good for him if half what you fellers 
 say s true." 
 
 " Might ride him on a rail, to boot," said Lem
 
 42 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Haskins, the village barber, by way of compro- 
 i n ise. 
 
 " I ll tell you ! " cried Lyme in the next breath. 
 " I U tell you ! but mind, I ll have no part in it, for 
 I ve other fish to fry but if you can coax the god 
 like Daniel over, there s only one thing to do and 
 that s to burn him at the stake ! " 
 
 This proposition was so obviously preposterous, 
 that, for the first time, the excited little knot of 
 zealots saw how impossible was the device which 
 they had been discussing, and most of them went 
 away wondering how they could have been so easily 
 hoodwinked, especially as the picture-taker was well 
 known to be given to that sort of thing. 
 
 A week later these same persons were accusing 
 themselves of having misjudged Lyme Disbrow. 
 
 " He wa n t cuttin up at all," the village barber 
 said. " How s a feller to tell whether he s jokin or 
 not? Daniel Webster ought to be burned at the 
 stake." 
 
 And it was generally admitted that Lyme Dis 
 brow was indeed a hard nut to crack. 
 
 The point was that Win Disbrow him they were 
 presently to call Dr. Disbrow in Smithboro and 
 thereabouts had come home with something else 
 than his diploma. The fact that into his hands was 
 to pass the practice of Dr. Sampson was quite over-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 43 
 
 shadowed for the time being by the fact that he 
 came as a bearer of startling news. It is true that 
 Smithboro had been wondering if the young doctor 
 could ever fill the old doctor s shoes. This was no 
 mean undertaking. Dr. Sampson had been among 
 these people for a half a century, and if ever a wise 
 man culling simples had engrafted his life upon the 
 life of the community to which he had been called 
 as a ministering angel, Dr. Sampson was that man. 
 Were it not that Dr. Disbrow was to be the succes 
 sor of the venerable practitioner, as Dr. Sampson was 
 on the point of laying down his life work, by reason 
 of advancing years, his coming would have been 
 regarded as an impertinence. As it was he could 
 not have returned to his native village under hap 
 pier auspices. Nevertheless the young doctor was 
 not greeted as a ministering angel. As has been 
 said, he came as a bearer of news. 
 
 Out of his pockets, as he alighted from the stage 
 late in the afternoon, bulged a bulky package of 
 newspapers, to which he himself, quite forgetting 
 his real mission among these people, lost no time 
 in directing attention. In these prints there were 
 accounts of Daniel Webster s visit to Syracuse 
 the day before. As the young doctor described it, 
 the day had been one of intense anxiety in the
 
 44 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 neighbouring city. What had happened filled an 
 important page in history. The doctor was over 
 flowing with this intelligence, and, having first ap 
 peased the popular appetite for information by 
 giving out the papers, he was quickly seized upon 
 by Mr. Disbrow being spared hardly time to em 
 brace his father and carried off to Peter Gerritt s 
 house. It having chanced that he was held over 
 at Syracuse for the night, on his way from Albany 
 to Smithboro, Win was unexpectedly made a wit 
 ness of that scene of early June, 1851, which, with 
 Daniel Webster as its central figure, set the country 
 in a ferment. It was to a recital of the facts that 
 Mr. Gerritt was bent on listening. 
 
 With one or two others, Mr. Gerritt and Mr. 
 Disbrow sat in the great drawing room of the man 
 sion while Win, unable to check the enthusiasm of 
 youth, paced the floor. He made a fine figure, his 
 stalwart frame needing nothing of the ample cut of 
 his fashionable clothes to show him off as a rugged, 
 lusty fellow of twenty-four. Easy, if not especially 
 graceful in his bearing, he looked as strong as an 
 ox, and in his head he had eyes as kind, eyes that 
 seemed to dominate his whole being. As he talked 
 they kindled with fire and gave a new emphasis to 
 his burning words. For his words did burn.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 45 
 
 There was no question where Win Disbrow stood 
 on the slavery question. He had enlisted with the 
 crusaders. 
 
 "An excellent young man," was Mr. Gerritt s 
 estimate of the young doctor, and though amiabil 
 ity, graciousness, kindness were in the very fibre of 
 this splendid old gentleman he would not deviate 
 from the truth even to pay a simple compliment. 
 
 As the scenes of the previous day at Syracuse 
 were unfolded by their narrator, it was easy to dis 
 cern how completely Peter Gerritt s being was 
 wrapped up in the passing events. Pity, and a pity 
 that swept as fingers do harp strings every chord 
 of his soul, was the controlling, guiding force in 
 this man s nature ; but if ever rage contended for a 
 footing in that sweetest of characters, it was mak 
 ing the trial then. There were positively moments 
 when the benignity of his face hardened into lines 
 of travail that startled his friends. Not a large 
 man when measured by the rule, when he stood up 
 to thank the young messenger, he fairly loomed, 
 there was so much of determination, so much of 
 actual command in his form, that on the instant 
 changed to deepest tenderness as he said : 
 
 " God help us ; I am very sorry for it all." 
 
 There had been a ereat deal to stir the heart and
 
 46 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 torment the spirit of such a man. From a balcony, 
 overlooking the city-hall park in Syracuse, Dan 
 iel Webster had pronounced the doom of the 
 higher law." That he spoke by authority there 
 was no doubt. With all the power of which he 
 .vas capable he had driven the steel into the peo 
 ple s hearts. 
 
 " It was awful to hear him," the young doctor 
 said. " He seemed to tower above the heads of 
 that surging mass of men and women as he pro 
 nounced judgment on what you were doing here, 
 on what we have been doing in Albany. I am not 
 a coward, Mr. Gerritt, but there was something so 
 terrible in his words that I felt a chill steal into my 
 heart ; then and I confess it a sudden admiration 
 for a power so wonderful, so grand, so fearful. 
 Forced out of hearing by the crowd that packed 
 the open space below him, I had ventured so far as 
 to get into the building from which he spoke, and 
 by main strength made my way to the office looking 
 out of which was the balcony on which he stood. 
 Only when he turned was I able to see his face, but 
 I needed no sight of that to be held spell-bound." 
 
 " He is a great, a wonderful man, as you say," 
 Mr. Gerritt broke in to say. "There is no blame 
 in admiring him. But the greater his genius, the
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 4? 
 
 greater the sin of misusing it. He called us trai 
 tors ? You heard what he said ? " 
 
 " Every syllable of it." 
 
 To a scrap of paper, which he had been clutching 
 in his hand, Dr. Disbrow then referred for a tran 
 script of this historic deliverance. 
 
 "When he reached these words," the narrator 
 said, "he seemed to be lost in the drift of his own 
 eloquence : Those persons in this city who mean to 
 oppose the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law arc 
 traitors, traitors, traitors ! This law ought to be 
 obeyed, and it will be enforced yes, it shall be en 
 forced, and that, too, in the midst of the next anti- 
 slavery convention, if then there shall be any occasion 
 to enforce it ! That is what he said, sir." 
 
 " It was prophecy, perhaps," Mr. Gerritt said with 
 deep feeling. 
 
 " It was drunkenness, Mr. Gerritt ! " rejoined Win, 
 in a tone as hard as the grating of iron against 
 iron. 
 
 " Drunkenness ! " repeated the others in the room 
 
 in one breath. 
 
 " Drunkenness ! " reiterated Dr. Disbrow with all 
 the deliberation of a man who knew he was being 
 held responsible for serious words. " The man was 
 drunk, but he was majestic in his cups, and the
 
 48 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 thunder of his warning struck the people dumb 
 struck them dumb, as drunk as he was." 
 
 To make good this charge Dr. Disbrow described 
 how, even in the very heat of his passion, the great 
 debater had plied himself with liquor from a pitcher 
 placed near at hand, and which was several times 
 replenished by his admiring supporters who packed 
 the room behind him. 
 
 " Oh, the shame of it all ! " was Mr. Gerritt s final 
 remark. " But it may be prophecy. God alone 
 can tell." 
 
 Was it prophecy ?
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WITH respect to the return to his native village 
 of Win Disbrow, yclept the doctor, it may be re 
 corded that it did not pass unnoticed. In the 
 somewhat ceremonious preparations which accom 
 panied his assumption of Dr. Sampson s practice, a 
 responsibility, it was everywhere recognized, of no 
 mean importance, the young physician was sus 
 tained and encouraged by his father, who was ap 
 parently manifesting more concern in the matter 
 than he ever bestowed upon anything else in all his 
 life. 
 
 This sorely puzzled some folks in Smithboro. 
 
 " I thought as how Lyme ould be givin the boy 
 the go-by," said the postmaster of Smithboro, 
 Zachariah Adkins, whose wish was father to the 
 thought. " Seein s how the young un s gone and 
 got mixed up with the Abolish fellers, and Lyme 
 don t hanker fur the same kind o fodder, I thought 
 they d have a reg lar fuss afore long." 
 
 Smithboro, it would seem, was rather slow to
 
 50 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 learn that if Lyman Disbrow had a distinguishing 
 trait of character it was an ability to mind his own 
 business. 
 
 But at just this juncture of his career Lyme was 
 in danger of breaking down that well-earned if not 
 universally acknowledged reputation. Out of all 
 question Lyme himself did not see whither he was 
 drifting. Yet he was bent heart and soul on marry 
 ing and settling his son out of hand. Bess Malcolm 
 came up fully to what his ideal of a wife should be, 
 and he felt a twinge of disappointment when, after 
 there had been a meeting between the young peo 
 ple the evening of his arrival, Win had not ardently 
 proclaimed the sudden discovery of his affinity. 
 Having been given a cue to speak on such a tender 
 and sentimental subject by his father, Win frankly 
 said he believed his first duty was to make his way 
 in the world. Being sure of that, he said, he 
 would take time to look around for a wife. 
 
 " But she won t hang on the honey of any such 
 words as that. Bess won t," Lyme contended, waxing 
 as warm as a young lover. " Snatch me bald-head 
 ed, Win Disbrow, if you don t siddle up to her, an 1 
 do it darn quick, I ll slick up myself an bring her 
 into the family as a step-mother for you." 
 
 He was pointing a finger of warning at the red-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 51 
 
 white-and-blue pole which poked a gilt ball into 
 that part of the street where Lem Haskins, the 
 village barber, held sway. It was a tradition in 
 Smithboro not a very ancient tradition, for Smith- 
 boro had been in the habit of " shaving itself " 
 prior to Lem Haskins s arrival a year before that 
 when an eligible villager put himself in the barber s 
 hands it was a sure sign of a coming wedding. The 
 scent of Lem Haskins s bergamot was like the call 
 ing of the banns. 
 
 At so unusual an ebullition as that, therefore, 
 Win laughed so heartily that his father came as near 
 as he ever did to losing his temper. 
 
 "You haven t been givin the old man the slip, 
 have you Win ? " Lyme asked. " You haven t got 
 some other gal down in Albany ?" 
 
 " Not any," was Win s curt reply and it was frank 
 enough to satisfy parental suspicion. "There s no 
 secrets between us, father, not one not even that 
 I ve had a hand in the U. G. R. R. I was afraid 
 that perhaps you wouldn t like that, but I was 
 drawn into it, and I hold it my principles, I 
 mean as of next importance to my profession." 
 
 " Doggone it, no ! Win ; that don t count for a 
 red cent. Principles are principles, and purty gals 
 are purty gals. Say, though, don t let all the good
 
 52 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 things get on your blind side like a watch-eyed hoss. 
 One eye for the niggers, if you must, an t other for 
 Win Disbrow." 
 
 " Oh ! as to that," the young man said, slapping 
 the back of the picture-taker, " as to that, I know a 
 pretty girl when she isn t a mile off." 
 
 " And there comes one, an the purtiest one I 
 ever laid my two eyes on, an I m ajedge," was 
 Lyme s ejaculation at this instant. 
 
 Father and son were standing in front of the little 
 white house, scarcely larger than the picture-wagon, 
 where Dr. Disbrow s name and title were displayed, 
 as Bess Malcolm came along, her cheeks radiant 
 with color, her eyes in a merry dance, her step a 
 tripping measure. She swung her sunbonnet, from 
 which flowed a streamer or two of blue ribbon, in her 
 hand a small, white hand that was incomparable in 
 Smithboro. In a tilting skirt she advanced with a 
 wavy, billowy motion that seemed to set her slip 
 pered feet atwinkle. 
 
 " There ! " Lyme cried out. If he had exhausted 
 every term of endearment in poesy he could not 
 have added anything to that one word. 
 
 " It s true ! it s true ! She wears the biggest crin 
 oline in Smithboro," Win whispered, for Bess was 
 drawing nigh.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 53 
 
 " That s what they say at the sewin circle," Lyme 
 replied in a louder voice. " Let the tabbies say it 
 till kingdom come; but ain t she jest as purty as a 
 red wagon ? " 
 
 Bess was so close at hand now that had Win an 
 swered Bess must have heard the reply, if indeed 
 she had not already caught the drift of the inquiry. 
 Instead of bringing about the contretemps, Win 
 cordially greeted the girl and as maliciously as you 
 please, falling in step with her, bore her off down 
 the street. This he did with such happy aplomb 
 that when she would have halted to address Lyme, 
 as it was evidently in her mind to do, she was 
 swept onward by the gentle pressure at her elbow. 
 It was one of those things a strong man can do with 
 a woman simply by virtue of his strength, but with 
 out the faintest exertion of it. 
 
 " That was very rude of us both," Bess said al 
 most pouting. 
 
 " O, dad won t mind it a bit," Win made reply. 
 " Anyway he is getting very tiresome." 
 
 " Tiresome ? exclaimed the girl, a look of sur 
 prise coming into her face, as she weighed the 
 unfilial remark. 
 
 " Yes, tiresome ; you see when we re together he 
 talks about nothing but you."
 
 54 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Oh ! and is that so unbearable ? I think I ll say 
 good morning, Mr. Disbro\v." This rather coyly. 
 
 "Well I could stand that, if he d only give me a 
 chance to form my own opinions." 
 
 " Doesn t he? "-said Bess with an inflection that 
 signified doubt. " Doesn t he ? I thought he 
 did. You are an Abolitionist, and he well, he s 
 not exactly one, though we may save him if we 
 try." 
 
 " That s not a true test of my father s confidence," 
 Win answered. " He s going to let me do as I please 
 about slavery, but he insists on guiding my untu 
 tored mind upon the question of female loveliness." 
 
 " And quite properly, too. You certainly don t 
 deny that such is every father s prerogative ? " 
 
 There was a touch of irony in this suggestion that 
 even Dr. Disbrow s nonchalance staggered under. 
 
 " He wants me to share his opinion of you," Win 
 said in a mock serious way that he imagined would 
 counter her blow. 
 
 " Quite right again," was the girl s prompt answer; 
 " for Uncle Lyme is not averse to me, and as a duti 
 ful son you should be of the same mind no matter 
 how hard it comes." 
 
 " Then you want me to like you as much as he 
 does ? "
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 55 
 
 " Surely. Doesn t the Bible say obey your par- 
 cuts or words to that effect? 
 
 " Then," said the doctor, " I shall be dutiful ; but 
 mind you this may not be a labour to delight in, and 
 if the old proverb about physicking pain is true, I ll 
 have to take my own medicine." 
 
 " Horrible alternative," Bess answered with 
 gravity. " Rather than that, I ll absolve you. Don t 
 obey your parent. Go and be as bad as you can." 
 
 It was in a rapid exchange of this sort of 
 persiflage that the young people walked out of 
 sight of Lyme, who thereupon returned to what he 
 sometimes called the " Realms of Art," in his 
 wagon in Disbrow s Corner, satisfied that his off 
 spring was not wholly incorrigible. But he 
 resolved to keep an eye on them. That his mind 
 was in a state of perfect equilibrium was testified 
 to by the fact that he was whistling the old tune. 
 
 As he passed Lem Haskins s shop, he encircled 
 the red-white-and-blue pole with his right arm, and, 
 sticking his head in at the door, astonished the 
 proprietor with the remark : 
 
 " Guess you ve lost a fust-class job, Lem. I ll 
 shave myself yit awhile." 
 
 When Lem came to the door, the picture-taker was 
 beyond call down the street, whistling; like a lark.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THINGS being so far so good, in the parental 
 perspective of Lyme Disbrow, he declared himself 
 off for green fields and pastures new. It was time 
 for him to pull up stakes and get under way for 
 one of his periodical trips across the country, a 
 decision he had announced to Win that day, and 
 which he found occasion to repeat that night when 
 he paid a farewell visit to his brother s house. 
 Bess had assuredly made things very comfortable 
 for him there. Some of Mrs. Disbrow s frowns had 
 softened into smiles. 
 
 " Win s set up in his kill-an -cure shop down the 
 street, an I hear the angels callin me ; so, rain or 
 shine, I m off tomorrow mornin for Perryville, 
 Rippleton and Canasango and a few other places 
 you ll find on the map if you take a spy-glass." 
 
 "You travel about so much, Uncle Lyme," Bess 
 said, " that if we could only transform you into an 
 out-and-out Abolitionist you could be a great help 
 to the cause."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 57 
 
 " If Lyman doesn t do us any harm, dear, that is 
 something," put in the preacher. " And I am 
 inclined to believe that there is no man in all the 
 country who would be quicker to stretch forth a 
 helping hand were he to find one of his fellow- 
 beings, black or white, in distress." 
 
 " What would you do, uncle," Bess inquired 
 with some earnestness, " if you had a good chance 
 to help a runaway some dark night out in the 
 country ? " 
 
 " If you told me to, I guess I d have to give the 
 nigger a lift," was Lyme s cheerful answer. "Any 
 way all cats are black in the night." 
 
 " And suppose," put in Mrs. Disbrow, as if to 
 apply the telling test, " that you should be asked 
 by a slave-hunter to tell him what you knew, if 
 you had seen a party of fugitives on their way, as 
 you often have? " 
 
 "Oh, I guess I d be like that old lady over in 
 Spraker s Square. She was so sick they couldn t 
 do nuthin for her. She was jest down sick. One 
 of her friends, a member of the same congregation, 
 was tellin bout it, an she told me that, when the 
 old lady was bout breathin her last, she looked 
 beautiful, her eyes a-lookin up to Heaven, an 
 her hands folded, but, says her friend, she was
 
 58 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 disinclined for conversation. I shouldn t be sur 
 prised, Mary, if I d be sufferin from the same 
 disease." 
 
 " There ! " exclaimed Bess, and the exclamation 
 was as triumphant as that other " There ! " which 
 Lyme had uttered earlier in the day. It signified 
 something between the sisters, too, that was left to 
 the imagination. 
 
 As Mr. Disbrow had been summor ~d that evening 
 to a little meeting of the faithful held at the 
 Gerritt mansion, Lyme made his farewells to the 
 family, and took his departure with the preacher. 
 At the doctor s office they found Win compound 
 ing a vicious-looking mixture for a waiting patient. 
 With a promise to sit for an hour with his father 
 at his room in the tavern, Win made his way with 
 Mr, Disbrow to Mr. Gerritt s door. It appeared 
 that notice had been forwarded to Smithboro that 
 day of the coming of a party of fugitives from 
 Tennessee, whose safety was in extreme doubt, as 
 they were under close pursuit. A message to 
 Mr. Gerritt by " grapevine telegraph " was to the 
 effect that the party had been able to elude capture 
 up to the last station by dividing. One man and 
 four women were under cover, to remain there for 
 a week or two, while two men of superior intelli-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 59 
 
 gence hurried on, one to give the alarm to the 
 nearest station, and the other, a daring fellow, to 
 lead the pursuing party astray by boldly showing 
 himself at places off the beaten track. 
 
 It was Mr. Gerritt s information that this device 
 had proved successful, and that he might expect a 
 visit from the scout in Smithboro within a day, 
 possibly earlier. 
 
 The message commended the man to the kindness 
 and assistance of friends of the cause. 
 
 " As the officers of the law, and the others, who 
 ever they are who follow, are on the man s track," 
 Mr. Gerritt said, when the friends were gathered 
 under his roof, " we must act quickly. We ought 
 to be ready with a plan to conceal, or hurry forward, 
 the party, when the man comes. If he can carry 
 the blood-hounds beyond here, we will bring the 
 others on, and hide them in this house until such 
 time as they can be passed with reasonable safety to 
 Mexico Point." 
 
 " I feel impelled to say," said Mr. Disbrow, " that 
 we should choose some other refuge than Mr. Ger 
 ritt s house. Unless this brave fellow who is trying 
 to put his pursuers on a false scent succeeds in 
 rushing the pursuers through Smithboro, it is this 
 house, first of all, that will be watched. It has be-
 
 60 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 come too well known that Mr. Gerritt never turns a 
 black man from his door. Let the rest of us take 
 some of the risk, no less as a matter of right among 
 friends, but as well for the safety of the slaves. I 
 shall take care of two of the women if they come, 
 and I m only sorry my little home is not more com" 
 modious that it might embrace all the party." 
 
 Mr. Gerritt was disposed to insist on assuming the 
 entire responsibility for the care of the expected 
 party, until Win, speaking as a messenger from the 
 outer world, declared that if the work in hand was 
 to be successful, Mr. Gerritt s house, as a place of 
 refuge, must be relieved of constant suspicion. In 
 all the land, Win said, there was no roof that was 
 so well known as a cover for the flying slave. If, 
 as he thought, the one object was to outwit pursuit 
 of the fugitives who came by the way of Smithboro, 
 then the eye of the detested law should be drawn 
 elsewhere than upon Mr. Gerritt s house. 
 
 " What is our aim will be better executed," he 
 said, " if we avoid a clash with the law. We can 
 outwit it if we put our heads together. Martyrdom 
 may be a crown, but for my part I have no kingly 
 ambitions, and am firmly of the opinion that, at best, 
 there are too few of us to justify anyone in deliber* 
 ately thrusting his neck into the halter."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 61 
 
 " Yes, yes, that s gospel true, Dr. Disbrow," said 
 Simeon Benson with marked vehemence, drawing 
 his chair closer to the young doctor. " We mustn t 
 go too fur, not too fur ; that s what I say." 
 
 " Dr. Disbrow did not put it in quite that way 
 Mr. Benson," the preacher suggested. " I don t 
 understand that he is counselling anything but the 
 wisest caution, and, to that end, thinks we ourselves 
 ought to assume more of the responsibility that we 
 have been inviting." 
 
 " Exactly," replied Benson, " but I thought Dr. 
 Disbrow was thinkin bout that man Dillingham, 
 deown in Tennessee, and didn t want to git any 
 of us in his boots. We must be careful ; that s 
 what I say." 
 
 " Richard Dillingham died in jail where the foes 
 of freedom put him," Mr. Gerritt said with great 
 feeling, " but no dread of his fate deters us, I am 
 sure." 
 
 Saying this Mr. Gerritt stood up, and, as if it had 
 been an understood signal, every man in the room 
 came to his feet. No word was spoken, but it was 
 a silent pledge of fidelity. Even Sime Benson gave 
 it, albeit with a wry face. 
 
 " When this party of fugitives come if they do 
 come who else will give them asylum ? Mr. Dis-
 
 62 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 brow takes two of the women ? I shall take two 
 other women." This was the offer of the Rev. 
 Theodore Thorn, the Presbyterian clergyman. 
 " One male slave, as I think you said, Mr. Gerritt, 
 remains unprovided for. What do you say, Mr. 
 Benson ? " 
 
 The Abolitionist ranter was taken with a sudden fit 
 of the fidgets. He hemmed and hawed for a space of 
 several seconds and finally declined to open his doors. 
 
 " I d do it in a minute, you all know me, but you 
 see I m expectin to go over to Canastota to-morrer 
 to meet my wife s sister, who s comin from Uticky, 
 and I wouldn t be here to look after our poor 
 brother. I wouldn t dare resk it, nohow. 
 
 There was just a moment s pause after this flutter 
 of the white feather in this little band of patriot 
 spirits. It was a calm summer s night. In its deep 
 stillness, unbroken even by the rustle of the elms, 
 there now sounded a low note of plaintive import. 
 It was like the call of a night bird for its mate, but 
 there was no ear to which it came that did not know 
 it to be of human origin. The friends of the hunted 
 slave were listening to the whistle of the Under 
 ground Railroad. It had come from the shrubbery 
 underneath the windows of the room in which the 
 council was in progress.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 63 
 
 " Kindly keep seated, gentlemen," Mr. Gerritt 
 said in an undertone, as he rose from his chair. 
 
 Before the master of the house had time to cross 
 the floor to the arched doorway of the spacious hall, 
 a buxom woman, not young, not old, unmistakably 
 of the land that gave Robert Emmett to the cause 
 of Liberty, was at hand, her face full of inquiry. 
 
 " Margaret, the new signal," Mr. Gerritt said, giv 
 ing instructions, " and if the answer is five raps 
 one, three in quick succession, and then one let in 
 whoever is there into the back hall. I ll wait for 
 you there." 
 
 Without a word, the girl was gone, and with his 
 finger on his lips as he left the room, Mr. Gerritt 
 disappeared. 
 
 At first there was no sound within or without. 
 Then, as if the signal were immediately under their 
 feet, the listening men heard two raps upon a pane 
 of "lass, and an instantaneous answer from the out- 
 
 o * 
 
 side one, one-two-three, one a signal so low 
 that on another night it might have been inaudible. 
 Bolts were drawn in the fastenings of the door, and 
 then replaced. The noise of this came to the ear in 
 a muffled way. There were footfalls on the stairs 
 and the sound of voices in a whisper. Sime Benson 
 was still as fidgetty as a child in a church pew.
 
 64 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 With a red handkerchief he wiped his streaming 
 forehead. The others were like a group of statues. 
 
 Mr. Gerritt stepped into the room, and at his 
 heels, a picture of fair womanhood in blushes and 
 alpaca, came Bess Malcolm. Behind them stood 
 the Irish maid with her stout arm at the back of a 
 stalwart negro whose inclination seemed to be to 
 hang back. Yielding to this pressure he advanced 
 to the centre of the room, by which time the com 
 pany were on their feet in token of their astonish 
 ment at seeing the runaway under the escort of the 
 radiant girl. It cannot be denied that Bess was 
 apparently enjoying the prevalent state of surprise. 
 
 "This is the scout we expected, gentlemen," Mr. 
 Gerritt said, and with a cavalier s bow to Bess, 
 " and here is another." 
 
 Dr. Disbrow evidently was more stunned by the 
 apparition than the others, and Bess, not slow to 
 recognize his discomfiture, went over to him with 
 outstretched hand. 
 
 " If Miss Malcolm will tell the gentlemen how all 
 this came about I am sure that they will listen," 
 Mr. Gerritt interposed, just in time to shut off the 
 flood of inquiries leaping to Win s lips. 
 
 "There isn t much to tell," Bess made answer. 
 " I ll try to cut it very short, for this man has a
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 65 
 
 story more interesting. A half hour ago Uncle 
 Lyme, who was roaming around like a lost spirit, 
 found this man hiding under his wagon and and 
 well, he was looking for friends, and Uncle Lyme 
 brought him to our house brought him to me." 
 
 " Fse done been sent to Peter Gerritt," the negro 
 interrupted. 
 
 " Yes, that s what Uncle Lyme told me," Bess 
 continued, "but he didn t want to take him to Mr. 
 Gerritt. He says you suspect him of being leagued 
 with the others ; so he brought him to our house." 
 
 Mr. Gerritt smiled in deprecation of being 
 thought so uncharitable, but said nothing. 
 
 "And you brought him here?" asked Win. 
 " You weren t afraid ? " 
 
 " Her act is the best proof of her courage, doctor," 
 Mr. Gerritt said. "And not every young woman 
 who believes as she does would be as brave." 
 
 " I se done been sent to Peter Gerritt," the negro 
 repeated, as he looked furtively from face to face, 
 the formality of enlightening him as to the identity 
 of his host evidently having been overlooked in the 
 haste and strangeness of his reception. 
 
 " I am Peter Gerritt," the great Abolitionist said, 
 "and these are your friends and mine. What is 
 your name, my good man?"
 
 66 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Dick Richards, massa." 
 
 " There are no masters here, Dick," was Mr. Ger- 
 ritt s admonitory rejoinder. 
 
 He was not a full-blooded specimen of his race. 
 In his eyes, his features, his physique, there showed 
 the indelible marks of that deepest shame of slavery, 
 the sin that stamps its own as with the brand of 
 Cain, and makes of heredity an odious boast. 
 There was a bronze-like beauty about the man that 
 was repellent because of the hideous truth it told. 
 In certain lights Richards was not so dark of com 
 plexion that he would not pass for a white man, and 
 he had been fitted out with clothing to aid him in 
 such a deception, if it would better serve his end. 
 Indeed in his capacity as a scout, so he told the 
 listening company, he carried two outfits ; in one of 
 which he stood, the other, a bundle of rags and 
 tatters, he had concealed some distance from the 
 village while he came to keep his appointment with 
 Mr. Gerritt. To the rags and tatters he resorted, 
 he said, when, as he had been doing, he was mis 
 leading his pursuers by sudden appearances and 
 exits from places where it was obvious inquiry for 
 the runaways would be made. It was a dashing 
 exploit to be engaged in and, though he knew its 
 perils, he was keyed up to the accomplishment.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 67 
 
 The man and the enterprise seemed to go to 
 gether. 
 
 In the course of the negro s revelations it came 
 out that he had been brought at last to desperate 
 straits by the success of his ruse. The pursuing 
 force, consisting of a Southern attorney, a United 
 States marshal and a hired assistant, had come up 
 with him. 
 
 " Dey s so close, Massa Gerritt, I reckon dey ll 
 smell dis hyer nigger out fore sun-up," Dick said. 
 
 " You re safe under this roof, Dick,"the Abolition 
 ist leader replied. " The bloodhounds have no au 
 thority, even under the Fugitive Slave Law, to 
 cross this threshold." 
 
 " But I se got to git back to my people," 
 Richards put in, almost with tears in his eyes. 
 " I se got to lead dem to de Promise Land, suah. 
 I se jess goin to do it, Massa Gerritt, somehow." 
 
 "Of course you are," exclaimed Bess, her cheeks 
 flaming with the excitement of the affair. " Of 
 course you are, and we re going to help you. 
 Aren t we, Doctor, and Mr. Gerritt and all of us." 
 
 " Every attempt shall be made to do so," was the 
 reassuring remark of Mr. Disbrow. 
 
 In a hurried discussion of ways and means which 
 thereupon ensued, it came out that for the present
 
 68 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 the rest of the fleeing party were deemed to be safe 
 at a station thirty miles south of Smithboro ; but it 
 was conceded that were Richards to be taken or 
 were his whereabouts to be detected, the pursuers 
 would learn of the fool s errand on which he had 
 led them and would quickly retrace their steps, with 
 the imminent possibility of capturing the whole 
 party. Obviously no effort should be spared to 
 again increase the distance between Richards and 
 those in pursuit. 
 
 Sime Benson was for sending Richards back with 
 out a moment s delay, and in a grandiloquent burst 
 of enthusiasm, he took out a heavy wallet wound 
 with strings and announced that he would gladly 
 give five dollars towards seeing the runaway well 
 provided for. When Mr. Disbrow impetuously re 
 marked that this was an emergency when cunning, 
 not coin, was wanted, Sime took umbrage at the 
 words, and made it a good excuse for leaving the 
 council. 
 
 As a result of the discussion, it was decided that 
 Richards should not stir from Mr. Gerritt s house 
 that night, and that after the village had been thor 
 oughly reconnoitered the next day, such action as 
 the circumstances justified should be taken. If the 
 pursuers were as close as the negro thought they
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 69 
 
 were, he would have to wait in hiding for their de 
 parture from Smithboro or depend on a strategic 
 move to make good his escape. 
 
 Having determined on this plan the little council 
 broke up. 
 
 " You re a little heroine, Miss Bess Malcolm," 
 said Dr. Disbrow, taking the girl on his arm down 
 the broad steps of the mansion, while his uncle 
 held back a moment for a final word with Mr. 
 Gerritt. 
 
 "Do heroines keep awake all night?" Bess in 
 quired naively. " I know I shan t sleep a wink to 
 night thinking of that wretched man." 
 " Let me give you a sleeping potion." 
 " None of your nasty medicine, thank you." 
 " All right, throw physic to the dogs. Will you 
 sleep if I tell you we shall have Richards out of 
 Smithboro to-night?" the young doctor asked. 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then I promise." 
 
 Bess in a glow of new excitement would have 
 had Win unfold what his plans were for thus 
 assuring the safety of the slave, but on the plea 
 that he was making a promise she should take on 
 faith, he brought her to her own door in a state of 
 doubt hopelessly divided between joy and vexation.
 
 70 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " I suppose you think a woman s not to be 
 trusted with such a secret ? " Bess inquired between 
 pouting lips. 
 
 " There s no secret about it yet," was Win s re 
 ply. " When there is, you shall be its custodian. 
 Does that suffice? For the present I promise that 
 the slave shall be out of Smithboro to-morrow." 
 
 " You promise that ? " 
 
 " I promise." 
 
 " And I say if you keep it, I ll like you as well as 
 I do Uncle Lyme." 
 
 " And give me all his privileges ? " Win stooped 
 as if he would have kissed her as he had seen his 
 father do. 
 
 There was a whisk of a dark petticoat, a tanta 
 lizing " Perhaps " singing in the air, a flash of lamp 
 light through a quickly-opened and closed door, 
 and Bess was no more to be seen.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 AT ten o clock at night Smithboro was apt to be 
 snugly stowed away in bed. As Win Disbrow at a 
 quickened pace turned his face towards the tav 
 ern to spend an hour with his father, his way 
 was lighted by a blaze of stars. Here and there 
 the jet of a tallow dip, trickling a feeble ray 
 through a window shutter, told of a laggard, or 
 marked a sick pillow. 
 
 On the steps of the Lafayette Hotel, with his 
 legs drawn up under his chin, a pipe in his mouth, 
 the young doctor found the author of his being in 
 conversation with a stranger. 
 
 " This is my boy, Dr. Disbrow," Lyme said, by 
 way of introduction. " What may I call your 
 name, mister ; I didn t jest catch it when Clem spoke 
 it a while ago." 
 
 "Thornby," was the stranger s reply. 
 
 " Mr. Thornby, my son, Dr. Disbrow," Lyme 
 said. " Must be purty sick over there, Win," he 
 continued, "you re so kinder late; if it hadn t
 
 72 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 been as I was lightin out to-morrer mornin , I d a 
 been in my downy couch afore this, I kin tell you. 
 But I wanted to see you on suthin perticular, an 
 so here I be. How sick is he anyway ? " 
 
 A dingy tin reflector on the wall of the tavern 
 office cast just enough light upon Lyme s face to 
 permit Win to scan it. Ordinarily he would have 
 taken this reference to an imaginary patient as a 
 bit of harmless chaff, especially as he had come 
 from the direction of Bess s home, but there was an 
 elusive something in the picture-taker s sharp eyes, 
 as the gaze of the father and son met, that Win s 
 quick wit told him not to interpret as parental 
 levity. 
 
 " It is a desperate case, father," Win made reply, 
 having come to the conclusion that they were talk 
 ing in parables. " But I hope to pull him through. 
 I m going to my office now to look into the books 
 a little. You see, Mr. Thornby, I m just a begin 
 ner in medicine ; and if you don t mind, father, you 
 might walk along with me. We can say our good 
 byes while I m looking up the authorities." 
 
 Thornby and the tavern being at their back, a 
 minute later, Win gave his father an affectionate 
 embrace and further certified to its sincerity with 
 the remark : " Dad, you re a brick."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. ; 3 
 
 Lyme s pipe had been puffed so hard that its red 
 glow paled the stars. He was in a meditative 
 mood, that was plain. 
 
 "Nice mess this is, Win, for a law-abidin citizen 
 of the United States," he said at last. "Touch 
 pitch an you ll be defiled, the good book, or some- 
 buddy or t other says, and here I be with my dew- 
 claws on a runaway nigger." 
 
 " Bess Malcolm thinks you re nothing less mag 
 nificent than a saint," Win said, " and I begin to 
 think she s a girl who knows a thing or two." 
 
 " I d not a-meddled with the business, Win, for 
 anyone but her. No, sir, not for you, or Ab either. 
 It s a ticklish business, too. That feller Thornby 
 at the tavern s a nigger hunter, an there s two 
 more on em there, who ll make things in Smith- 
 boro hum like a bumble-bee on a honey-suckle to- 
 morrer, I m thinkin ." 
 
 " They re here then ? " Win exclaimed, stopping 
 dead in the path. 
 
 " As big s a meetin house," Lyme replied. " Here 
 to stay, I guess, till they git their finger-nails into the 
 wool of that nigger you ve got over to Gerritt s." 
 
 " You talked with them, did you ? " Win asked. 
 
 "With nobuddy but that feller you jest left. 
 Clem Jones is mighty scarey bout em, an told
 
 74 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 round they d come here to buy black walnut tim 
 ber : but it s suthin blacker n that they re chasin 
 after, or they d not come to town with a pair of 
 wind-blown hosses, bout an hour after I d took the 
 nigger to Bess ! " 
 
 " Just in time to save him. You are a brick." 
 
 This was what Win said as he unlocked his office 
 door and went in. It was decided that, so far as 
 Dr. Disbrow s illusionary patient was concerned, he 
 could work better in the dark than in the light. So 
 the candles remained unlighted. It was plain the 
 tavern keeper, evidently in the secret of the stran 
 gers mission, had thought to do something for them 
 by recommending Lyme as a sympathizer, but as 
 only Thornby remained in sight, and he kept his 
 own counsel, Lyme had little to add to the infor 
 mation already in the possession of the doctor. 
 Thornby had indeed endeavoured to lead Lyine 
 into a disclosure of the part Smithboro was playing 
 in the anti-slavery crusade, but as he had preserved 
 his usual reticence on the subject, nothing had corne 
 of their talk on the tavern steps. 
 
 " Now you ve got the nigger on your hands, Win, 
 you and the rest on em, what you goin to do with 
 him ? " was Lyme s next inquiry. 
 
 " I m going to send him away on the Under-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 75 
 
 ground Railroad to-morrow, right under the nose of 
 those bloodhounds," Win confidently answered. 
 
 " It s ticklish business, Win," the father put in. 
 
 " I told Bess Malcolm I d do it," the young man 
 said in a tone designed to touch the heart of his 
 father. 
 
 "You did, eh? An I ve a blamed good notion 
 to help you, but I guess I ve got as badly mixed up 
 in the business as I oughter. Doggone it, no! I ll 
 lay low." 
 
 " You re going to help, dad, that s just what s go 
 ing to happen. You are going to let me put a 
 bundle of old clothes in your wagon to-night, and 
 then to-morrow morning you are going to drive 
 away with it, and when nobody s looking, you re 
 going to dump it somewhere on the road, and go 
 on about your business," 
 
 " You mean the nicker ? " 
 
 oo 
 
 "I mean a bundle of old clothes. Why should 
 you ask your son what s in the clothes? " Win said, 
 slapping his father on the back. " Now I want you 
 to give me the key to the wagon ; then I want you 
 to go back to the hotel, and keep your eyes peeled. 
 If those bloodhounds get to barking inside an hour, 
 or half an hour, you have business at the wagon, 
 and if you whistle the old tune, I ll know what to
 
 76 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 do. If the bloodhounds don t stir, go to bed and 
 go to sleep, as I told Bess Malcolm to do, when I 
 promised that the nigger, as you call him, would go 
 free to-night." 
 
 It was for Bess s sake that Lyme Disbrow did it. 
 Not a living soul, not even Bess, or Mr. Gerritt, or 
 his brother, the preacher, was to be enlightened as 
 to the use that was to be made of the wagon. 
 Lyme made this an express stipulation, for, as he 
 said, while he had no real fear of the consequences, 
 he did not want to turn his picture-wagon into a 
 cattle-cart. What was more, he added, as long as 
 he could he wanted to be a sinner, if to be holy 
 and righteous was to be as " mean as pizen," as, he 
 insisted, were a considerable portion of the Aboli 
 tionist elect. He knew, he said, a lot of people who 
 were howling through the wilderness for the free 
 dom of the slaves, who piled work on their hired 
 help until their backs broke, and then sent them to 
 bed with not enough in their stomachs to keep a 
 cat alive ! 
 
 " I know a white blackbird when I see it," Lyme 
 concluded, "an them s my sentiments." 
 
 Except that in answer to a low whistle outside 
 the windows of the Gerritt mansion there followed 
 an exchange of mystic raps on the curtained panes,
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 77 
 
 the flicker of the candle in the lower hall, the disap 
 pearance of a shadowy figure within, and, after a 
 space of half an hour, its reappearance in double, 
 the separation of the two on the village green as 
 they made their spectral way from elm to elm in the 
 blotches of black shade impenetrable to the flaming 
 sky, and then the click of the lock in the picture- 
 wagon as its bolt was shot back and forth, the chief 
 happening of that night in Smithboro had no 
 herald. 
 
 The next morning, bright and early, as Lyme 
 Disbrow s wagon rumbled past the tavern with the 
 picture-taker s face at the front window, Thornby, 
 the slave-taker, wakeful as a dog, sprang from his 
 bed to see for himself who was astir at that hour. 
 On the wagon s side he read the legend : " Secure 
 the shadow ere the substance fades." Then he 
 went back to bed for his forty winks.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LYME DISBROW S queer wagon was a familiar 
 sight on most roads. As he passed along, many a 
 shrill hulloo sounded from a newly-ploughed hillside 
 or was flung down at him from the peak of a 
 mounting hayrick to draw his attention from his 
 morning meditations. He was more contemplative 
 than usual, this morning; so thoroughly engrossed 
 was he with his own thoughts, in fact, that without 
 these spurs to a livelier spirit he might have moped 
 half way to Vidlersville. He was, truth to tell, 
 neither sorry nor glad that he had become the 
 humble instrument of what he knew vast numbers 
 of good folk would have looked upon as a noble 
 act. At the same time, having taken the runaway 
 negro as a passenger, he was intent on discharging 
 his part of the business with precision and dispatch. 
 
 Lyme and Richards had scarcely spoken at the 
 start, and now the negro, worn out with watching 
 through the night, was asleep on the wagon floor, 
 jolt as the vehicle would over the rough road. All
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 79 
 
 Lyme s mental power was being centred on select 
 ing a spot from which the fugitive, having been 
 disembarked, could with reasonable safety make a 
 journey southward to rejoin his party. The idea in 
 Lyme s head was to give the negro as much cover 
 in the woods as possible, and yet not lengthen 
 his journey. Being, as he claimed, on speaking 
 terms with every blade of grass in that country, 
 Lyme was planning a safe route with a minute cal 
 culation of all the chances. To have Dick retaken 
 would look like a breach of faith on his part, Lyme 
 decided, and he was bound to outwit pursuit. 
 
 They had gone out of Smithboro, Lyme and his 
 bundle of old clothes, on such a morning as he was 
 wont to take the keenest delight in. Just a balmy 
 breath of clover-laden air blew fresh in his cheery 
 face. Flights of birds, whose names he knew and 
 whose songs he loved, swept across the landscape : 
 here where it was made to teem by the patient 
 tiller of the soil, and there, where it was left still 
 glorious in a state of primeval loveliness expansive 
 stretches of upland timber virgin to the woodman s 
 axe. Over against the distant hilltops rose banks 
 of milk-white clouds, massed as low as the horizon 
 and as high as the zenith, as if just beyond that 
 jagged borderland of pinnacles and pines another
 
 8o THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 world was drawing on a mammoth pipe and tossing 
 great puffs of smoke into mid-air. 
 
 Within range of his own vision, Lyme saw a little 
 world going to its daily tasks. At the right hand a 
 half dozen cows, trailed by a barking dog at which 
 a boy shouted " Stu boy, stu boy," meandered over 
 a lea still silvered with the dew of morning. " Co 
 boss, co boss," sang another lad in a key as sweet 
 as an Arcadian tabour, down a sloping bank of 
 spongy meadowland cut into irregular squares by 
 the zig-zags of the rail fence. The dip of a well- 
 sweep, squeaking on its bearings, was another sign 
 of life ; the grating of a stone-boat going down a 
 cow-path another, and as all things are quick or 
 dead by comparison life was at its ^busiest here at 
 this hour. 
 
 " This country s too good for niggers, " Lyme said 
 aloud, taking his lungs full of soft air, and turning 
 in his place to see how his charge was faring. 
 
 " I reckon, sah, I se been a heap o trubble to 
 you," Dick said in a whisper, as he sat up and 
 rubbed his eyes until they seemed bigger and 
 whiter than ever. 
 
 "No trouble so far," Lyme remarked, "an I 
 don t want you to be, come Sunday an the day 
 after that. But dang your black hide why don t
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 8r 
 
 you stay where you b long you niggers ; what 
 with the seven-year locusts an the sheep-pest we 
 could get long without niggers." 
 
 Richards was on his feet with the quickness of a 
 cat. The picture-taker s words had a hostile sound. 
 
 "Whar you takin* me?" he cried, as he seemed 
 to crouch for a spring. " Dey done tol* me you 
 was a fren* and if you ain t I se goin to fight ma 
 way out, right hyer." 
 
 And he looked as if he would do it against all 
 odds. 
 
 " Served you good an right, you old fool," Lyme 
 leaned over the edge of the window-sash to say to 
 the dapple-gray horse hitched to the wagon. " You 
 never did know beans, an here you be runnin off 
 with a nigger who don t know nough to thank you. 
 You re the blamedest fool in seven counties, that s 
 what you are, Old Ironsides." 
 
 If the horse did not comprehend this jocular 
 tirade, the negro did, for he calmly settled back 
 into one of the two chairs with which the wagon 
 was furnished, but said not a word. 
 
 " Git ap, there, you fool of a hoss," Lyme con 
 tinued in the same facetious strain, " cause I m 
 goin to swap you for a yaller dog an throw the 
 nigger in to boot. Say, nigger, what are you wuth
 
 82 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 anyways, wuth in money, so s when I make the 
 trade I kin deal intelligent ? " 
 
 " Massa Molby paid twelve hundred dollahs fur 
 me," Richards replied, and he now spoke as if he 
 took pride in this measurement of his value. / 
 
 "That s a heap o money for a nigger," Lyme 
 said, " but there s no accountin for tastes. Your 
 master must have wanted you purty bad to have 
 gone down into his eel-skin for twelve hundred. 
 Why did you run way from him ? " 
 
 " I done wanted to see de Promise Land, suah," 
 Dick answered. 
 
 " Didn t he treat you well? " Lyme inquired. 
 
 " Yes sah ; I se no plaint to make, noway, sah." 
 
 " An you scooted, leavin your master to whistle 
 for his twelve hundred ? " was Lyme s comment. 
 " Well, this is what I think of this transaction." 
 He went on speaking again to the dapple-gray : 
 " This is grand larceny. The constables ll be chasin 
 an cotchin you, if you don t hump along, for havin 
 stolen goods. And as for you, nigger," Lyme 
 continued, looking at Dick, " I don t take a cent s 
 wuth of stock in a runaway nigger. I m helpin 
 you out of your scrape cause that gal who took 
 you to Mr. Gerritt s last night would want me to." 
 
 " Fore de Lor , massa, I thank you," Dick said.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 83 
 
 " Thank her, not me," Lyme rejoined, " for they d 
 had you in the calaboose afore this if it hadn t been 
 for her." 
 
 Lyme pulled the dapple-gray to a standstill. 
 The road had led into a gulch, the precipitous sides 
 of which, overgrown with ferns and mosses, dripped 
 with the ooze of many springs. Drawing the calico 
 curtain of a window in the side of the wagon, Lyme 
 pointed the negro to a rocky opening, which he 
 said could be easily scaled. Then he directed 
 Dick to follow the lay of the land, sticking to the 
 high ground, along which the woods stretched for 
 several miles. At the first clearing he would be in 
 sight of Vidlersville, Lyme informed him, and hav 
 ing skirted that settlement his way was clear, for 
 Dick had already been over the ground south of 
 that village. 
 
 Then handing the negro a package, in which there 
 was, as he said, " a few vittles," Lyme unlocked the 
 wagon door and told the negro to be off. Standing 
 on the rutted road he saw Dick clamber up the 
 steep incline to the wooded cover. 
 
 " Now run for it ! " he shouted, and without a word 
 the negro was out of sight. 
 
 " Good riddance to bad rubbish," Lyme said as 
 lie went into the wagon, and proceeded on his way.
 
 84 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Say, old boss," he added, tapping the back of Old 
 Ironsides with the reins, " I hope we ll never sot eyes 
 on that nigger agin. Doggone it, no ! never agin." 
 
 This was a vain hope, for while Lyme was doing 
 Dick this good turn, the negro s friends in Smith- 
 boro were formulating plans for breaking his bonds 
 of iron with a sledge of gold. To the little band of 
 persons who knew of Dick Richards s presence in 
 Smithboro his sudden disappearance was a surprise. 
 The secret of it was kept from most of those who 
 under ordinary circumstances might have been 
 entitled to it, and that there was no attempt to 
 penetrate the mystery after Mr. Gerritt had given 
 it the cloak of his name, was one of those proofs of 
 unquestioning loyalty that gave the Abolition 
 cause the strength of a religion. It was like faith 
 in God. Of this mettle was the true Abolitionist. 
 
 Dick had made a strong impression on the friends 
 of the cause. His resourcefulness, as much as 
 his intrepidity, in misleading his pursuers from the 
 trail, thus making his party of fugitives secure in 
 their hiding-place, proved him to be a man of excep 
 tional ability, and to make his services more valuable 
 to the cause it had been determined, if possible, 
 to buy his freedom. It had been resolved, however, 
 to take no step in this direction until the scout and
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 85 
 
 his companions were safely bestowed on Canadian 
 soil. Of Dick s arrival at Kingston Mr. Gerritt was 
 duly advised three weeks later, extreme caution hav 
 ing been observed in forwarding the party after Dick 
 rejoined them, on account of the vigorous efforts 
 made to overtake them in their flight. Of those who 
 had been in pursuit, only Thornby had been visible 
 about Smithboro, and a watch set on him showed 
 that he had not been idle. But in the end he, with 
 the others, drove out of Smithboro three days after 
 Dick s escape, under cover of a tempestuous night. 
 
 It was Bess Malcolm who first thought of bringing 
 Dick to Smithboro a free man to aid their cause. 
 She did more she proposed to buy his liberty with 
 her own money. She had a couple of thousands 
 that had come to her from the settlement of her 
 father s estate in Massachusetts, and this had been 
 increased by two years savings out of her salary as 
 a schoolmistress before she had joined her sister in 
 Smithboro. 
 
 "A most kind, a most humane, a most patriotic 
 offer," Mr. Gerritt said when the subject was first 
 broached, Bess and the preacher having called at 
 the mansion on that errand. " But I beg of you, 
 my dear young lady," he continued, " let me pro 
 vide the means. I shall be well repaid, for Dick will
 
 86 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 be of valuable assistance ; and I am only sorry the 
 thought did not occur to me. I shall at once write 
 to Dick for the name of his master, and then open 
 negotiations for his purchase through my agent in 
 New York." 
 
 " If you rob me of the pleasure of buying his 
 freedom, with my own money, Mr. Gerritt," Bess 
 replied, " I shall be deeply grieved. Let me enjoy 
 the consciousness of having been of some service to 
 the great cause, Mr. Gerritt, please do." 
 
 " Miss Malcolm has set her heart on it," Mr. Dis- 
 brow added, " and though it may exhaust her little 
 store, I believe that above all things she would 
 value no return more highly. We had better humour 
 the girl s fancy." 
 
 Bess was not to be persuaded otherwise and so had 
 her way. Mr. Gerritt s sole reservation was that if 
 the price of the slave was in excess of fifteen hundred 
 dollars he was to make up the balance. Inasmuch 
 as Col. Sinclair Molby, of Nashville, Tenn., was in 
 the position of a man selling a piece of property that 
 he had no means of delivering without the consent 
 of the slave, a sharper bargain than common was 
 driven with him by Mr. Gerritt s agent, and six 
 weeks later Dick Richards, a bondman no longer, 
 came back to Smithboro fearless of all the world.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WIN DlSBROW s practice in Smithboro and the 
 country round about was crowding his waking 
 hours, and his father, fearful that the young doctor 
 was burning the candle at both ends, lost no oppor 
 tunity to solicitously admonish him that in so doing 
 he was seriously jeopardizing his life s happiness. 
 
 " I knew a young feller down at Shed s Corners," 
 Lyme said, " and, if I don t disremember, he was a 
 doctor too, who killed himself workin tween meals. 
 There was no more let-up to him than there is to a 
 mill-stream after the spring rains. Well, one day 
 he went an took a ride to the grave-yard in the fust 
 carriage. Then what ? Why his wife and her second 
 husband went up where the flowers bloomed over 
 him ; they planted clam shells round his little two- 
 by-six posy bed, watered the mound with fallin 
 tears, an then went home and ate up all his quince 
 preserves. I can t jest call the doctor s name, but 
 it might have been Killmore. The Killmores were 
 
 o 
 
 as thick as hops round Shed s Corners, an some on
 
 88 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 em ought to have been sawbones. Anyway they 
 ate up the doctor s quince preserves after his toes 
 were turned up to the daisies." 
 
 " But there must be a first husband for my wife 
 before there s a second one," Win remarked, not 
 missing the implication in his father s witticism, the 
 intent of which was to chide him for long delay 
 in placing himself under the magic spell of Lem 
 Haskins s bergamot. Win s professional standing 
 had been sufficiently established, Lyme thought, to 
 justify speed in a courtship that the village generally 
 agreed was progressing in that quarter. The village 
 certainly acknowledged that Dr. Disbrow s fortune 
 was made. Had he not been called to attend Peter 
 Gerritt when, one day, the great liberator broke 
 down under the weight of anxiety he was carrying ? 
 
 As a matter of fact Win and Bess, if the village 
 was right in its guess, were telling each other the 
 old, old story in the old, old way. Its variations from 
 the Smithboro custom lay in the fact that it was not 
 a pastoral wooing. Certain conventionalities be 
 longing to the social amenities of larger communi 
 ties were being observed, but, after all was said and 
 done, there was no doubt Win was "sparking" 
 Bess, and to this conclusion the village had arrived 
 with all the satisfaction to be derived from practical
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 89 
 
 unanimity of opinion. The one question left, there 
 fore, was when they would " hitch up." 
 
 It was a love-making, however, that a romantic 
 girl like Dorothy Gerritt could not abide. Dorothy 
 was Bess s best friend, and in their moments of con 
 fidence she was in the habit of speaking her mind 
 freely. In this she took after her father, the sage 
 of Smithboro, whose prop and support she was in 
 hours of sorest tribulation. She walked midst the 
 fairy forms of high ideals, but with no far-away look 
 in those hazel eyes of hers, as often happens with 
 young women of her disposition, and to speak by 
 the card of her training in a household where the 
 problems of life rather than its primary lessons in 
 love and hope and fear and sadness and pleasure 
 rule the trend of thought. In her view if things 
 were not right, they ought to be, because they 
 would be pleasanter so. To correct the wrongs 
 that confronted her, as one by one the world un 
 folded them, to straighten them out at the sacrifice 
 of peace of mind at loss of sleep even appeared 
 to be a step in the opposite direction. Dorothy 
 was a little philosopher. 
 
 As Dorothy was Bess s constant companion, Win 
 saw a great deal of her, and he often wondered if it 
 had not been given to this winsome miss of nineteen
 
 90 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 to teach those who like himself were heavy-laden a 
 way to shift their burdens. His absorption in the 
 great cause of Abolition he never doubted was the 
 expression of his loftiest sentiments, and that it was 
 just as noble for a woman to go to the same lengths 
 was his fixed belief, until alas ! for the selfishness 
 of these lords of creation he came to wonder 
 whether what became him as a man did not show 
 lack of tenderness in a woman. Then he would 
 picture Joan of Arc riding cap-a-pie to save Orleans 
 and straightway would hate himself for being a 
 poltroon. But had he heard Dorothy chide Bess 
 he could have loved her then and there. 
 
 " Of course, it s all right, Bess, to devote ourselves 
 heart and soul to the salvation of the slaves," was 
 Dorothy s way of putting it, " but I never hear you 
 and Win talking of anything else, and I don t be 
 lieve you do. If I were in love I d forget father s 
 name was Gerritt and my own, too." 
 
 " Girls who love and get their reward usually do 
 forget their own names," said Bess. " They have 
 to." 
 
 " But I ll forget mine before I ever get that far 
 when I m in love," added the daring little roman 
 ticist. 
 
 " So would I," Bess answered, " if I were in love."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 91 
 
 " But you are, you are, you are ; and so is Win, 
 but you ve both such a funny way of showing it." 
 
 " Well, then, you minx, when I m in love, I ll say 
 I wont show it," Bess said, taking her friend in her 
 arms. 
 
 " Did you say won t or don t ? " Dorothy inquired, 
 and no reply broke just then through the fondness 
 of their embrace. The girls were looking strange 
 things out of their sparkling eyes. 
 
 "You don t love him, eh?" Dorothy said at last, 
 her rippling laugh breaking the spell. " You don t 
 love him not a bit ? Well, if that s so, he s too 
 nice to be made to die an old bachelor for hopeless 
 love of you, while you re waiting for slavery to be 
 abolished. So you won t mind if I pitch in ?" 
 
 " No, certainly not. You re welcome to him," 
 was Bess s acceptance of the challenge. 
 
 " You dear old ninny of a Bess Malcolm, you ! I 
 tell you if you don t stop mooning about Abolition, 
 and spend a little good time in in other ways, you 
 may lose him. There ! " 
 
 Whereupon Dorothy thought her duty to her 
 friend was done and having kissed her fervently 
 made off as fast as she could, confident that the half 
 hour had not been wasted. 
 
 To what extent Dorothy Gerritt spoke by au-
 
 92 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 thority it would be difficult to say, but that Win 
 and Bess kept the great cause they had espoused in 
 the forefront of their lives, was beyond question. 
 It was an awesome movement, this of the Abolition 
 ists, in the success or failure of which lives were 
 held as at a pin s worth, and which, as it gathered 
 force, like an irresistible flood, was beating at the 
 very foundations of the American home. Men and 
 women stood aghast at what was being done and 
 what they themselves were doing. In the face of it 
 all they grew old before their time. Yet this girl, 
 with no vindictivencss in her heart, with no thought 
 of a martyr s crown, with no emotion in her breast 
 except that of human sympathy, flung herself into 
 this majestic tide and floated with it, like a bird on 
 the crest of a tempest. She was finding joy in the 
 doing of the thing that sounded the depths of her 
 feelings, and that there was a man whose words 
 touched her at the same point, was enough for her. 
 The mere form of the words did not matter. She 
 used to declare to herself that love could be lifted 
 above a lexicon of fine phrases. She was reading 
 the heart of man, she said, in a brighter light and 
 was content. 
 
 At first it seemed to Win as if he could not say 
 enough in praise of what Bess had done for the
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 93 
 
 cause which was binding their lives together. She 
 had perhaps impoverished herself by ransoming the 
 slave and she deserved more honour than words 
 could give her. 
 
 Nor had Dick Richards proved a poor investment 
 so far as the operations of the Underground Rail 
 road were concerned. The negro s sagacity had 
 not been overestimated in the cost. And he was 
 as indifferent to peril as he was sagacious. Under 
 the pretense of having the care of Dr. Disbrow s 
 horse, he was kept constantly employed pointing an 
 ever-increasing number of runaway slaves the way 
 to the Promised Land. He learned to know the 
 Chenango Valley as if it were a kitchen garden. 
 There were tracks through the woods that no one 
 else kne\v, for he had made them himself, and they 
 led to hiding places as cleverly chosen as the holes 
 of the foxes. Every hollow of a fallen tree into 
 which a hunted man could crawl, every cave in the 
 rock where a party of them could huddle, was 
 mapped in his head. In the sharp work of foiling 
 pursuit of the fugitives he exhibited the keenest 
 pleasure, and as the law was now being exerted to 
 the very utmost to stop this exodus from the land 
 of Egypt, the black scout was an invaluable aid. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these evidences of Dick s use-
 
 94 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 fulness to the cause Win took a hearty dislike to 
 him. It was a declaration of this aversion that 
 caused a shadow to come between Win and Bess. 
 
 " I wish he had never come here," the young doc 
 tor said to Bess one day. " He s too white to be 
 black and too black to be white." 
 
 " I ll take the responsibility," the girl replied. 
 " And he seems to be lightening all our burdens by 
 a show of fidelity that it is most cruel of you, Win, 
 to criticise." 
 
 " Bess, I don t want to be cruel, but I do want to 
 be just. What he does he does to please you he s 
 grateful to you no doubt, for buying his freedom. 
 And I know better than anyone else how resource 
 ful he is, and how brave, but he hates me I know 
 that, too, and I am never quite sure that I can 
 trust him." 
 
 " Perhaps it s because he does risk his life for me 
 that you hate him, too," Bess said, half in jest, half 
 in earnest. 
 
 " I don t like his kind of gratitude. It s not nat 
 ural in a negro and it s too much like that of a dog 
 for a white man. This mixture of the bloods is of 
 all things in slavery the most abhorrent." 
 
 Win was not mistaken in his man. The negro, 
 while nominally subject to the orders of the doctor,
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 95 
 
 obeyed him solely because he was the spokesman 
 of his benefactress. To her he was as faithful as a 
 hound and master of everything save his feelings ; he 
 could not help showing them. The psychological 
 reasons, so easily within range of a medical practi 
 tioner s comprehension, were not apparent to Bess ; 
 nor could they be explained by him to her. 
 
 Confronted, therefore, by this insurmountable 
 difficulty, Dr. Disbrow, the physician, and Win 
 Disbrow, the lover, concluded to avoid the subject 
 in the future. Before the summer was over he had 
 occasion to soundly berate himself for this lack of 
 decision. A different course would have spared the 
 Abolition movement the odium, whether right 
 ly or wrongly placed, of having nursed a viper in 
 its bosom. 
 
 A rumour had been current in Smithboro that was 
 so monstrous in its nature that it seemed to carry 
 its own refutation. It had originated on the steps 
 of the Lafayette Hotel. The ribald tongues of the 
 tavern gave it a start. But even then it went in 
 guarded whispers. 
 
 " It serves em danged good and right," Clem 
 Jones said. " They might uv known when they 
 fetched the nigger here. This defyin the law and 
 runnin em off to Canady s bad nough, but when
 
 96 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 they bring em here to live I jest says I m agin it ; 
 and I m fur paintin his black hide with tar and 
 feathers." 
 
 " He aint got no black hide," Postmaster Adkins 
 put in, "and that s jest where the trouble is. He 
 jest ought to be blacked, and p haps tar d do it. 
 Enyway his good looks oughter be spiled." 
 
 Events did not take that precise turn. Neverthe 
 less the outraged feelings of the village did not go 
 unvented. 
 
 Autumn had come with palette and maul-stick to 
 deck the dying leaves for their last sad flutter 
 among living things. 
 
 The pall of midnight was on the little village. 
 The footfalls of a score of men muffled in the scat 
 tered leaves gave sign that strange things were 
 happening in Smithboro. Dim figures passed to 
 and fro like apparitions. To witness the culmina 
 tion of these ghostly preparations the townspeople 
 were presently called by the ringing of the fire bell 
 that hung in the cupola of Deluge Engine Com 
 pany s house over on the green. The brazen 
 clamour awoke the village as from the dead. It 
 seemed as if this tumult of clanging brass must be 
 audible to the uttermost ends of the earth. Except 
 on gala occasions like the Fourth of July, and
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 97 
 
 Washington s birthday, the fire bell was more an 
 ornament than a measure of protection, but it was 
 ringing this night as nobody ever heard it ring before. 
 
 Out came the villagers in all stages of undress, 
 and animated by as many apprehensions of dire 
 peril as a summons so unusual and so ominous 
 might be thought to excite. 
 
 " Fire ! " was the cry yelled through the dark 
 streets. It was caught up in a wild frenzy and car 
 ried from house to house. 
 
 Fire indeed had descended on Smithboro. To 
 those who looked from one side of the village it ap 
 peared as if the other side was doomed. 
 
 A mass of flames that leaped above the highest 
 of the elms threw the distance into a black shadow. 
 As light as day it seemed down the street where 
 amid the scurry of flying feet, a rattle of heavy 
 wheels and a rallying cry of running firemen, led by 
 a bellowing trumpet, Deluge Engine Company was 
 on its way to the rescue. The alacrity of the fire 
 men in getting there was marvellous. If they had 
 stood ready behind the doors of their house with 
 their hands on the ropes they could not have shown 
 greater expedition. Perhaps they had taken this 
 precaution ! There was an air of mystery about the 
 affair from beginning to end.
 
 98 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " It s Frank Daboll s house," the word went 
 round. 
 
 " If what they say is true, this is an act of Provi 
 dence," cried a good woman, when the word reached 
 her ears. Like scores of others she cowered in 
 her door-yard appalled by the scene and unwilling 
 to look upon its dread consequences. Others still 
 rushed through the red glare to see all that there 
 was to be seen, like so many moths flying into a 
 flame. 
 
 " Poor thing, whatever happens I hope she wont 
 be burned alive," was the pitying cry of another 
 woman. 
 
 " Shameless hussy, she oughter be," a sister less 
 humane exclaimed. 
 
 " If the nigger s there he shouldn t be let out," 
 said a man as he passed on the run. 
 
 In the excitement of the moment the village was 
 finding voice for the rumour of the tavern steps. It 
 was at last on every lip. It had as many tongues as 
 a fabled serpent. Every forked flame was tipped 
 with the poison of the scandal. 
 
 What a spectacle it was of rural vengeance ! A 
 tar barrel to which a lighted match had been touched 
 while the village slept was blazing at the Widow 
 Daboll s door. This was the way Smithboro hunted
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 99 
 
 shame. It was Smithboro s way of branding a wom 
 an with the scarlet letter. 
 
 " Pump her up, Deluge ! " rang out the hoarse 
 order through the fire trumpet. At the engine 
 brakes stood two ranks of straining arms. The 
 machine had been manned by the avenging spirits of 
 Smithboro. At the word they bent to their work, 
 and as the pump chugged in unison to the song 
 of " Now up, now down ! " the firemen stretched 
 upward and doubled at their knees to the steady 
 sweep of the brakes, A silvery flood rose above 
 the house and poured over its angled roof. Smash 
 went the windows when the sputtering stream was 
 aimed at the brittle panes, and as the wrecked home 
 dripped water at every chink, the people howled in 
 merciless approval. 
 
 So the blazing barrel, grim symbol of the vil 
 lagers outraged virtue, burned to a handful of cin 
 ders ! 
 
 Early in the proceedings sooner than it was 
 possible for the gathering villagers to see the spec 
 tacle a frenzied woman had dashed from the house 
 and sped through the open fields and down the 
 path beside the neighbouring creek into the darkness. 
 But this story was narrated and denied with equal 
 vehemence.
 
 loo THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 When at last the pounding of the brakes as they 
 went up and down had ceased, obedient to a trump 
 eted order, a man who had thrust his head into a 
 glass-splintered sash yelled that there was someone 
 inside. 
 
 " The nigger, the nigger ! " was the furious cry. 
 
 " Tar and feathers ! " was the merciless echo of 
 this alarm, and to the flickering light of the crumb 
 ling staves, a dozen men stumbled over each other 
 in a rush inside. They came out a few minutes 
 later empty handed. 
 
 The fun for fun it was called in Smithboro was 
 over. An hour later all was as quiet as ever in the 
 virtuous village. 
 
 A woman, wrapped in a single garment only, 
 crept from the shelter of the woods an hour before 
 the dawn of that day, and, picking her way through 
 the gloom, returned to the dismantled house, to 
 leave it again in as much terror with a few neces 
 saries tied in a shawl. So Smithboro slept while the 
 young widow of Frank Daboll quitted its streets 
 forever. Smithboro had purged itself by fire.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 UNDER the elms that day Peter Gerritt walked 
 like a Nemesis. He had set the seal of condemna 
 tion on what had been done. Wrath was in his 
 speech. On the culprits, whoever they were, on 
 their sympathizers, one and all, he pronounced judg 
 ment. Bitterness was in his heart and gall on his 
 tongue. He was a different Peter Gerritt from 
 what the village had ever before known. 
 
 " You have put a stain on this village," he said as 
 he stood in the centre of a group of excited men, 
 " that no one of us will live long enough to see 
 wiped out. In the sight of God, before the law of 
 man, there is no palliation for it. It was fiendish, it 
 was barbarous, it was wicked. Shame upon you ! 
 Shame upon you ! 
 
 " Shame yourself, Peter Gerritt," cried Postmaster 
 Adkins, who among the accused first found courage 
 to defend the village. It was a new thing publicly 
 to take sides against the liberator. Even those 
 whose hostility to his slavery views was most con 
 spicuous held Mr. Gerritt in such esteem as a man 
 and a citizen that to flout him in the streets called
 
 102 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 for a degree of boldness heretofore unknown. The 
 people of Smithboro had learned to love him too 
 well for the good he had done. 1 1 is life among 
 them had been a benison. 
 
 When the postmaster hurled back the odious 
 phrase that Mr. Gerritt had put upon the village, the 
 listeners shuddered at the sound ; but as nothing 
 came of it, no harm to him or to them, one word led 
 to another until like a mob they hooted him. 
 
 " Brave men you are ! " cried Mr. Gerritt, standing 
 his ground while the little crowd augmented. 
 " Brave men, indeed, to attack a defenceless woman 
 in her home, and at dead of night drive her naked 
 into the woods, as if she were a wild beast ! " 
 
 " The woman be damned ! " shouted Clem Jones, 
 forcing his way to the front. " That s what I say 
 the woman be damned. Twa n t her the boys were 
 arter twas that nigger of yourn that spruce Jim, 
 Dick Richards and you know it, Peter Gerritt." 
 
 " Only wolves rend each other," Mr. Gerritt made 
 answer, as he strode off under an outcry of vile 
 epithets, which, when his back was turned, the 
 more cowardly sympathizers with the proceedings 
 of the night before thought it safe to utter. 
 
 " I ll brain the next man who says a thing like 
 that ! " was an exclamation from the outer circle of
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 103 
 
 the jostling knot of angry men. It was Dr. Disbrow 
 who spoke, and pushing to the centre of the throng 
 he manifested a fixed purpose to make good his 
 threat. His challenge passed unaccepted. 
 
 " You ain t no better nor him," the landlord of 
 the Lafayette Hotel said, "for that nigger s as 
 much yourn as his n." 
 
 " Well, if he is, what then? " the young doctor re 
 plied, facing the tavern-keeper in a composed man 
 ner. 
 
 "What I say is," Jones said, "that he never 
 oughter have come here, nohow. Let em stay where 
 they blong." 
 
 " He s a free man, Jones, and this is a free coun 
 try," Win answered. 
 
 " But we don t want any free love, do \ve, Doctor ? " 
 was the inquiry of a villager, whose connection 
 with the Abolition cause in Smithboro was no 
 secret. " That s what the boys don t like. We re 
 agin it, black or white. Richards warn t no worse 
 than the Daboll woman." 
 
 Half a dozen men quickly volunteered their ap 
 proval of this view of the case, making it plain in 
 that way that popular sentiment upon the question 
 at issue was not to be divided upon the old lines 
 of slavery and anti-slavery.
 
 104 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " That s a lie ! " exclaimed Jones, who was abroad 
 that day working with might and main to spread 
 the impression that what had been done was an 
 outburst of protest against the introduction of free 
 slaves in Smithboro. What effort he made in this 
 direction was a clumsy effort, but with his aid and 
 without it, that was the trend of general comment. 
 Away from Smithboro, when the news of the episode 
 percolated through the land, the conviction was 
 more or less strong that the cause had been dealt a 
 serious blow in the home of its most steadfast 
 friends. After that it demanded a little more of 
 a man to avow himself a liberator. 
 
 For weeks afterwards the village was nervous and 
 irritable. The burning of the tar barrel in the 
 Widow Daboll s yard had set many of the good folk 
 at cross purposes. It was planned as a moral les 
 son ; it became a bone of bitter contention. No 
 one was quite sure that the infamy of which the 
 wretched woman had been accused really attached 
 to her, and the fact that the negro, whose face of 
 sculptured bronze was said to have ensnared her, 
 remained in Smithboro to meet the charge served 
 to confuse public opinion. Mr. Gerritt s vigourous 
 espousal of Richards s cause in the end had a 
 mollifying effect, though he failed, as he designed
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 105 
 
 to do, to bring his fellow-citizens up to the point 
 of formulating in mass meeting a denunciation of 
 the outrage. 
 
 Within a week a written notice had been displayed 
 on the door of the Free Church of Smithboro call 
 ing the villagers together to this end. At a meeting 
 of Deluge Engine Company No. i, the preceding 
 night, it had been solemnly resolved that to the 
 extent of its influence, political, religious and social, 
 the organization must head off this attempt to heap 
 it with obloquy. The resolution which recorded 
 this determination was framed by the village editor, 
 and it was commented on by everybody present as 
 a masterpiece of English prose. As an instrument 
 for the moral uplifting of the community the fire 
 company did not propose to take second place. 
 
 Mr. Gerritt had subscribed twenty-five dollars 
 towards the red paint and gold stripes on the engine, 
 and things had come to such a pass at this meeting 
 that it was seriously proposed to return him his 
 money. Clem Jones, who was assistant foreman of 
 the company, had worked the meeting up to the 
 point of taking this action, and would have carried 
 it too, had he been able to suggest where the money 
 was to come from. 
 
 " We ll show him he don t run the hull town,"
 
 io6 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 was a remark oft-repeated in the meeting, and on it 
 the fire company finally compromised. Peter Ger- 
 ritt s mass meeting in the Free Church was assur 
 edly afoul of the fire company and it did not propose 
 to exert itself in vain this time. 
 
 Only the male population of the village heeded 
 the call for the meeting. Of its women, its noble, 
 self-reliant women, the women of Smithboro famed 
 in story two alone came forth to the call. They 
 were Bess Macolm and Dorothy Gerritt. The gos 
 sip of the meeting was that neither of them dared 
 stay away for reasons that were obviously personal. 
 
 " Tain t no go, this here ain t," said Dave Sturgis, 
 the foreman of Deluge Engine Company. " We ve 
 done what we sot aout to do, and there ain t many 
 men here dast vote fur what the women folks don t 
 sot any store by." 
 
 The foreman of the fire company was a student 
 of human nature. Smithboro had assembled to up 
 hold an ancient law of chivalry. What breach had 
 there been of it ? Where were the accusers? 
 
 In sorrow, more than anger, Mr. Gerritt made al 
 lusion to his disappointment that the fair fame of 
 Smithboro and of Smithboro s women was held in 
 such light regard by those whose sacred right to the 
 protection of honest men should of all things con-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 107 
 
 corn them. Mr. Gcrritt was speaking as only he 
 could speak when his heart was touched. There 
 was a fascination in his voice, a fervour in his manner 
 that could not be resisted, and as point after point 
 along his line of argument was scored, the audience 
 moved with him. 
 
 The yelp of a village cur broke the night s still 
 ness as the orator paused for breath. 
 
 The snarl in the throat of another dog cracked 
 and snapped and grated above the sound of scuffling 
 feet as half the people in the church changed their 
 positions. Grinding teeth were heard in a low- 
 pitched crescendo of yowls and barks. Mr. Gerritt 
 took a second for breath, for he saw that his audi 
 ence had become for the moment disconcerted. 
 Those nearest the open windows, craning their 
 necks, peered into the dark of the village green. 
 
 A boy s head, the appearance of which at the rear 
 of the church had been announced by a tread of 
 heavy boots on the vestibule floor, now put Peter 
 Gerritt s noble forehead in total eclipse. 
 
 " Say, Sime Benson ! " came from the doorway in a 
 screechy diapason, " Jones s brindle s got holder yer 
 shepherd dorg an s chawin th gizzard aouter im ! " 
 
 Mr. Benson, who sat up near the front of the 
 church, went down the aisle on a run. Before he
 
 io8 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 reached the door, so many others had vacated their 
 places in the back pews that he came bumping up 
 against them where they were struggling to get 
 out between the jambs. It is said the Abolitionist 
 ranter was so upset that he actually profaned the 
 holy temple with an oath. Angry words were cer 
 tainly exchanged, and, as might have been expected, 
 this uproar dissipated the last hope of keeping the 
 meeting in order. The fact was that from the first 
 yelp of a cur in pain the meeting was on the verge 
 of demoralization. Even the eloquence of Peter 
 Gerritt could not stand against a dog fight. 
 
 His uplifted palm might have stemmed the tide, 
 had not a leading citizen, who had occupied a 
 mourner s seat, resorted to the palpable subterfuge 
 of putting his handerchief to his face while he walked 
 out under the pretext of having the nose-bleed. 
 After that nobody felt bound to remain, and no 
 body did that is nobody except Mr. Gerritt, Mr. 
 Disbrow, Bess Macolm and Dorothy Gerritt. The 
 shame of it all bowed Mr. Gerritt s head very low. 
 He loved Smithboro and would have saved it from 
 infamy. 
 
 " I have done my best," he said as he led the 
 others away out of sight and sound of the impious 
 spectacle. Win, who had been glad enough that a
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 109 
 
 professional call had kept him away from the meet 
 ing, came up with them at the opposite side of the 
 green. What a pitiable fiasco the meeting had 
 been was made known to him in a few words. The 
 two dogs howling and growling in the tangle of 
 grass almost under their feet as they passed along 
 mocked at their serious faces. Around the space 
 on the green where the enraged brutes were tearing 
 each other to pieces, as they rolled over and over 
 in a splatter of bloody froth, circled these men of 
 Smithboro, absorbed in the issue as if it were a bat 
 tle of high principles. By one of the onlookers a 
 lantern had been brought, and while he held it 
 above the tumbling, grumbling, maddened dogs, the 
 crowd moved backward and forward to keep the 
 arena clear. The harder the animals fought, the deep- 
 erthe gashes their gleaming teeth made as their jaws 
 crunched together, the more intently was the fight 
 watched in the fitful light of the shaded candle. 
 There were partisans of both dogs in the crowd, and 
 they hoarsely shouted encouragement to the brindled 
 bull or tawny shepherd as long as either had a 
 snarl in him. Those who would have kicked the 
 curs apart said so under their breaths. Hence it 
 was that not until Sime Benson s shepherd, pulling 
 his sharp nose from a death-grip, dragged himself
 
 no THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 between his master s legs, and crouched there for 
 safety, did the men of Smithboro have a surfeit of 
 blood. 
 
 " Nuthin like a dorg fight to make folks forgit 
 how much they owe," Lyme Disbrow remarked to 
 the first person who happened his way after it was 
 all over. " Until I d been to a circus I thought a 
 dorg fight couldn t be beat. Maybe Smithboro d 
 change its mind if it d git out in Genesee Street 
 once a year." 
 
 Mr. Gerritt halted at his gate long enough to ex 
 pound the philosophy of the evening s incidents. 
 Was this sage s insight into the springs of human 
 action any more penetrating than the picture- 
 taker s ? 
 
 " From beginning to end," was the liberator s 
 observation, " this business is illustrative of the 
 primitiveness of our civilization. We like to think 
 of ourselves here in Smithboro as members of an 
 enlightened community. We have proved that we 
 were. Have we not held aloft the torch of Liberty ? 
 " In high places we have made the name of this 
 little village a menace to oppression. On cruel 
 statutes a thousand years old we have set the seal of 
 our condemnation. We have assumed to be the 
 leaders of men. But do we not walk as bovs who
 
 THE RED ANVIL. in 
 
 are blindfold ? Our cry is to the South the mis 
 guided South that human slavery must end, as 
 Jew-baiting ended in England and the pursuit of 
 witches ended in Massachusetts. They are all of a 
 kind survivals merely of a pagan time, of an effete 
 age. What then will be said of us, who have reared 
 this temple of Liberty, when, lapsing back into the 
 savagery of our race, we snatch up the torch of 
 Liberty and make of it a burning brand to kindle the 
 fire of vengeance ? What right have we to mark sla 
 very for destruction, who hunt an erring woman 
 from our midst with a sword of flame ? It is but a 
 step short of death at the stake. The superstitions 
 of Salem can be excused as well. Ah, friends, it 
 seems as if we had not advanced very far. Barba 
 rism is not yet dead within us. I have always pitied 
 the South that negro bondage was its inheritance. 
 I pity it more than ever to-night. By our own sins 
 are we confronted. The wrong of slavery the South 
 does not know. Have we the right to point them 
 the way whose better instincts do not rebel at what 
 we have seen to-night ? Is it for us to say that 
 the slave-holder who lays bare the back of that 
 which he has been taught is his own is a culprit, 
 when sane men like those of Smithboro take seem 
 ing delight in looking unabashed on two dogs made
 
 ii2 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 ferocious by the taste of each other s blood, and 
 then assume to be clean and wholesome ? Believe 
 me, friends, our work must be defined by broader 
 lines." 
 
 " In other words," was Win Disbrow s comment 
 on what their mentor had said, " everything that is 
 done in the name of right and justice and religion 
 and charity is not good." 
 
 This observation he had dropped as he walked 
 under the nodding treetops of an October night 
 towards Bess s home with Bess on his arm. 
 
 Bess bit her lip. As if the pressure there applied 
 must have its compensation, she partly released her 
 arm and said : 
 
 " I will not quarrel with you, Win. Why don t 
 you end the matter by sending Dick away for 
 good ?"
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 WIN had never even hinted that Dick Richards 
 should be sent away from Smithboro for good. He 
 had steadfastly adhered to his resolve not to speak 
 again of the negro, except as the man entered into 
 the operation of the Underground Railroad, where 
 in he continued to figure as a most important factor. 
 Dick seemed to be working out his destiny in the 
 Abolition movement under an inspiration. Its 
 leaders from one end of the State to another knew 
 him to be a hero. No test of his courage, his cun 
 ning, his tirelessness, found the black man wanting. 
 It was as if he was determined that no particle 
 of smudge that enveloped the Widow Daboll s 
 house should brand him as an outcast. Whether 
 justly or unjustly, what had happened had increased 
 the number of his enemies and rendered their hatred 
 of him more implacable. But those who aligned 
 themselves as friends became so without reservation. 
 Bess Malcom was of these, for she would not toler 
 ate the thought that the man s heart was black. 
 
 " Why don t you send him away ? " Win asked
 
 ii4 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 himself, having taken an exceedingly formal leave 
 of Bess at her door. When she had put the question 
 to him he had pretended not to comprehend its 
 significance. He was, of course, perfectly aware 
 that to act on Bess s suggestion would be to place 
 his own peace of mind above the success of the 
 great cause. Such a proposition, he felt, would 
 indeed pass without support among its friends. 
 Dick Richards was doing wonders. Within a week 
 had he not established a most ingenious means of 
 communication between the stations on the Otselic 
 Creek by floating logs down its swift current, logs in 
 which messages had been concealed ? As the stream 
 flowed northward, by resort to this device informa 
 tion conveyed in cabalistic signs was made available 
 hours before it could be carried by horse or foot, and 
 at times, too, when another messenger might not 
 have been able to elude detection. Of a certain 
 timber, and notched in a certain way for the purpose 
 of identification these logs became almost as sure 
 as Uncle Sam s post-boys. " Mr. Wood," as the 
 logs were called, was relied on in many emergencies. 
 
 Obviously Dick Richards could not be sent away. 
 
 " Would that he might be," Win said in the voice 
 of his meditations as he wandered under the elms. 
 " This man should have nothing to do with my
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 115 
 
 happiness, or hers. Yet he has, and always has 
 ever since he cursed this place with his presence. 
 It s not fair rivalry. Sympathy is a stronger pas 
 sion than love. In a woman s heart it is often 
 supreme. Combine pity with it and it is supreme. 
 Were this man, this slave, a white man, and not 
 half as handsome, to what might not Bess s pity 
 lead her? Good God ! What am I saying ! What 
 am I saying! " 
 
 The thought was madness to him, and in his de 
 spair he threw himself violently on a grass plot in 
 the deserted village street. 
 
 There in the chill air his father found him not 
 many minutes after, as he strolled towards the tavern 
 with his pipe in his mouth. 
 
 Win was in the mood for a confession and he 
 frankly told his troubles. 
 
 " You might as well know first as last," the young 
 man went on to say, " that I am as anxious to have 
 Bess Malcolm like me as you are, and that, I take 
 it, has been your fatherly desire. I have tried to 
 please her, and if I have failed it is in not having 
 as good an opinion of the negro, Richards, as she 
 has. I have been honest enough to say so to her, 
 and since then we have avoided the subject. From 
 that minute things have not been the same."
 
 ii6 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Course they haven t," the picture-taker broke 
 in to remark. " What kind of a doctor are you, not 
 to know that when a woman has a thing on her 
 mind if she can t talk about it, she s as bad off as a 
 heifer with a tail too short to brush the flies off her 
 ear. She jest up an worries. That gal s high- 
 strung, Win, an mustn t be worried." 
 
 " I refrained from discussing the negro, father," 
 Win said, " because I feared that, not being able to 
 agree on the subject, it would be better to drop it 
 altogether. I was a fool for speaking of the fellow 
 at all." 
 
 "Jest so," came the sharp reply in approval of 
 this word of self-condemnation. " Couldn t you see 
 that the nigger d turn his insides out to please the 
 gal? She up and bought him, didn t she ? Jest 
 shelled out like a drunken sailor to pay the damage. 
 Course he took a likin to her. A dorg d do that, 
 an niggers are some better n dorgs leastwise 
 some niggers an some dorgs. If you wanted to 
 have the gal kind o spruce up to you, why didn t 
 you take to the things she took to niggers an all. 
 I did, didn t I, though it went agin the grain." 
 
 " But an honest man can t hide his feelings," Win 
 argued. 
 
 " Honesty ain t the only crop that can t be winter-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 117 
 
 killed. Doggone it, no ! I knew an old skeezinks 
 over in Perryville who went to jail cause he was so 
 blamed honest. They put a summons onto him 
 for a witness in a hoss case, an not bein sure he d 
 come the next day, the jedge asked him to confess 
 himself as owin the county five hundred dollars, 
 so d he could go hum on his own recognizance. 
 But he wouldn t do it, sayin he didn t owe a mortal 
 soul a red cent, an wouldn t perjure himself. So 
 they stowed him away in the black hole till they 
 wanted him. His name, as I recollects, was Simp- 
 kins, but that s nuther here nor there. His honesty 
 like the measles was terrible painful when it struck 
 in." 
 
 " What is your advice ? " Win finally asked. He 
 was not given to brooding over the things that per 
 plexed him. His disposition was naturally buoyant 
 and cheerful. " What is your advice ? " he repeated, 
 Lyme having taken a longer time than usual in 
 which to frame a reply. " Should I say to Bess 
 that I can t consider the suggestion that Dick be 
 sent away ; that he is too useful to us, and that I 
 will try and learn to like him ? I can t promise to 
 do so, for I do not trust him. Would that do ? " 
 
 " Doggone it, no ! that wouldn t work, not a bit on 
 it," was the father s quick rejoinder. " If you ve
 
 i IS THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 got any books on women in your black walnut cases 
 you want to put your nose tween the leaves. 
 Can t you see, Win, she s comin round to your way 
 o thinkin ? Jest you give the dead an dyin a 
 chance for life to-morrer mornin an drop round on 
 Bess an talk it over. Jest you take her at her word. 
 Maybe she s as sick o the nigger as you be. I ex 
 pect she is. She s as smart as a steel trap an 
 ought to see things ain t goin right leastwise take 
 her at her word. Did I ever tell you bout that 
 friend o mine over at Mile Strip who wanted to sell 
 hisoldhoss? Didn t I? He stuck up a sign on 
 his barn, writ by himself, sayin the hoss was for 
 sale, an givin as a reason for sellin that he was too 
 h-e-a-v-e-y for his owner. He jest up an spelled it 
 h-e-a-v-e-y, jest like that. All the deestrict school 
 children come long an* bust their buttons laughin 
 at the sign. By an by a college chap from Syracuse, 
 who was drivin through the country, spied the sign, 
 an asked to see the hoss. He was a good-lookin hoss, 
 but did seem as if he needed a little hard work to git 
 him in condition, bein as fat as butter. The college 
 chap took anuther squint at the sign, an then 
 planked down the yellow bellies for the hoss. 
 This hoss ain t too heavy for me, says he, an off 
 he goes down the road. Afore he he d gone much
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 119 
 
 of a piece, the boss was gruntin like a stuck pig. 
 He hadn t breath nough in him to blow up a blad 
 der. Back goes the college chap to Mile Strip with 
 blood in his eye, wantin his money back, an no 
 questions asked. He lowed he d been cheated out 
 on his eye teeth. The hoss, he said, had the heaves 
 so powerful bad he couldn t waddle. 
 
 Jest so, says my friend, jest so. And that s 
 jest what the sign says too heavey for the owner. 
 
 No, the college chap says, the sign says too 
 heavy for the owner. How do you spell heavy? 
 my friend up and asks kind o cute like. Then the 
 college chap reads the sign agin and, gettin rippin 
 mad, says as how he thought my friend meant heavy 
 not heavey. An he had to keep the hoss, cause he 
 didn t take my friend at his word. What ivas that 
 feller s name? Blamed if I can think on it. But he 
 didn t know nough to take people at their word." 
 
 " Uncle Abner is right, father," Win said, " you 
 speak in parables. I ll think it over ; perhaps things 
 will look brighter in the morning. They aren t 
 half as dark as when you found me." 
 
 And the young doctor went to bed with a lighter 
 heart. The balm of an easy pillow brought him to 
 the next day in fine spirits. He thought now of 
 the presence of the negro scout as of no more con-
 
 120 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 sequence than a gossamer thread of a spider s spin 
 ning stretched across his path. It could be brushed 
 aside whenever he willed it so. He marvelled that 
 he could have conceived Richards to have been of 
 even passing interest in his scheme of life. 
 
 In this jubilant frame of mind, therefore, he took 
 Bess into his buggy that evening for a drive on the 
 creek road. It was a winding way along the waters 
 course much frequented by the swains and damsels 
 of the village ; once it had been the post road, now 
 the traffickers had left it to the lovemakers. The 
 pioneers trail beside the creek, twisting and turn- 
 ning to the caprices of a wandering stream, had 
 given way to the turnpike laid out as nearly as 
 possible, between points, as the crow flies. All 
 hail this tireless mapmaker, with a compass in his 
 pinions and a surveyor s transit in his beak ! Love 
 you may be sure was willing, as it ever will be, to 
 take the old roads. So Win and Bess rode out of 
 Smithboro in the purple haze. 
 
 It was one of those days of the waning year, when 
 the parting glow of the descending sun seems to 
 hang in the dome of heaven like a halo, an absorbed 
 light that puts the sheen of silk on the duller fabric 
 of the overhanging grayish clouds, and while it 
 spends its force in the black face of Night, dies out
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 121 
 
 in a burst of glorious colour. In this light, while it 
 lasted, the young people let the horse jog along the 
 creek road. On one side the jagged cliffs or crumb 
 ling gravel-banks darkened the way, and at the other 
 side tumbled and roared the stream in a wild torrent ; 
 for after running in long stretches of mile upon mile 
 of stillwater, with here and there a downward plunge 
 into the rapids, as far as Smithboro, the waters 
 broke into a mad gallop over the boulders, singing 
 in their freedom, like the poor creatures whose re 
 lease from bondage as did their own lay to the 
 North, where the crested waves of Lake Ontario 
 lapped the shores. 
 
 " Pictures of Nature like this," Bess said, " always 
 seem to make it a sacrilege to talk." 
 
 They had been silent for a long time. The 
 horses hoofs pattered over the stony foothold as if 
 they were travelling on a carpeted floor. The 
 drooping branches of the sumac and thorn-apple 
 and wild cherry had spread their fallen leaves into 
 a weave of oriental dyes beneath their wheels. 
 
 " Strange," Win said, taking up Bess s observa 
 tion, " I always feel like trying to outcry Nature in 
 whatever voice she speaks. I have sat down here 
 on this creek hundreds of times when a boy seeing 
 if I could make sounds to imitate the dash of the
 
 122 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 water against the rocks. Sometimes the sound is 
 almost human. There ! Did you catch that note ? 
 But I never quite mastered the song of the waters. 
 I was never stumped by the call of a bird, or any of 
 the noises of the animals I used to shoot and trap, 
 but the sirens down there in the creek knew a music 
 that defied me. As a boy I would have given 
 all I thought dearest in the world to catch that fairy 
 voice, to talk to it in its own sweet tongue, for I 
 felt that in no other language could we understand 
 each other." 
 
 " I have heard such voices," Bess said. " When 
 they are transcribed we call it poetry, I suppose." 
 
 " When we hear them, Bess, what are they called ? " 
 was Win s question as he snapped a bunch of 
 brown leaves off their stems with the lash of his whip. 
 
 " I am sure I don t know, unless it is music, as you 
 describe it." 
 
 "Your voice is, Bess." 
 
 " O, no it isn t. Win," replied the girl turning 
 sharply to him her eyes alive with playfulness, and 
 softness, too. " No it isn t, for you don t half try to 
 talk to me, or understand me, either. Now if you 
 would only try to like me as. well as Uncle Lyme 
 does or as you did the brook when you were a 
 boy."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 123 
 
 " I m not a grandfather now," Win answered, 
 " and I never felt more like a boy in all my life." 
 
 " It s a pity, Win, it s so late, for we can t stop 
 here to listen to the sirens, and here s the place to 
 turn." 
 
 They had indeed reached a spot on the road where 
 the high bank had caved in, and formed a natural 
 turnout. Into this space Win drew rein. What 
 light he had came from the glinting waters. The 
 wheels were cramping for the turn, when the horse, 
 pricking up his ears, reared on his haunches and 
 began to lunge towards the edge of the stream, lying 
 at that point twenty feet below the roadway. Win 
 was using every muscle in his body to bring the 
 horse to his feet. Bess stared into the deep shadow. 
 
 " There s someone there," she said in an under 
 tone. 
 
 As she spoke the outlines of a man s figure were 
 defined against the shimmering light which the 
 water reflected, and with a quick jerk at his bridle 
 the careening horse came down to steady feet. 
 
 " I reckon I kin help you, Missy Bess," the man 
 said. It was Dick Richards, and without another 
 word he undertook to lead the horse around to head 
 him for Smithboro. 
 
 " Keep your hands off ! " Win cried, resenting this
 
 I2 4 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 interference ; but the negro held fast to the bit 
 until the turn was safely accomplished. 
 
 Win felt Bess close at his side, and divined that 
 she was as alarmed, perhaps, as he was surprised. 
 
 " What the devil are you doing here ? " he cried 
 at the negro, who stepped boldly into the middle of 
 the road, and stood there as if he awaited orders. 
 
 " I se done takin a walk, Missy Bess," Dick 
 replied, ignoring the source of the inquiry and 
 making an obsequious bow in Bess s direction. 
 
 " You might have frightened our horse, Dick, 
 and tumbled us into the creek," Bess said in a 
 reproachful tone. 
 
 " I se not done dat, Missy Bess," was the negro s 
 response. " I se done saved you. I was jess behind 
 you all the time, suah." 
 
 " Behind us ! " Win shouted. " Skulking behind 
 us ! Why were you following us? Why, I say? " 
 
 The negro looked straight at Bess Malcolm as if 
 she had framed the inquiry. 
 
 " I se done tol you, Missy Bess," he said, " dat I se 
 done takin a walk." 
 
 " Now look here, you black scoundrel, you answer 
 me," Win almost shrieked, as his passion increased. 
 " What did you follow us for? Answer me, me, me, 
 not her ! "
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 125 
 
 His right arm, in which he gripped the whip, shot 
 upward. The lash swished through the depending 
 boughs above their heads and poised ominously in 
 mid-air. 
 
 " Don t ! " cried Bess, catching Win s wrist. 
 " Don t ! How could you have used those awful 
 words ? " 
 
 Win hardly heard the admonition into which Bess 
 had thrown so much feeling. If he did he had 
 passed beyond the bounds of heedfulness. He 
 glowered at the negro speechless with rage. Dick 
 stood without a tremour on his lips. He had caught 
 the note of sympathy in the girl s voice, had marked 
 how this untoward reference to his colour had hurt 
 her, and had seen that she had thrown herself 
 between him and the descending lash. 
 
 At a stride he was close to Win s ear, and in a 
 voice plaintive and musical he said : 
 
 " Dis hyar nigger done lub music, same as white 
 man." 
 
 The next instant, Dick Richards broke through 
 the alder bushes bordering the creek, and leaping 
 down its ragged bank, shot into the stream. Bound 
 ing from boulder to boulder, half the time submerged 
 to his middle, he clambered up the opposite side 
 and was lost in the gathering darkness.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ALONE in her room an hour later Bess wept as if 
 her heart would break. 
 
 " How dared he do it ? How dared he do it ? " 
 she moaned, as she lay on her moistened pillow, 
 burying her shame in its recesses. It seemed to the 
 stricken girl as if her flaming cheeks would scorch 
 the linen folds. 
 
 She felt the hot blood beat at her temples like the 
 strokes of a hammer. Into her brain surged a 
 thousand questions, some of them accusations, some 
 of them justifying her every act, but all left unan 
 swered in the unfathomable depths of her misery. 
 
 " Poor fellow, poor fellow," she cried, smothering 
 the words of pity for the negro in her pillow. 
 " What has he done ? What have I done to de 
 serve it all? If he did but know but he cannot 
 understand ; he never will. And Win, what will he 
 think ? Does he think that no, no, no, he does 
 not, he must not ! I will tell him it is all a dreadful 
 mistake. I cannot live and have him think this of
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 127 
 
 me. Does he think it? Does he? It would be 
 wicked, wicked, wicked! Why didn t he speak to 
 me? Why didn t I speak to him? 
 
 There was no surcease in her sorrow until she 
 sobbed herself to sleep. Why had he not spoken ? 
 Why not she ? Stunned, mortified, outraged, Win 
 and Bess had come home with sealed lips. The 
 negro s words had struck them dumb. He said so 
 little, and meant so much, that condemnation of his 
 sinister avowal had appeared to Win to be futile ; to 
 Bess, rejection of the affront seemed to be unmaid- 
 enly. Under different circumstances, the fact that 
 the negro had dared to be so bold might have been 
 passed off with a laugh. In her light-hearted way 
 she would have set the incident aside as too silly to 
 be thought of a second time. A dog which had 
 stolen to her side while she slept and licked her 
 cheek she would have cuffed and then fed. But the 
 scene by the brookside had been too tragic for 
 that. 
 
 In the beginning she did not think of herself at 
 all as an element in it. Every other detail was over 
 shadowed by a startling picture of a white man in 
 the attitude of laying a whip over a black man. 
 All the horrors of slavery crowded into her imagina 
 tion. What symbol was this of the God-given
 
 128 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 authority of the one of the irredeemable servility 
 of the other ! She never doubted that beside her 
 sat a relentless foe to slavery, a brave man, a true 
 man ; yet, moved by his natural impulses, had he 
 not attempted to pull down the pillars of the temple 
 of which he was himself an apostle? Had a man 
 of his own colour offered her an insult as monstrous, 
 Win Disbrow she thought would have sprung at his 
 throat. It would have been a struggle of man to 
 man. He would no more have lifted a lash than he 
 would have gone against an unarmed antagonist 
 with a dagger. The whip was for a slave ! 
 
 " It was a coward s act," the girl would have said 
 had her first thoughts found voice. 
 
 " Villain, I will kill him," would have been Win s 
 words, but he too, overmastered by the repulsive- 
 ness of the negro s declaration, left the words 
 unspoken. A curt " We will hurry home," when 
 they started back, and a bitter " Good-night " at 
 the gate left their minds in a state of turmoil that a 
 few words of confidence might have cleared of all 
 distress. It was the horrible seriousness of the 
 situation that barred the way. 
 
 When Win found the solitude of his chamber he 
 pulled a drawer from under the marble top of a 
 table strewn with books and papers. Stooping
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 129 
 
 down he picked up from among its disordered con 
 tents a pistol, the revolving barrel of which, with its 
 four openings, he dusted on his coat sleeve. As he 
 cocked and snapped the weapon it clicked like a 
 death-watch. A classmate at Albany had given 
 the pistol to Win as a parting gift, and he recalled 
 how he made-believe to employ it on the dastard 
 who had wronged him ! They had been at the play 
 that night, and the melodrama they had seen they 
 had reenacted. 
 
 <l I ll not need you," Win said. He was speaking 
 to himself. Then going to the window he lifted 
 the sash, and into a pond, located more by the 
 croaking frogs than by the star-lit sky, he flung the 
 pistol from him. As it splashed upon their haunt 
 the frogs ceased croaking. Win shut down the win 
 dow, and lighting a pipe gave himself up to 
 thought. 
 
 When, the next day, his father saw Win his face 
 was drawn and his eyes blood-shot. His fitful 
 slumber had been tormented by an ever-recurring 
 question, What should he do? To the picture- 
 taker he carried the same question. 
 
 "What s got into you, boy?" was Lyme Dis- 
 brow s first query. "You look s if you d been 
 pulled through a wringer."
 
 130 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Win told his story as freely, as frankly, as meekly 
 as if he were a boy again. They had gone inside 
 the picture-wagon to be alone. Lyme had been 
 found there hard at work in his dark room with his 
 shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. 
 
 " What shall I do ? " said Win, repeating aloud 
 the question that a thousand times he had asked 
 himself. 
 
 " Do bout what ? " Lyme made reply, the while 
 he kept his hands busy slipping tintypes into their 
 pink paper cases. 
 
 " About the negro, father ; about Richards ? " 
 
 "Nuthin " was the picture-taker s blunt answer. 
 " Not a darned thing. Let the devil take care o 
 his own." 
 
 " I d have done it last night, I d have killed him 
 if she could have been kept out of the affair." 
 
 " Killin s murder, my boy," the father said dryly, 
 " an no Disbrow ever done it yit. Good thing you 
 slept on it, too, for you won t have to. That nig 
 ger s gone for good you bet your boots." 
 
 " Gone ! " exclaimed Win. " Where ? When did 
 he go ? " 
 
 " I dunno where, nuther when, but he s lit out, 
 sure s eggs are eggs. He made his bow to perlite 
 society, I kin tell you, when he took that bath in
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 131 
 
 the creek. An I m the biggest fool unhung for 
 havin him in my hands twice an lettin him slip 
 through my fingers. If it wasn t that Old Ironsides 
 knows more n I do I d lose my way every time I 
 go takin pictures down the road. Doggone it, no ! 
 I don t know nuthin ! " 
 
 "I hope he s gone; then I ll know what to do," 
 Win said, seeming to take for granted that the 
 superior intelligence of his father, in whom indeed 
 he had the utmost confidence, was not lacking in 
 the power of divination in this instance. 
 
 " Course you know ! You ll go to the gal, like 
 the spunky young feller you be, seein you ve got 
 Disbrow blood in your veins, an talk to her jest 
 as you have to your old daddy. Course you know 
 what to do this time. You don t allus. You jest 
 kicked over the churn full of cream, boy, when you 
 brought that nigger here to Smithboro. I ain t 
 sayin a word agin the Abolish movement, not a 
 word, an you kin keep right on freein niggers 
 till Kingdom comes, but I tell you this climate 
 ain t congenial for em. Send em up to Canady 
 to bleach out, an then, perhaps in a hundred years 
 or so, they ll make good members o the church, 
 if nuthin else. I m not savin niggers ought to be 
 druv like cattle, an walloped for not workin ,
 
 132 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 I d a been ashamed o you, Winfield Scott Disbrow, 
 if you d a-struck that man with your whip, but 
 till we re all colour-blind, an can t tell a nigger 
 from a white man, we won t make a brother o 
 him. If that nigger s as good as the rest on us, as 
 Peter Gerritt an your Uncle Ab says he is, he s 
 good nough to marry a white woman, as lots on 
 em s doin ; it won t work, my boy, it won t work. 
 Doggone it, no ! Course it won t." 
 
 "But father," Win interrupted to say, his 
 principles being under assault, " you are taking 
 the extreme view. Is it fair " 
 
 "You let your old daddy have his say, won t 
 you ? I calculate to hold my hush most o the 
 time. I ain t sittin on the tavern steps workin 
 my jaw like the rest on em. I m jest sayin* 
 what s on my own mind to you. I may see things 
 the wrong side up. It s the way they look to 
 me when I m behind the camera. The ground- 
 glass stands everybody on his head, but when 
 I get em in there, in the dark where nobuddy 
 can see, I straighten em out slick an nice. 
 Sometimes I think that I m seein this nigger 
 business upside down lookin through the ground- 
 glass as it were. Maybe that s so. But if it looks 
 topside under to me, how can you fellers tell it s
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 133 
 
 all right ? You can t tell how a picture s goin to 
 look from where you sit. Doggone it, no ! I d 
 ruther be behind the camera." 
 
 Win broke in long enough to insist that his 
 father was taking the negro, Dick Richards, as 
 the representative of the enslaved race as a whole, 
 and that this was not just to the cause. 
 
 " See here, boy," the picture-taker replied, 
 " when you tap a cider barrel you ve got to take 
 things as they run at the bung-hole. I knew an 
 old farmer at Simmons Hill who lived on cider, 
 till he was nearly choked to death with vinegar. 
 That ended him, so far as cider was concerned. 
 I think his name was Simmons. Yes twas. 
 The place was named for his grandfather. If 
 the vinegar s all out of your cider barrel better 
 knock in the head and use the staves for firewood." 
 
 In this form came the father s suggestion to the 
 son that, until a different course seemed imperative, 
 Dick Richards must be blotted from his memory. 
 As the negro vanished from Smithboro from that 
 day Win did not have to be urged further to act 
 on the parental injunction. Whither Dick had 
 gone no one knew. As the actual cause of his 
 disappearance remained unrevealed by those con 
 nected with it, the curiosity aroused thereby took
 
 134 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 many fanciful shapes. When a report gained 
 credence in the village, and was much discussed, 
 that Richards had been kidnapped while on an 
 errand of mercy down the valley, Win thought it 
 wise to unfold the truth to Mr. Gerritt in order to 
 allow the falsehood to be denied. This the 
 venerable liberator did while he blushed for the 
 cause. 
 
 Richards s mysterious departure would have 
 occasioned much more speculation at any other 
 time. As it was it went out of mind on account of 
 the immediate approach of the Liberty Convention 
 to be held in Syracuse, to attend which Abolitionists 
 from far and near were now engaged in making 
 noisy preparations. It was designed to make this 
 gathering of the anti-slavery hosts a mighty 
 protest against the vicious law. Of course Peter 
 Gerritt was to be present, and as Mr. Disbrow 
 and his wife, who had decided to join him, were to 
 take Bess, Win came to the conclusion that stern 
 duty also called him hence. Win and Bess, 
 although frequently in each other s company during 
 the week succeeding the episode at the brookside, 
 had not been able to throw off the constraint 
 which had taken hold of them both as a conse 
 quence of it.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Impelled by his father s advice to open his heai 
 to the girl, Win had once or twice essayed to speak 
 to Bess on the subject, but she recoiled from his 
 timid advances, herself fearful that no good could 
 come of the discussion. At the same time she 
 gave Win to understand, in that indefinable way 
 women have, that her diffidence in this regard was 
 not to be construed as a rebuff. It is a serious 
 question whether Win would have been rebuffed 
 under any circumstances. He was by no means 
 sure in his mind that Dick had gone for good. 
 What if the negro should return to plague them ? 
 What might not a man do as desperate as he had 
 shown himself to be ? With Bess s consent or 
 without it, therefore, he had resolved to guard her 
 against all danger. All the chivalry in his make 
 up had been stirred and he assumed a knightly 
 trust. 
 
 " I m rejoiced to know that you are to be with 
 us in Syracuse," Mr. Gerritt said to Win. "We 
 shall there put into plain words what the free North 
 has been saying in overt acts since the enactment of 
 this devil-prompted law. I am hopeful that in the 
 character of its members, and in the importance of 
 its action, this convention of ours shall take rank in 
 history second only to the Continental Congress
 
 136 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 which met in Philadelphia July 4, 1776. Traitors 
 those men were called ; traitors they call us." 
 
 " Yes," replied the young doctor, " I shall never 
 forget those words of Webster s. " Traitors, trait 
 ors, traitors, were his words." 
 
 " And he said that this nefarious law of theirs 
 should be enforced in the midst of an anti-slavery 
 convention this convention at Syracuse is it." 
 
 " Those were his words, Mr. Gerritt," Win said, 
 his recollection of Webster s philippic making his 
 blood tingle anew. 
 
 " His words, yes his words," the great liberator 
 murmured, his voice dropping to an almost inaudi 
 ble whisper. " We shall see if there was the spirit 
 of prophecy in them." 
 
 And he reverently looked heavenward, as if a 
 scroll to other eyes unseen lay open there before 
 him.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " THAT S him that man shaking hands with the 
 nigger." 
 
 " They re all doin that. Which one ? " 
 
 " Now you can see him that man with the flow 
 ing beard and the Byron collar." 
 
 "That s Peter Gerritt, eh? Well, he don t look 
 it, does he ? He don t look as if he d hurt a fly ? " 
 
 "And he wouldn t if it were a black fly ! That s 
 him though. Why he s spent more money helpin 
 to run off niggers than you and me 11 ever see in 
 dreams. That s old Peter Gerritt of Smithboro. 
 Queerest old cock in the world. Got a little church 
 of his own cause he couldn t believe in hell-fire and 
 infernal damnation. Got a big house down there 
 that s a reg lar /wtel everybody comes and goes 
 and don t pay a cent. Niggers and all. All the 
 money his father made tradin with the Injuns in 
 furs pardner of old Jacob Astor he just shovelled 
 out doin good. One day the poor-house stared 
 him in the face. Then he up and borrowed two
 
 138 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 hundred and fifty thousand dollars from old Astor, 
 with security, and got rich again. Got more land 
 than he can shake a stick at. Holds mortgages on 
 half the farms for twenty miles round Smithboro. 
 Never s been known to foreclose one. Kind of 
 angel dropped down from heaven. Wrong head, 
 good heart, like angels in gineral." 
 
 Mr. Gerritt was holding a levee on the sidewalk 
 outside the meeting place of the Liberty Conven 
 tion. All urbanity, all kindliness, he was greeting 
 the people who flocked to his side. Scores of negroes 
 were struggling forward, bareheaded and beaming 
 with smiles, to clasp his hand. In their black faces 
 was joy unspeakable that they were within arm s 
 reach of their beloved deliverer. Otherwise it was a 
 crowd of sober men and women zealots no doubt, 
 fanatics if you will from whose lips apparently the 
 last ripple of laughter had died out in a wail for 
 their stricken fellow-men. They seemed to be 
 marked among men as if the cause they served had 
 seared their breasts with the cross of the crusade. 
 Not being in dress distinctive, nor in their genera 
 tion apart by reason of their age, the colour of their 
 hair, or the cut of their beards, as one tells a priest 
 by his tonsure and a Quaker by his hat, yet here 
 we had a selection of men and women as unmis-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 139 
 
 takably Abolitionists as if their hearts had been 
 laid bare for vulgar perusal. 
 
 " You can tell em as far as you can see em," 
 was the remark of a bystander, safely removed from 
 peril of contamination, at the opposite side of the 
 street. He it was who had drawn the rapid sketch 
 of Peter Gerritt just set down. 
 
 " How can you tell ? " his companion inquired. 
 
 " By the cut of their jib." was the flippant reply, 
 and indeed it was not a description at random of 
 prevalent conditions among the Abolitionists. Pos 
 sibly the speaker was not so much unlike those on 
 whom he was passing comment that, had he 
 plunged into the throng, he would not have been 
 lost in it, one among many. But to have thrown 
 together those who stood with him, bystanders like 
 himself, and those others across the way, would 
 have undeniably changed the aspect in the gather 
 ing to the least discerning eye. 
 
 Syracuse was not having its first look at a Liberty 
 convention. The Abolition movement was an old 
 story there. This convention, however, promised 
 to sound a new note of alarm. Coming as it did 
 at the end of a summer which stood out boldly as 
 the red-letter period in the history of the anti- 
 slavery cause, and six months after Daniel Web-
 
 140 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 star s thunderous challenge to the nullifiers to do 
 their worst, Abolition seemed destined on this first 
 day of October, 1851, to reach its high tide. The 
 Abolitionists looked to the convention to do some 
 thing that would fire the North with long-delayed 
 courage to demand the repeal of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law. On the part of those whose sympathies were 
 with the law, good or bad, defiance of its object had 
 been so audacious, so successful, so general, that 
 they felt no bounds of common sense would hold 
 the convention. What new crimes would be pro 
 jected, as some put it, what new indiscretion would 
 be committed, according to the softer speech of 
 others, no one dared predict. The young city came 
 to the fateful day of the convention, therefore, 
 under a heavy pressure. 
 
 Win Disbrow had been about the world enough 
 to know that public conditions in Syracuse were 
 not normal. More people were abroad in the 
 streets than seemed to accord with good order, and 
 though Bess and Mrs. Disbrow, who were in his 
 company on the way to the meeting place, were 
 satisfied with the statement that an agricultural 
 fair had thronged the streets, the young doctor 
 felt called upon to advise the ladies to keep out of 
 the crowds.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 141 
 
 " Slavery probably has more friends than ene 
 mies here," he said, " and no one knows to what ex 
 cesses our enemies may go should the conven 
 tion take advanced ground, as Mr. Gerritt is 
 quite determined it shall. I saw an anti-slavery 
 meeting stoned out of the building in Albany. I 
 don t place much confidence in the righteousness of 
 our cause. Not far from this very spot I heard a 
 thousand men yell like demons their approval of 
 what Daniel Webster said. Those who disap 
 proved, like myself, were stunned by the fearful- 
 ness of his words. Only remember we are not in 
 Smithboro." 
 
 Win s warning was not pitched to the calm tem 
 per of the convention. It proceeded about its 
 business under a solemn inspiration that never even 
 verged on clamour or excitement. No unruly 
 element darkened the convention s doors to break 
 in upon its deliberations, a device of the enemy that 
 had been seriously feared. Had these honest folk, 
 called as they believed by a divine summons, over 
 estimated the importance of their utterances? 
 Would the protest of this band of patriots be car 
 ried no farther than the defiant sound of that meet 
 ing-house bell in Smithboro, tolled by a runaway 
 slave ? Did no power on earth exist to kindle into
 
 142 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 flame the great moral forces of the Union ? Did 
 patriotism lie perdue? 
 
 Distant from the meeting place of the convention 
 a half hour s walk, Jerry McHenry s muscular arm 
 plied the cooper s hammer among a wilderness of 
 staves and hoops. No hand in the shop was cun- 
 ninger at the draw-shave, no stroke stouter at the 
 wedging. His face was black, but he had proved 
 himself worthy of his hire. 
 
 A man stepped through the open door of the shop 
 and leaned against a salt barrel that had just been 
 rolled from under Jerry s skillful hand. He said 
 he was looking for a man charged with thievery. 
 
 " I want you, Jerry McHenry," the newcomer 
 said almost in the same breath. 
 
 The negro knew what this meant. He was a 
 runaway slave, and to such as he death alone was 
 security. Sleeping or waking his keen ear listened 
 always for the yelp of the bloodhound. All he 
 asked had been a fair start. This time he was at 
 bay with no way open for freedom. His wrists in 
 irons he was led through the streets by an officer 
 of the Federal law, a shambling, despairing, hunted 
 slave, in whose shackled limbs the Government of 
 the United States emblazoned its recognition of 
 slavery as an institution, and the right of every
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 143 
 
 slave-holder to seize his human chattel wherever 
 found. On this picture the city of Syracuse gazed 
 this day, in the year of grace, 1851. 
 
 Daniel Webster s prophecy was coming true ! 
 
 At the heels of this procession of misery, ere it 
 reached its destination where Justice sat, there 
 trailed a brawling mass of men, some outlaws them 
 selves, boisterous in crying for the law s vindica 
 tion ; others like the mob at Calvary, knowing no 
 mercy ; and others still, helpless in their rage, hurl 
 ing anathemas on the bitter cruelty of the spectacle. 
 Soon enough the cry went up that a slave had been 
 taken and through the town the news went hum 
 ming from mouth to mouth. 
 
 " Down with nigger worship ! " was the acclaim 
 of the upholders of the law. 
 
 " The North against the South ! " was the answer 
 ing cry of an Abolitionist, who, better than he 
 knew, was looking far into the future. 
 
 Into as many forms as these concrete conceptions 
 of the situation could be translated by resort to 
 cant phrase, or rhetorical hyperbole, an excited, 
 restless, vociferous multitude poured its feelings. 
 The slave had been conducted in safety to the 
 office of the United States Commissioner, and was 
 there held as prisoner, but that he would be left to 
 his fate no one for an instant believed.
 
 144 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 The Liberty Convention had suspended business 
 on the instant that a warning word had been 
 brought to it. The tidings whispered into a man s 
 ear at the rear of the hall gathered the force of a 
 storm as it rolled over the assembled delegates and 
 was delivered to the chairman s platform in a 
 whirlwind of voices. 
 
 Mr. Gerritt was on his feet, well in front, like a 
 flash. 
 
 " Deeds, not words, good friends," he said, his 
 right arm raised, and his finger pointing through 
 the open doors, already clogged with volunteers for 
 the rescue. " We go there ! " was all the great lib 
 erator added to his simple call to arms. 
 
 As for the moment he stood there among his 
 compatriots, Peter Gerritt, his jaws set, his eyes as 
 luminous as a youth s, his under.-. i/e lifting to the 
 majesty of the occasion, no sculptured allegory of 
 the higher law could have been more nobly con 
 ceived. No chisel has made enduring that heroic 
 attitude in this supreme hour of the Nation s peril, 
 but it lives in memory a glorious figure, more im 
 perishable than either granite or bronze. 
 
 Through the now agitated city to the slave s 
 place of confinement the whole convention followed 
 Mr. Gerritt. As his identity, and that of others as em-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 145 
 
 inent in the cause, became known on the streets there 
 were counter outbursts of devotion and of derision. 
 Win Disbrow, by dint of earnest persuasion, induced 
 the ladies to drop out of the throng, to await his 
 coming at the house of a friend. This course they 
 were convinced it was best to follow, as their ears 
 were already being assailed by the ribaldry of the 
 streets. As they passed along, nevertheless, Mr. 
 Gerritt, Mr. Disbrow, and the rest who led the way, 
 became assured that if the populace was divided in 
 sentiment, its greater part condemned the seizure 
 of the slave. Outside the Commissioner s office 
 they were hailed with a loud shout, in which, while 
 hisses and groans mingled, the cry of Liberty pre 
 vailed. 
 
 " Let Peter Gerritt pass," Mr. Disbrow said, as 
 they came to a forced halt at the outer edge of 
 the solid block of men who packed the street from 
 curb to curb. At the word the crowd split as if a 
 wedge had been driven into it, and between the 
 swaying masses at either side the famous Abolition 
 ist and his immediate companions walked almost 
 unmolested to the threshold of the Commissioner s 
 office. 
 
 " As Moses passed the Red Sea," the preacher 
 said exultantly over this mark of Peter Gerritt s
 
 146 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 hold on the people. It was indeed an inspiring 
 spectacle. Arms stretched forth to touch the great 
 liberator in sudden displays of affection, or more 
 reverently to take up the hem of his garment. 
 
 " If you want help call on us," shouted a voice 
 from the middle of the crowd, " and we ll come. 
 Won t we boys? " 
 
 A wild huzza was the welcome answer. 
 
 Mr. Gerritt turned and lifted his hat. As if with 
 one impulse a thousand hoarse voices joined in the 
 warning, " Look out ! " as a heavy box dropped 
 straight down from an upper window of the be 
 sieged building. Mr. Gerritt s crown of silver hair, 
 tossing in an October wind, was right in its path. 
 It was going like an arrow to the mark. It would 
 have struck this lover of liberty to the earth had 
 not two strong hands reached out, as the owner of 
 them leaped into the space, and with a forward 
 lunge diverted the course of the falling missile. It 
 bounded edgewise in amongst the weaving mass, 
 leaving a trail of blood behind as it dropped where 
 the crowd waved back out of its way. 
 
 " Get inside they ll murder you," Win said, as 
 he pushed open the door, and fairly forced Mr. 
 Gerritt over the sill. This done, he took a second 
 to speak to the hero of the moment, whose presence
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 147 
 
 of mind had stilled a shudder in a thousand hearts. 
 Mr. Gerritt would have remained to shake the man s 
 hand had not Win barred the way lest another at 
 tempt at murder might succeed. Without looking- 
 for time was precious Win said : 
 
 " You re a brave man. What is your name ? " 
 
 " Dick Richards, sah," was the reply. 
 
 At that instant a convulsive movement of the 
 people who were flattened against the entrance 
 carried Win into the office behind Mr. Gerritt and 
 Mr. Disbrow, and once in the door was forced shut. 
 Outside Win could hear the negro being lustily 
 cheered. 
 
 Peter Gerritt was defying the Government of the 
 United States to meet the question its minions had 
 raised. 
 
 "Theft!" he fairly shrieked in the ears of the 
 Government s court of justice. " Theft ! Has it 
 come to this? The United States playing the 
 sneak! What law is this you dare not enforce un 
 der its rightful name ? Why do you drag a sweating 
 workman from his bench because he is a fugitive 
 slave, and, to save yourself and the Government you 
 serve from ignominy, charge him with petit lar 
 ceny? Why? Shall I tell you? Do you hear 
 those bells sounding the dread alarm? Why did
 
 148 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 you take refuge in this flimsy pretext ? Because 
 those bells, silent or chiming, proclaim the iniquity, 
 the viciousness, the failure yes, failure of this 
 devil-made law of yours." 
 
 It was indeed true. From steeple to steeple 
 throughout the city the alarm was sounding. The 
 tremulous pulsations electrified the air as if the 
 mystic currents of the poles had been marshalled by 
 the hosts of Freedom. If there was a laggard in this 
 hour it was not intended that he should sleep un 
 warned. To this extremity had the friends of the 
 slave resorted. 
 
 " Theft, I say," the undismayed champion of 
 Abolition continued. " Theft of what ? Theft of 
 the right to live and have his being, the right to toil 
 for his daily bread, and, having earned it, the right 
 honestly to be paid for his work. If this is the 
 theft of which this man stands accused, I shall meet 
 the charge when the time comes. Now, here, I 
 maintain that Jerry McHenry having been arrested 
 by the officers of this court, on the pretence of hav 
 ing committed a theft, you, a Commissioner of the 
 United States, cannot try him. This is not a court 
 of competent jurisdiction." 
 
 Whether this plea prevailed on account of the 
 bungling of the marshal who took the slave in cus-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 149 
 
 tody, or a fear that the ringing of the bells portend 
 ed more evil than yet appeared, whatever it was, the 
 court hurriedly put off the hearing. The news scat 
 tered the people who had thronged the adjacent 
 streets and massed themselves against the place of 
 trial. Twenty men, none sooner than Mr. Gerritt, 
 asked the privilege of going on the slave s bail bond. 
 The law, the Commissioner said, gave him no alter 
 native than to deny this request. Under heavy 
 guard Jerry McHenry, manacled like a criminal, sat 
 beside his new-found friend. Others as steadfast, 
 once the jam of men had been relieved, came to 
 declare themselves. 
 
 " I am Peter Gerritt, and no harm shall come to 
 you," the sage of Smithboro had whispered in 
 Jerry s ear, when first he entered the room. " No 
 harm shall come to you," he repeated after he had 
 delivered his pica. The poor fellow, peering about 
 him, saw only the faces of friends. There were no 
 black looks. His eye was ranging above the muz 
 zles of the marshals pistols. 
 
 " I am a strong man," the slave said leaning close 
 to Mr. Gerritt. " If dey be friends outside, I kin 
 fight ma way clean away." 
 
 Mr. Gerritt frowned on this expedient. 
 
 " Not yet," he advised. " As a last resort, yes, 
 but wait."
 
 150 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Bolder spirits hovered near, young men who 
 loved adventure, older men who scoffed at caution. 
 Such as they touch elbows in every battle-line. 
 They fire Ephesian domes and outlive in fame the 
 pious fools who rear them. On their breasts glisten 
 the Victoria crosses. To such as they, the caged 
 slave, balked as he thought of the right to achieve 
 his own freedom, baited by a heartless, tyrannous 
 law, bent a listening ear. A hurried word, a sudden 
 crush of men at the door, an onslaught inside it, 
 which tumbled the guards to the floor as if they 
 were lay figures, and a black man in irons was cry 
 ing quits to the majesty of the law. 
 
 The escape had been well planned, and with wits 
 sharpened by long calculation of just such chances, 
 Jerry did not lose a second s time, did not make a 
 false step. He was out into the long shadows of 
 the ending day, running for his life, before the guards 
 had scrambled to their feet. The confusion of the 
 room was being worse confounded by the dare-devils 
 who had set the slave free. They feinted this way 
 and that to stop the chase until with drawn pistols 
 the officers forced the blockade. 
 
 It was the city s supper hour and through streets 
 well-nigh empty the chase was taken up. A half 
 hour earlier and the runaway could have been hidden
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 151 
 
 by his friends in the thick of the crowd. As it 
 was, a fleeing negro, on whose swinging arms the 
 gyves rattled like an alarm bell, could not run far 
 undetected. He could not tell friends from foes 
 when fresh runners joined him. He was weighed 
 down with his chains and out of breath. At last, 
 a half-mile away, he stumbled and fell. Poor 
 devil ! Those nearest laid heavy hands on him. 
 They were his foes. Panting like a deer running 
 before hounds Jerry had been caught. With their 
 knees pressed down on his breast, his captors, 
 unlicensed upholders of the law he was flying from, 
 pinioned the slave until the guards came up with 
 him. A little crowd quickly gathered. It spoke 
 in two voices one of shame one of approbation. 
 
 " I se goin back dead, not alive," Jerry managed 
 to cry out, as with a superhuman effort he began 
 again the unequal struggle for freedom. The guards 
 were now on him in full force. Three or four men 
 out of the crowd were bold enough to rush to the 
 slave s aid, but they were beaten back with the butts 
 of the pistols, and knowing lawful retaliation would 
 not end here, if the capture of Jerry was long re 
 sisted, they turned their efforts to saving the prisoner 
 from further harm. So he was dragged back to 
 duress tattered and bleeding, part of the way like a
 
 152 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 carcass on a truck which had been called into service 
 to hasten execution of the law. 
 
 Was slavery triumphant ? Was Daniel Webster 
 its prophet ? 
 
 This time the police office was chosen as a strong 
 hold. The law was wearing a blanched cheek. Out 
 of an October night the people poured to turn it 
 whiter still. They were saying things now that had 
 been left unsaid before. Treason, as Webster de 
 fined it, was in the air. Jerry s adventure had set 
 the people thinking. The city was in an uproar. 
 Collecting in the open square on which the police 
 office fronted was an army come to the rescue. It 
 looked black and ugly in the sickly light of a half- 
 dozen street lamps. It surged backward and for 
 ward as if it were a storm cloud in a hurricane, and 
 out of its restless depths there came ever and anon 
 a dull roar like that of thunder. 
 
 " Webster lied," was started as a shibboleth and 
 it suited the popular fancy so well, it was heard in 
 chorus a hundred times repeated. 
 
 " So be it," was Peter Gerritt s declaration as he 
 passed within earshot of the clamourous multitude. 
 There had been a hasty summons of the Abolitionist 
 leaders soon after the town began to ring with the 
 news of the slave s escape and recapture. A
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 153 
 
 council had been called to decide what should be 
 done. 
 
 " Desperate diseases require desperate remedies," 
 Mr. Gerritt said, as with Mr. Disbrow and the young 
 doctor he hurried to the rendezvous. This was the 
 cue to action. It was to be a rescue by force of 
 numbers. To this conclusion the councillors ar 
 rived, having in secret conference taken measure of 
 the chances and counted the cost. Thirty valiant 
 gentlemen, all known to each other and to none 
 other, locked themselves in a law office to plan the 
 rescue. By mutual trust, by their common culpa 
 bility, they were bound together. In the eye of the 
 law they were no better than thieves. The exploit 
 they were hazarding was expressly defined as a crime 
 punishable by fine and imprisonment; but this was 
 no bar to their high resolve; taken, too, in face of 
 the assurance that if they would stay their hands 
 the negro would on the morrow be let go under 
 some pretext or other. 
 
 " They admit that they have gone too far, that 
 the arrest was ill-timed, and that the moral effect 
 of a rescue would be most disastrous," was the word 
 brought to the council. 
 
 But the council would not budge. Its feet were 
 planted on the rock.
 
 154 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 "The moral effect is the keynote," was the re 
 sponse to this proffer of amnesty. 
 
 Daniel Webster had lied, and it was proposed to 
 let the world know it. Jerry McHenry was to be set 
 free. As one by one the thirty conspirators gave 
 assent to this decision, a few hurried scratches of 
 the pen made the record, and this a moment after 
 was turned into ashes, in the candle s flame. 
 
 " We make history, but do not write it," Mr. Ger- 
 ritt said. 
 
 So it happens that from first to last the absorb 
 ing story of these events is now a transcription of 
 rusted memories. It was no part of the great plan 
 of the Underground Railroad to take account of 
 posterity. Its first rule was to leave behind no 
 tell-tale messages. 
 
 " What the end of this may be, God alone fore 
 sees," one of the unnamed declared. " With our 
 eyes wide open we are walking into a breech. We 
 are resolving to break the law of the land, and are 
 to use as a weapon an undisciplined, heedless force. 
 In it there may be, aye, there surely is, a lawless 
 spirit not amenable to control. Who can tell what 
 a mob will do ? Blood may flow, our own blood as 
 likely as not, if the officers of the law deal with us, 
 as, God help us, they are authorized to do by this
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 155 
 
 law we would stamp beneath the soles of our feet. 
 But we have put our hands to the plough ; let us not 
 turn back. To the rescue ! " 
 
 Long before this effort to organize a leadership 
 for the delivery of Jerry had borne fruit, the mob 
 would have taken the job into its own hands, had 
 not trusted men been despatched to the scene to 
 hold the excited people in check. From the elevated 
 platform which formed the approach to the police 
 office, citizens they knew stayed the attack by word 
 of mouth. It was a pretty trick in oratory that no 
 one misunderstood. More than once the delay 
 wore out the patience of the hotter heads, and a for 
 ward movement would start from this or that spot 
 only to be halted by a cry of caution. The sheriff 
 of the county came to warn the speakers that they 
 were inciting a riot, and that unless they desisted 
 he woukl call out the militia, only to be hustled 
 like a man of straw to the fringe of the crowd under 
 an avalanche of ridicule. It was too well known 
 that the soldiers, being an arm of the State govern 
 ment, would not come out to assist in the enforce 
 ment of a Federal law. Their commandant had 
 said so, and was present now to reiterate that de 
 cision. He did not have to proclaim it from the 
 house-tops to have it known. His casual remark
 
 156 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 that he hoped the militia could find better business 
 than "hunting niggers" was passed along until 
 trumpet-tongued it sounded in every ear in that 
 restless throng. 
 
 " Hats off to the soldier boys ! " cried a man with 
 a fog-horn voice, tossing his cap in the air. It was 
 a happy thought that bared a thousand heads in a 
 jiffy. 
 
 " Hats off ! Hats off! " yelled everybody. 
 
 The hats waved over the sea of faces like one 
 great plume. Some wight in the heart of the 
 crowd did not doff his K.ossuth quick enough. It 
 was knocked from his head with a smart whack of a 
 walking-stick. Then one after another the covered 
 heads were put under tribute to the spirit of fun 
 that now broke loose all over the crowd. The 
 strain was relieved, and this mob in leash was in 
 stantly at play as if it were a holiday that had 
 massed it. Laughter overwhelmed the impassioned 
 periods of the orator who stalked the platform. 
 Stock still he stood wondering what had happened 
 to have brought about the transformation. 
 
 Win was at the orator s side as mystified as he. 
 A doctor should have been quicker to catch the 
 spirit of the scene. The night before a battle is 
 often the merriest in camp. A student of his kind.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 157 
 
 Win should have known this. But he was watch 
 ing for the signal of attack. To him had been 
 assigned this duty, and he had taken a station on 
 the platform, from which the whole square could be 
 surveyed. 
 
 The crowd still rocked in laughter. The orator 
 was splitting his throat in a vain attempt to still 
 the uproar. Through the half-light of the October 
 dusk Win saw the flutter of a white handkerchief 
 at the far end of the crowd, and, plucking the dis 
 comfited speaker by the sleeve, he struggled for 
 ward, and shouted with all the strength that was in 
 him : 
 
 "There they come! There they come! Make 
 room for Liberty ! " 
 
 Only those who stood immediately beneath the 
 platform heard the command. As well might Win 
 have lisped it to the bellowing sea. Again he 
 lifted up his voice : 
 
 " Make way for Liberty ! " 
 
 There was a faint echo of his words in front. As 
 best they could those who stood there turned to 
 see at what the author of the cry was frantically 
 pointing. The laughter died out, and the waving of 
 hats ceased. The people had turned their backs 
 on the platform, and were lurching towards the outer
 
 158 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 circle of the crowd, to the inspiring cry of " Make 
 way for liberty ! " Then, once more, as had hap 
 pened earlier in the day, there was a rift in the black 
 mass, and, as on either side the people swayed back 
 ward, through a straight path to the platform passed 
 a band of rescuers. But this time they came to 
 conquer, not to plead. For arms they carried rods 
 of iron, levied upon at a neighbouring store, and 
 long lengths of scantling, right at hand in a nearby 
 lumber-yard. One or two, more daring than their 
 companions, flourished firearms. The onslaught 
 was led by chosen men, but it had gathered force 
 on the way, and by the time its signal reached the 
 platform, where Win stood guard, it looked formi 
 dable enough to wreck Jerry s prison. 
 
 Win kept his post only a brief space after the pur 
 pose of the mob became apparent. There was a sud 
 den sally from the door of the police office, the effect 
 of which was to clear the platform of every occupant, 
 many of whom were rudely tumbled over the railings 
 on the heads of the people below. This having 
 been accomplished the officers retreated to cover, as 
 was indeed the better part of valour, for the besieg 
 ing party was coming on with a desperate mission 
 to fulfil. A shower of stones went rattling through 
 the window-glass as the policemen disappeared.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 159 
 
 Through a broken pane a revolver shot was fired 
 from inside, and the crowd surged back a few feet 
 in a quiver of alarm. 
 
 An answering shot came from the centre of the 
 mob. The bullet flattened against the bricks and in 
 the stillness that for a moment followed the report 
 was heard to drop on the platform. 
 
 " Save your powder ! " came a cry that carried a 
 command in its every tone. 
 
 On the outskirts of the crowd there had been a 
 wild break for places of safety. Men, women and 
 children ran into the stairways of the buildings 
 facing on the square, gorging the narrow passages 
 with struggling masses of frightened humanity. 
 The dimly-outlined figures which had been visible 
 in the upper windows of these buildings shrank 
 back in terror. 
 
 Everybody listened for another pistol shot, and 
 Bess Malcolm was among the rest.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BESIEGED and besiegers were saving their powder. 
 The leaders of the attack had now reached the 
 platform through the crush of helping hands, but 
 they were so hemmed in by the crowd that they 
 ceased to have an identity, Tight against the 
 masonry and railings of the platform they were 
 held in an immovable wedge. Here Win Disbrow 
 had met the attacking party, and it was he who, by 
 the exertion of a giant s strength, raised his body 
 out of the writhing mass and vaulted over the rail 
 ing. 
 
 The door of the police office swung open. A 
 tall man stepped into the flood of light that flashed 
 through the opening. A pistol was in his clenched 
 fist. 
 
 " Stand back ! " he shouted, pointing his left hand 
 at Win, " or we will shoot to kill. Stand back, I 
 say ! " 
 
 Again the babel in the mob was stilled. In the 
 lighted room behind the man who gave this solemn
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 161 
 
 warning were ranged a row of armed men. The 
 rescuers were looking into the muzzles of twenty 
 pistols. 
 
 " Get down, get down quick ! " yelled fifty voices 
 at once to Win, whose jeopardy was in the universal 
 eye. Bess Malcolm, drawn on by the fascination of 
 the scene, was now engulfed by the mob at her back, 
 which like a torn cloth was frayed out in tangles of 
 loose ends. As she was tossed hither and yon by 
 the excited people she could see Win s face in pro 
 file as he stood there in the track of the gaslight. 
 The polished metal of the pistols glimmered at his 
 back. 
 
 " They ll plug that feller chuck full of lead if he 
 don t light out of that, purty darn quick," said a 
 rough voice at the trembling girl s ear. 
 
 " Right you are, sonny," remarked another. 
 " They ve got the bead on him this minute." 
 
 Bess s heart had stopped beating. She tried to 
 scream. It was the first impulse of her sex, in this 
 her extremity, for it was unnecessary to tell her that 
 between him and death intervened nothing but the 
 twitch of a ringer on a hair-trigger. She could not 
 scream, try as she would. Why did he court death 
 so boldly, so madly, so recklessly ? What was the 
 use? All the slaves on earth were not worth the
 
 162 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 risk, she thought, as she stood transfixed, speechless, 
 incapable, watching him wait for the final moment ! 
 An hour seemed to have flown by, yet there he 
 stood making a jest of death ! 
 
 " He s the blamedest fool I ever did see," Bess 
 heard someone say. Then her power of speech 
 returned. The words which sprang to her lips she 
 left unuttered. They would have called him by the 
 same name. Assuredly none but a fool would 
 throw himself in a bullet s path. In moments of 
 awful terror what pranks the mind plays. As the 
 mother, seeing her child drowning, mingles her 
 agonies with blame that she should have been dis 
 obeyed, Bess s dread and Bess s reprobation fought 
 for the mastery. Was it a sign that Win was more 
 to her than a good friend ? Even to herself she 
 had hardly confessed as much. 
 
 All this takes time to tell, but, as a matter of fact, 
 Win was not seeking martyrdom this day. He^was in 
 front of the levelled pistols only as long as one 
 might count ten, perhaps, when one of the pointed 
 weapons spit out a mouthful of fire. A thousand 
 things happened at once. The door of the police 
 office was shut with a bang and the mob involun 
 tarily heaved backward impelled by the one thought 
 that it was under fire. Then Win Disbrow leaped
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 163 
 
 over the railing to the space thus cleared, and into 
 it, responding to his command, the armed force 
 surged forward. Free for the instant, these men 
 went over the iron barrier, and plunged in close 
 formation at the door. They beat upon it with 
 their rods and sticks, and upon the windows as well, 
 but to no purpose, for strong barricades inside made 
 futile the damage they did. 
 
 " Give it to them ! " came the cry from behind, for 
 those in front employed their breath at their work. 
 Inspired by the sight, and infuriated by the 
 impregnability of the jail, the mob as a whole 
 hurled itself forward, cracking the railing as if it had 
 been built of slate pencils, and piled on the plat 
 form in a squirming, tumultuous, resistless throng. 
 It seemed as if the building, mere brick and mortar, 
 must topple over. 
 
 " The building is falling ! " was a cry that was 
 raised as the platform creaked under the weight it 
 was bearing up. Then the mob broke again, those 
 farthest away from the scene of action being swept 
 to one side and another as the mad rush from 
 imagined danger caught them before the cry of 
 alarm. The movement scattered the people as if 
 they had been over an exploded mine. A handful 
 of sturdy fellows, Win Disbrow among them, stuck
 
 1 64 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 to their task at the besieged door. For the time 
 being it looked as if they had been forsaken, but a 
 shout ringing through a side street said this was an 
 illusion. 
 
 " Out of the way ! It s now or never! " sang fifty 
 men in unison as they bore along a heavy beam 
 such as formed the foundation timbers of half the 
 pretentious buildings of the town. The crowd 
 re-formed and quickly blackened the square. Those 
 who bore the beam plunged into the heart of it 
 under their own headway. They were themselves 
 to blame who did not make room. This was not 
 the time nor place for exchange of courtesies. 
 Broken heads and bruised bodies could be patched 
 up when Jerry Mclienry was free. Men do not ride 
 in a cavalry charge to the mincing steps of a dancing 
 school. 
 
 " Out of the way ! It s now or never ! " 
 Behind the battering-ram, as it was carried for 
 ward, the seething, roaring mob of people rushed 
 headlong in like the sand in an inverted hour-glass, 
 Up the rise to the platform, across it to the face 
 of the building, where until now the law had been 
 holding force at bay, this ponderous bolt was shot 
 with an impetus that toyed with the force of gun 
 powder. A shock that shivered the glass in the
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 165 
 
 unshuttered windows and made the brick wall bulo-e 
 
 o 
 
 inward gave ominous warning of what was to come. 
 The aim had not been true. Staggering under the 
 recoil of the blow, those who wielded the beam 
 began to shift its direction toward the barricaded 
 door. With hands lacerated by the slivered edges 
 of the timber, they put it in motion again, as chil 
 dren do a swing hung from an apple tree. They 
 could be heard groaning under its weight, as it 
 gained momentum. 
 
 " One, two, three," Win Disbrow was counting. 
 
 " Now ! " he cried with the last word. This time 
 the beam was driven hard at the middle door. 
 The panels split like taut tissue paper. Within 
 there was a crash of woodwork. Jerry McHenry s 
 captors might have saved the furniture. All the 
 tables and chairs they had used for fortifications 
 tumbled in a ruined heap on the floor. The way 
 was open. The slave s rescuers might walk where 
 lately they had been denied did they but dare. 
 
 And on that historic spot at that historic moment 
 there were men brave enough to take the risk. 
 There were men who did. When went there by 
 a time that human courage left great opportunity 
 unimproved? Is there not always a hand to lift the 
 flag to the blood-sodden rampart ? What hope
 
 1 66 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 forlorn that does not know a leader? This was no 
 battle this rescue of a slave with pomp and cir 
 cumstance of war to stir the blood of men to lofty 
 deeds, but it had its place for heroes. To pass 
 across that shattered barrier meant to face death. 
 Within they had the right to kill. To kill, in turn 
 was murder. Such was the law. 
 
 " How still it is! " came from a terrified onlooker 
 in a hoarse whisper. It was still, for it was not 
 war. The cannon s boom and drum-beat came 
 long years after. Those who rescued Jerry made 
 war without knowing it. The hush was the hush 
 of heaven when rent by mighty thunder, the splen 
 did moment of flashing firmament when peal from 
 peal is separated by silence unfathomable. Then 
 victory, voiced in a thousand fashions, was cried by 
 the multitude, now impatient for its reward. 
 
 The narrow passage in the doorway was choked 
 with those who would be first to fetch forth the 
 slave. Every eye under that starlit sky strained to 
 see. The spectacle was of a black mass throwing 
 itself into a chasm of light. Elizabeth Malcolm 
 thought she could single out one of these writhing 
 forms. Her intuition told her better than her 
 vision who was there. Far back in the crowd she 
 listened to men and women saying that death held
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 167 
 
 that lighted space. She turned away dizzy and sick 
 with terror. When she looked again, the doorway 
 too was dark. A flash and a report marked its 
 location in the looming wall against which the mob 
 was pressing. Like all the rest she felt the jar as 
 those who faced the pistol fire on the platform reeled 
 under the impulse to fall back. It seemed to the 
 girl as if she were falling over a precipice. 
 
 " You d better git out o hyer, Missy Bess," Dick 
 Richards whispered, as she was caught by both 
 elbows from behind and held up. The girl shook 
 herself from the grip and turned upon the negro a 
 face full of anger. On her lips a storm of indigna 
 tion was trembling. Yet what had he done 
 that any man might not do to serve a woman in 
 distress ? Did the touch of a negro defile her she 
 wondered ? Then it came to her that his place 
 was where Win Disbrow stood that moment, his 
 life in his hands, fighting for the cause from which 
 this man was a deserter ! Perhaps one precious life 
 had been sacrificed already, for while the negro and 
 the girl struggled for a foothold in the wrenching 
 crowd, the shout went up that the law had dealt a 
 mortal blow a man had fallen with a ball in his 
 heart. Whose life had paid the forfeit? 
 
 " There is where you should be," Bess said.
 
 168 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Her face was of an ashen hue and her right arm 
 stretched out toward the platform. 
 
 " I se done bin dar, Missy Bess," the negro replied, 
 "an* come hyer ter watch ober you, Missy Bess, 
 cause cause, hes dar. I ll go back dar if you 
 says so." 
 
 " Go ! " was the girl s command. 
 
 He started at the word. 
 
 " Dick ! " Bess called, " Dick Richards ! " The 
 negro returned as if he had been a dog on a chain. 
 
 " If Mr. Disbrow is hurt, let me know quickly. 
 Quickly, you understand. Bess was trying to 
 smile as if to soften the rebuke she had adminis 
 tered, but the effort ended in a quiver of the lip 
 that told of the agony in her heart. 
 
 Crawling like a snake in a meadow the negro 
 was soon out of sight in the crowded square. What 
 was happening on the platform, or within the 
 stronghold behind it that had been reduced by the 
 mob, was indistinguishable in the dark. There had 
 been but one shot. After that the word came 
 back from in front the fugitive slave s guard had 
 been overpowered by the enraged rescuers, who 
 had rushed upon them and snatched the cocked 
 pistols from their hands. What this desperate 
 adventure had cost in lives nobody could tell.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 169 
 
 Several men had been trampled under foot, that 
 was sure, and had been dragged out to the edge of 
 the crowd dripping blood. A little boy, pallid and 
 limp, with a bludgeon in his rigid fist, was passed 
 over the heads of the people to a place of safety, 
 whence a group of women found their way, to pat 
 his palms and dash his face with water. The 
 breath had been squeezed out of him. While he 
 blinked recognition of their tender ministrations 
 one of the women swooned and his little woes were 
 quite forgotten. " Pickpockets ! " cried someone the 
 next instant, as a youth with a knitted cap drawn 
 down over his ears darted out of the packed 
 square and, as spry as a rabbit, jumped clear of ex 
 tended arms. Then he disappeared around the 
 corner into the night. Here a rowdy, whose crown 
 had been cracked, cursed his luck that set him sav 
 ing niggers ; over there this blaspheming was offset 
 by a few words of audible prayer. It was the hurly- 
 burly of a mob. Swinging backward and forward, 
 to the right and to the left, it eddied and whirled 
 around a dozen false alarms at once, a wild-eyed 
 concourse of patriots, and of thugs too, who had 
 made the law of the land a by-word and a jest ! 
 
 " Is he free ? " Win Disbrow spoke the words 
 through parched lips. Stretched prone upon his
 
 170 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 back he lay upon the stone steps of a neighbouring 
 dwelling, past which the people were running at top 
 speed in the wake of a coach and pair that had 
 gone clattering out of the square. A heedless run 
 ner roughly jostled Bess Malcolm as she bent over 
 the prostrate form. He paid clear for his awkward 
 ness. Dick Richards beat him down into the 
 gutter with a single blow. Few men could have 
 done it. What other could have brought the 
 young doctor, maimed and helpless, out of that 
 maelstrom of brutal energy that had sacked the 
 city prison ? It was the feat of a gladiator, and the 
 stalwart negro looked like one, as proudly he had 
 delivered his burden into the keeping of his bene 
 factress. 
 
 " I shall not forget this, Dick," Bess said. 
 
 She had not answered the question Win had 
 asked. The negro would have made reply had not 
 she gently put him aside with a motion of her 
 hand. He understood, and stepped back into the 
 shadow of the porch, and when, as the last footfalls 
 died out in the quiet street, Win s eyes opened, he 
 was gone. There was other help at hand, kindly 
 folk, who lifted Win within the dwelling, where his 
 hurts had skilful treatment. He had been under 
 foot in the advance guard on the platform when the
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 171 
 
 fray was thickest. A blow upon the head had 
 dropped him in his tracks, but neither he nor 
 another had fallen beneath the pistol shot. The 
 ball had gone wide of a human mark. By what 
 miracle he had been saved from being ground under 
 the heels of the mob, it was Bess s privilege alone 
 to know. 
 
 Win Disbrow s gaze rested on Bess s face when 
 next the languid eyelids raised and the purpled lips 
 shaped themselves for speech. 
 
 " Ah, Bess," he murmured, " is that you ? You 
 will tell me. Is he free ? Has Jerry escaped ? " 
 
 " Yes, Win," was the girl s simple reply. " And 
 you will be all right yourself very soon. The doctor 
 here says so." 
 
 Win s eyes wandered from one face to the other. 
 
 " I guess I did get a little the worst of it, but I 
 don t mind if Jerry got away. You re not saying 
 what isn t so just to make me easy, are you ? " And 
 he searched the faces about him. " You re not lying 
 to me ?" 
 
 " It s the truth," Bess said. Her eyes were over- 
 flowing. 
 
 " Forgive me, Bess," was Win s response. " I for 
 got where I was ; I forgot it was you. So he s free, 
 Jerry s free ! Daniel Webster was the only one who 
 lied."
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 IT was the opinion of Win Disbrow s aged mentor 
 that he would carry the marks of the Jerry Rescue 
 to his grave. When Dr. Sampson told Lyme Dis- 
 brow so, the picture-taker remarked that the next 
 world was the only place where they would be ap 
 preciated. 
 
 " I can t agree with you, my friend," Dr. Sampson 
 rejoined, " I can t agree with you. Those are hon 
 ourable scars. Take my word for it, you will live 
 long enough to be proud your son has them, as he 
 will be. Take my word for it." 
 
 Lyme had been a constant watcher at Win s bed 
 side from the hour that he had been brought to 
 Smithboro to become the occupant of the spare 
 room in the preacher s house. This was an arrange 
 ment on which Mr. and Mrs. Disbrow had insisted, 
 and fortunately the young doctor had been prevailed 
 upon to consent to it, for there had followed weeks 
 of delirious fever that called for just such attention 
 as Bess Macolm was able to give the injured man
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 173 
 
 under her own roof. Win s vigourous health had 
 unquestionably saved him from the worst conse 
 quences of his disablement. Yet he had suffered 
 cruelly. 
 
 Lyme was looking at a healed wound from which 
 Dr. Sampson had just unwound the bandage as he 
 spoke. 
 
 "You ll have to excuse me, doctor," the picture- 
 taker continued, "I m down on niggers now more n 
 ever I was. I can t take your opinion on anything 
 concerning niggers. I didn t never tell you, did I, 
 bout old Deacon Bronson,who used to run the hull 
 town o Lenox when it came to politicking? Well, 
 one day at one of the county conventions, they got 
 twisted in a terrible tangle, an the Deacon made a 
 motion that he thought d straighten things out 
 slick an clean. Then up jumps old Dr. Purple, 
 you remember him, Dr. Purple of Woodstock, with 
 an amendment. It didn t mount to a hill o beans, 
 but the old doctor thought it did, an he shouted 
 out to the Deacon to take the amendment an end 
 the trouble. Take my amendment, take my amend 
 ment ! he says, jest like that. No siree, says the 
 Deacon, I won t. I ll take your pulmonic salve an 
 your liver pills, doctor, but you can t work off none 
 o your amendments on me. The Deacon s dead
 
 i/4 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 now ; died o the yaller janders five years ago no, 
 twa n t, twas three years ago, the same day that the 
 lightnin^struck the steeple on the Methodist church 
 at Perryville. They put the steeple back, but that 
 was the end o the Deacon. There s no help for the 
 janders, is there, doctor? " 
 
 In this parable the picture-taker told the old doc 
 tor that his prescriptions and his opinions were not 
 to be regarded as of equal efficacy, and he laughed 
 heartily at the application of it. 
 
 " There s no help for you, Lyman, any way you 
 put it," Dr. Sampson said in a merry tone. " Your 
 case is hopeless." 
 
 It would have been good time wasted had it been 
 attempted to persuade the picture-taker that the 
 Jerry Rescue was worth the risk his son had run. 
 Yet the country was already resounding with the 
 angry pronunciamentoes of the embittered sides. 
 Through the length and the breadth of the land the 
 events at Syracuse were pointed at as the proved 
 failure of the Fugitive Slave Law. The Abolition 
 ists were in great glee. Up from the South came 
 the cry that it must not be cheated of its prey by 
 either the weakness or the cowardice of the Govern 
 ment at Washington. A political convention in 
 Georgia had hinted at the possibility of secession
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 175 
 
 unless there were ample redress for the slave holders 
 wrongs ! 
 
 Beyond all peradventure, when that pair of horses 
 went clattering down the side street of the city 
 made famous by the Jerry Rescue, a spirit of mis 
 chief was awakened that threatened to lead the 
 country blindfold on to destruction. It was dashing 
 on the rocks when the Fugitive Slave Law was 
 thrown out as an anchor cast to windward. But 
 the anchor would not hold. Jerry McHenry was 
 free in Canada, whither he had been guided, with 
 little effort at concealment, after he had been sur 
 rendered to his rescuers. They had found him 
 erect and his guards on their knees asking for mercy, 
 at the final charge on the jail. The arrest of eighteen 
 of the participants in the slave s escape in no 
 way dampened the ardour of the others, as guilty, 
 but who were left unmolested. As Peter Gerritt 
 was among the latter, known as he was to have 
 been a moving force in the rescue, though excused 
 by age from the mobbing, the Government was 
 openly taunted with cowardice. 
 
 It was no secret, either, that Dr. Winfield Scott 
 Disbrow had had a hand in the rescue. Such mea 
 gre accounts of the escape of Jerry as were printed 
 gave him prominence without naming him, as none
 
 176 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 other was named, the exploit having at least the 
 silent sympathy of the press. The newspaper of 
 half a century ago was a human thing. Heartless 
 enterprise is a modern feature of its equipment. 
 
 " And what can I do now for the young torch- 
 bearer of Liberty who shall be nameless?" Bess 
 would say to Win when he was able to sit up in the 
 cushioned chair. It was in this fashion that Win had 
 been designated in one of the accounts of the Res 
 cue. The description had sounded so pretty on 
 Bess s lips that Win let her use it at her own sweet 
 will. Sometimes he spoke of himself as " the young 
 torch-bearer of Liberty," now that his bones had 
 stopped aching. At the same time he would not 
 listen to praises of his part in the episode, no matter 
 how delicately they were phrased by his faithful 
 nurse. 
 
 " Any fool could have got into that mob and 
 been knocked on the head," Win insisted, the first 
 time Bess had broached the subject of his personal 
 bravery. " That was easy. It s a good thing that 
 some of the rescuers had sense enough to keep out 
 of the way of the clubs, or Jerry would have had no 
 one to help him. And I have been wondering, ever 
 since I could think at all, who it was who helped 
 me out ? Do you know, Bess ? "
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 177 
 
 This was a query the girl had hoped might have 
 been long deferred. To answer it frankly would 
 be once more to bring the evil omen of Dick Rich- 
 ards s existence into their happy lives. Bess and 
 Win had indeed been happy as men and women 
 ever are when devotion and helpfulness go hand in 
 hand. She chose, therefore, to hide the truth that 
 would have dimmed that happiness. It was cow 
 ardly, she knew, and for a moment she wavered in 
 her determination to leave the negro s noble service 
 unheralded ; but in the end she returned an evasive 
 answer to his question. 
 
 " So you think yourself a fool, do you," Bess 
 said. " Well, I don t. Don t forget that I was in 
 that mob." 
 
 " We are all fools sometimes the wisest of us," 
 Win went on to say. " Perhaps the world is better 
 for it. Wisdom could not have dictated the rescue 
 of Jerry Mclienry; yet who can tell what great 
 good may come of it ? " 
 
 " Yes," Bess said, dropping into a chair beside 
 her charge. " Yes, hasn t somebody said that fools 
 rush in where angels fear to tread ? " 
 
 " Suppose we leave all the others out of considera 
 tion, Bess, and say that this is an affair in which a 
 fool and an angel only are concerned."
 
 1 78 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Bess felt Win s hand clasp her own as it lay upon 
 the crumpled muslin of her frock. She had nothing 
 to say to this, for he was putting into words the 
 single thought that was bringing the old lustre back 
 to his eyes. What he was saying was pleasant to 
 her ear, and she was content to listen. 
 
 " An angel and a fool, I said," Win continued as 
 if to call forth a reply. His wan cheek was ablaze 
 with colour and his grasp tight over Bess s yielding 
 fingers. 
 
 " What do you want me to say, Win ? " Bess asked. 
 " That I am an angel or that you are a fool ? Neither 
 is true, although I once had a doubt." 
 
 " When was that ? " 
 
 " When you faced that pistol in Syracuse. But 
 I did not know. How could I ? I thought it so 
 foolish of you. But it was brave, Win, very brave 
 and 
 
 "You really feared for me, did you, Bess did 
 you ? " 
 
 The invalid had drawn the girl towards him, 
 and she, unresisting, had bent down close to his pil 
 lowed head. All her soul was filled with joy, and 
 the mystery of it entranced her. 
 
 " Yes, Win," was what she said. 
 
 " There was no danger, Bess, no danger at all,
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 179 
 
 but I wish there had been that you might have 
 wished me to live." 
 
 " That was my wish, Win that you might live." 
 
 " For you ? " 
 
 " For me. You see I m selfish, after all." 
 
 There came a gentle tap on the door and the rat 
 tle of the latch as it was lifted. Love s young dream 
 went rudely by the board, and Dorothy Gerritt was 
 its unconscious disturber. She was on the other 
 side of the door asking in a soft voice if she might 
 come in, and having been admitted, with such sem 
 blance of gravity as Bess could instantly summon to 
 her aid, she would have backed out again as fast as 
 she could had not her father blocked the passage. 
 
 " Oh my," were the words in which Dorothy put 
 her surprise, as with girlish impetuosity she 
 attempted to beat a retreat. There was neverthe 
 less the light of discovery in her sparkling eyes. 
 Happily for all concerned Mr. Gerritt came forward 
 to relieve the embarrassment. 
 
 Mr. Gerritt had been most solicitous regarding 
 Win s injuries, and hardly a day had passed that 
 had not found him inquiring at the preacher s door. 
 On most of these visits Dorothy had accompanied 
 him, and after Win had come through the fever, 
 they often sat awhile at his bedside. Sometimes
 
 1 8o THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Dorothy had remained with Bess after her father 
 had made his farewells. Win had been making it 
 a point to ask her to remain. She brought sun 
 shine into the room whenever she came. Her 
 girlish chatter brightened him up when he was in 
 the lowest spirits, and, what was better still, as Win 
 viewed it, made Bess forget for the time being 
 the burden she was carrying. Care of him, he was 
 not slow to see, had been a burden, and it was show 
 ing in many ways that passed others unobserved, 
 but obtruded themselves on a physician s notice. 
 This is why he had several times insisted on dismiss 
 ing his nurse, only to extend the period of her 
 services when he found that he had given her 
 pain. 
 
 This morning Mr. Gerritt was overjoyed to dis 
 cover his young ally sitting up for the first time. 
 What was more, he saw that the bloom of health 
 was coming back into Win s cheeks. Out of his eyes 
 was shining that look of goodly strength, of happy 
 confidence, of manly candour that had won the 
 great man s favour at the beginning of their ac 
 quaintance. 
 
 "Ah, my dear young friend," the Abolitionist 
 seer said, taking Win s hand with a hearty grip, 
 "you will soon be yourself again. Believe me, I
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 181 
 
 am very glad indeed. A few days more and you 
 will be on your feet again, I am very sure." 
 
 " I never felt better in all my life, Mr. Gerritt," 
 was Win s answer. Mr. Gerritt did not see where 
 his young friend s glance was resting, but Dorothy- 
 was quicker sighted, and, with the very mischief 
 in a face screwed into a mask of demureness, she 
 said : 
 
 " I m sure we re tiring Dr. Disbrow, papa, and we 
 ought to be going. Don t you think so, Bess?" 
 
 Bess could have boxed her tormentor s ears, but 
 she did the wiser thing and led her into the corner 
 of the room, ostensibly to look at a Currier print of 
 Gen. Zachariah Taylor at Vera Cruz, a sprawling 
 picture melodramatically illustrating the fatal mo 
 ment when, performing feats of astounding horse 
 manship on the back of a milk-white steed, the 
 grizzled hero of the Mexican war was dodging a 
 cannon ball, lithographed in three colours, that came 
 hurtling through space in a trail of pyrotechnical 
 splashes of Pompeiian-red and chrome-yellow and 
 navy-blue. 
 
 Mr. Gerritt, innocent in his greatness, as most 
 sages are, would have risen to go, had not Win s 
 laugh reassured him. 
 
 " You have not suffered in vain," Mr. Gerritt
 
 182 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 said, " not in vain. The night-time of our cause is 
 passing. The Jerry Rescue has brought the whole 
 country to a realizing sense of what it means to 
 defy the patriotic sentiment of the people. We 
 have shown President Fillmore that this infamous 
 law cannot be enforced. Our friends in all the free 
 states will take example by what has been done in 
 Syracuse, and, unless the law be repealed at the 
 next session of Congress, we will fill the prisons of 
 the North with offenders the Government will not 
 dare to try. To hasten the day of deliverance 
 from this devil-prompted law, I have decided to be a 
 candidate for Congress. Our friends think that I can 
 serve them in Washington, and, God willing, I shall 
 raise my voice for them in the national halls of legis 
 lation. I feel convinced that we are on the road to vic 
 tory. The law has few friends left, few real friends. 
 Jefferson Davis was right. He says such a law 
 cannot live. It was passed, he says, by the minor 
 ity representation from the South, with the simple 
 acquiescence, not the support, of the majority from 
 the North. Yet this was a law that was to be 
 enforced, not in the South, but in the North. This 
 is why Davis says it cannot survive, and he is 
 right." 
 
 " Webster s prophecy failed," Win remarked, his
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 183 
 
 voice as firm as ever it was. " Now I have hopes of 
 Davis s logic." 
 
 " Our hope, my dear friend, is in the youth 
 of the land. Many of us are too old to keep 
 up the fight much longer, and our places must be 
 filled by the young men, by men you will let me 
 say it ? like you, whose vigour is coequal with their 
 zeal." 
 
 Again wishing Win a speedy recovery, Mr. Gerritt 
 withdrew, but not without paying a kindly tribute 
 to Bess s ability as a nurse. Dorothy s arm was 
 around her friend s waist in a fond embrace. The 
 girls were on their feet and faced Win, who, to 
 tell the truth, was wincing under the quizzical gaze 
 that Dorothy centred on him. 
 
 "I knew it the moment I came in," she finally said 
 with a toss of the head that was meant to signify 
 her powers of discernment. " I m no doctor, Win 
 Disbrow, but I can tell a real blush from a streak of 
 red paint. Poor papa can t, you know, and thought 
 everything red he spied about the room was the 
 glow of health or something." 
 
 " Well ? " was Win s lighthearted query, " What 
 have you to say ? " 
 
 " Nothing," was the girl s answer, " only what I 
 told Bess you ve been a long time about it.
 
 1 84 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Wasn t it worth waiting for ? " Win inquired as 
 he reached out his hand to take one of Bess s that 
 hung conveniently near. 
 
 " I suppose it was," Dorothy replied, rather 
 grudgingly, " and now I dare say all that is left me 
 to do is to kiss you both and say I m glad." 
 Whereupon she pressed her lips to Bess s face and 
 left a teardrop there. 
 
 " May I ? " Dorothy said, looking first at Win and 
 then at Bess. 
 
 " After me," was what Bess said, and Win felt 
 the fulness of his love melt into the warmth of the 
 first kiss. " It was mine by right," Bess added, 
 " but you robbed me of it when you came into the 
 room a little while ago." 
 
 " I might have known," exclaimed Dorothy. 
 " I m the village pest and ought to be spanked and 
 sent to bed. No, I won t take it. I deserve to be 
 punished. Naughty children get no sugar plums. 
 You kiss him for me." 
 
 Then in a gust of laughter she closed the door 
 behind herself.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 WINTER in Smithboro was distinguished by a 
 polar austerity. Deep snows covered the village 
 half the time half-way to the eaves. For days and 
 days the hardy drivers who breasted the recurring 
 storms could not urge their horses through the 
 burrowed drifts. All hands felt satisfied if they 
 could keep the paths open from the stoves to the 
 wood-piles. It was as much as the imperial elms of 
 Smithboro could do to keep their aspiring heads 
 above the snow line. 
 
 The picture-wagon was snowed in at Disbrow s 
 Corner. 
 
 " Business is suspended," Lyme said, as he toasted 
 his shins at the tavern fire, " owin to the inclemency 
 of the weather." 
 
 One day a critic of his sloth said to him that if he 
 had half an eye to his opportunities he would heat 
 the wagon and keep going. 
 
 " Doggone it, no ! " Lyme answered, taking a fresh 
 hold on his pipe-stem. " I don t look on it jest that
 
 1 86 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 way. One of the busiest men in these parts, you 
 mayn t know, was old Elder Rogers of Slocum 
 Valley. You didn t know him, of course, cause he 
 never spent no time loafin round the taverns. 
 Well, the Elder hooked his sorrel mare to his buggy 
 one day an started down the road. A neighbour of 
 his n, who thought he knew more n the Elder, met 
 him down near the grist mill, an hollered to him 
 that his harness wa n t half on. You ll never git 
 to Perryville while you re in that fix. You gol- 
 darned old fool, your harness ain t half on, says the 
 neighbour. I know/ up an says the Elder. You 
 see I m only goin half-way. Elder Rogers was one 
 o the crosseyedest fellers I ever did see. He was 
 a brother-in-law to the Congregational preacher at 
 Woodstock they both married Dorkins gals." 
 
 It was plain that the winter had no terrors for 
 Lyme Disbrow. At its bitterest he professed to be 
 as warm as toast. The fact was that he was living 
 in the radiance of the two lives that concerned him 
 most. It was the tattle of the village that Win and 
 Bess were to wed in the Spring, and in anticipation 
 of this event Bess was reported to be stitching away 
 on a marvellous array of fabrics, such as had never 
 been brought into Smithboro before. There were 
 vague rumours that the marriage was to take place
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 187 
 
 in the meeting house, and that it was to be marked 
 by some extraordinary kind of ceremonious display. 
 In other words it was to be a wedding in the " city 
 fashion." At this the sedate villagers, especially 
 those who had insisted that Bess was stuck-up, shook 
 their heads and bewailed the fact that the village 
 
 o 
 
 was going to the bad. 
 
 " Wouldn t wonder, nuther," a leading worker in 
 the sewing circle had remarked, " if they d have 
 tickets of admission like a circus show. They do 
 tell me that s the kind of carryin -on they have in the 
 city." 
 
 All the time it was knock, knock, knock at the 
 preacher s door. The good women of Smithboro 
 were calling on the preacher s wife in droves. 
 When they came away, and it was hinted that 
 something might have been in sight to give an ink 
 ling of what the wedding was to be like, they said 
 they hoped they knew their manners better than to 
 be prying into other folks business. 
 
 It must not be imagined that Smithboro, lying 
 under the heavy snow, had been shut in entirely 
 with these good women and their innocent gossip. 
 Through the dreary months the Underground Rail 
 road continued in operation. No winter was severe 
 enough to lay an embargo on its mysterious traffic
 
 i88 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Flight was no harder than pursuit along its line, and 
 as here was a case of self-preservation against pur 
 suit, the first law of Nature kept on winning. So 
 the fugitives faced the wintry blasts that turned 
 back many a pursuer. Not all of them got through 
 alive. As a physician, as well as a friend of the 
 cause, Win had been at hand to make the long way 
 less perilous to the hunted wretches who travelled 
 it. Once, at least, he had returned to the warmth 
 of his own fire, more dead than alive through the 
 hardships he had borne, with a black mother and 
 her child riding stark in death at his side. It was a 
 woeful story of desperate endeavour, unrewarded at 
 last, that he never told over the threshold of Peter 
 Gerritt s door. How many others as pitiful 
 darkened that weary way ! 
 
 But this is a tale of the living, not of the dead. 
 
 Hark ! A robin red-breast has built him a nest in 
 the tallest of the elms. Up there he is singing of the 
 springtime, and the leaves are uncurling so majesti 
 cally, as the sun kisses them, that grim winter, so 
 lately holding all the world in icy fetters, fades from 
 sight at the chirrup of a bird. This ghostly thing 
 in a winding sheet that deadens the foot-falls of 
 tramping men and silences the very thunders of 
 her:v:Mi, with power in its crystal fingers to check a
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 189 
 
 leaping torrent, or pinch a maiden s cheek till it be 
 red, must surely have been a fantasy of a wakeful 
 hour ! Winter ! what is that ? A dream, perhaps ! 
 A robin red-breast in a tree-top has banished it. 
 
 On the centre-table of the Rev. Abner Disbrow s 
 parlour a candle was eking out the fleeting light of 
 an evening in the latter end of April. It chanced 
 that Bess Malcolm was dividing the glimmer of the 
 lighted wick with no soul else. To her that day, as 
 she had passed under the elms, the first sweet notes 
 of the robin red-breast had floated down in a wave 
 of melody. A voice in her heart took up the 
 tender strain and sang it over and over again. It 
 was this music, welling through her senses like a 
 potent charm, that caused Bess to lay aside her 
 needle and throw herself back in an ecstasy of de 
 light. Nothing could break the spell, she thought, 
 save a longed-for footstep on the gravelled walk 
 outside. In fact Bess was at that precise moment 
 straining her power of hearing that she might catch 
 it at the gate. 
 
 A pair of stout knuckles beating on the door 
 panel startled her from her reverie. Surely Win 
 had not made such a surreptitious approach. Possi 
 bly he had ; possibly the rascal had tiptoed over the 
 grass to make his coming a surprise. Yes, that was it.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Conic in," Bess called, as she snatched up her 
 needlework and commenced to sew as if her life de 
 pended on it. No one stirred on the doorstep. 
 
 "Come in, and I ll forgive you for frightening 
 me," Bess said after a pause. This time she heard 
 a heel grate on the rough stones. 
 
 " Open the door and walk right in like a gentle 
 man," was the girl s next command as she assumed 
 an air of unconscious ease in her high-backed rocker. 
 
 At this the door was softly opened and held just 
 ajar : Bess rocked to and fro without speaking. 
 
 " Missy Bess." 
 
 The name was pronounced in a tone just above a 
 whisper. 
 
 The girl knew Dick Richards was at her thresh 
 old. She rose and went to the door with her hand 
 outstretched as if she were groping in the dark. It 
 was not fear that overcame her, for had she been in 
 terror of her visitor, she might readily have shut the 
 door in his face and barred it. She thought this 
 out as she steadied herself with her hands at the 
 casings. Looking out she saw the negro, cap in 
 hand, standing before her. 
 
 " Missy Bess," he said, nervously turning his head 
 to the right and left, as if expecting to be seen or 
 overheard, " I se done come hyer to ask a favour."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 191 
 
 Dick had now advanced into the light. Bess 
 could see that his eyes were agleam with excitement, 
 and that whatever his errand was it concerned him 
 deeply. Her first thought was that he might be 
 fleeing from justice and was seeking refuge with 
 her. On the impulse she spoke. 
 
 " You re a free man, Dick, and ought to have no 
 fear of anybody. You know all our hiding places 
 are for slaves. I don t think I can help you if you are 
 in trouble." 
 
 " Can t help me, Missy Bess?" the negro said in a 
 pleading voice. " You doan know what you says. 
 I se in a heap o trubble, Missy Bess fore de Lor I 
 is." 
 
 Saying this the man fell into an attitude of servi 
 tude that ill became his upright figure and unde 
 niably handsome face. Bess was quick to note 
 these incongrous elements in the tableau, and her 
 resolution failed under the subtle influence. Cer 
 tainly this was no mendicant to be turned from her 
 door with a crust of bread. The alert eye of the 
 negro caught again, as he had down by the brook- 
 side, the elusive image of her sympathy as it was 
 mirroured in her gaze. 
 
 " You done tol me," he said, following up his ad 
 vantage, "dat you d nebber forget what I done for
 
 192 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 you and him." This he said as he straightened 
 himself up to his full height and looked calmly into 
 Bess s eyes as if he had offered a claim he had a 
 right to enforce. 
 
 " I have not forgotten it, Dick. What is it that 
 you ask me to do? " 
 
 " Fse jess askin yer to help a yallah gal dat s 
 runned away from her missy. Dis am de way ob it, 
 Missy Bess, an fore de Lor I m tellin de trut ." 
 
 "Why do you say that, Dick? I have never 
 doubted you. Go on." 
 
 "Yes, Missy, de trut . She done come from 
 Louisany wid her massa and missy, an got ter 
 Syracuse, whar I tol her bout the Promise Land, 
 and de good folks dat helps de poor niggers. So 
 den she runned away wid me. But now she s got 
 fraid ob suthin and says she ll run no mo less 
 I done took her somewhar . You knows, Missy 
 Bess, I kin hide de gal so de ol debbil hisself won t 
 fin her, but she says that I se got to git her out ob 
 dis, and took her to some house to hide." 
 
 " When did she escape ? " Bess asked. There was 
 no question the runaway girl had found a friend. 
 
 " Jess dey for yisterday," the negro replied. 
 
 " You came here together?" 
 
 " Yes, Missy, I nebber let de gal git way from me." 
 
 " Where is she now ? "
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 193 
 
 " I ll took you darif you done want ter go, Missy 
 Bess." 
 
 " Certainly we ll go, Dick. Just step out of sight 
 behind the house till I leave word that I am going out. 
 If anyone comes don t stir. I won t be a minute." 
 
 As the negro stepped into the dark shadows of the 
 house Bess drew the door shut at her back. When 
 she reappeared she sent Dick ahead of her, and as 
 he chose the least frequented paths to the end of the 
 village, towards which he took his way, Bess was able 
 to follow her guide unnoticed to the creek road, into 
 which the negro turned, having put a great maple be 
 tween himself and a passing vehicle, just at the turn. 
 
 Five minutes after Bess left the preacher s house 
 the gravelled walk was crunching under Win Dis- 
 brow s hastening footsteps. The candle on the cen 
 tre table needed snuffing, but Mrs. Disbrow blew it 
 out after she had delivered to him the message Bess 
 had so hastily entrusted to her. 
 
 "Win says that baby at Dover s is not likely to 
 live," Mrs. Disbrow said as she passed through the 
 little room the preacher used as a study. " He 
 couldn t have stayed to-night anyway, so it was just 
 as well Bess went out for a walk. I think that I d 
 better go on over to Dover s to-morrow morning to 
 see if I can do anything for them."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 MR. DlSBROW dropped his pen among the scat 
 tered sheets of an unfinished sermon, and, for the 
 third time within an hour, walked to the front door 
 to peep out into the blackness of the night. 
 
 " Mary," he called from his table in his study, 
 having reseated himself there, " where did Bess say 
 she was going ? " 
 
 " For a walk, she said," came the drowsy answer 
 from an inner room. 
 
 " Perhaps I had better go over to Mr. Gerritt s 
 she is probably with Dorothy and walk back with 
 her. I m not getting on very well with my sermon, 
 and a little fresh air will stimulate me." 
 
 " Very well, dear." 
 
 At the gate as the preacher sauntered out he 
 came face to face with Bess, who, on a run, rushed 
 panting into his arms. Through the veil of night, 
 Mr. Disbrow could not see the girl s face, but: a 
 tremour that shook her lissome form as he held her 
 captive a moment told him she was labouring under
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 195 
 
 a severe nervous strain. To his questions beseech 
 ing an explanation, Bess was at first able only to 
 gulp her breath. With an effort she finally forced 
 a reply from her heaving bosom. 
 
 " Has she come ? Is a strange negro girl here ? " 
 she said. 
 
 " No, no one but Mary is in the house," the 
 preacher made answer, essaying as he spoke to lead 
 Bess down the walk towards the door. " What has 
 happened, Bess? Tell me." 
 
 Bess was holding back against the pressure of the 
 preacher s arm. 
 
 " We must stay here ; we must wait for her," 
 Bess said. " Where else can she go ? " 
 
 " Tell me what has happened ? Of whom are 
 you speaking?" This Mr. Disbrow said with some 
 authority in his voice. 
 
 Then the preacher and the girl went to the little 
 steps and sat down on the flat stone that formed the 
 tread. Bess s breath was coming naturally, and 
 her self-possession had returned. First she narrated 
 the circumstances of Dick Richards s visit, and, as a 
 sequel to it, how the negro had led her down the 
 creek road as far as the Pine Tree Spring, where, 
 relying on his truth, she expected to find the mu 
 latto Gfirl awaiting their aid.
 
 196 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 "You went there alone, with the negro?" the 
 preacher asked in evident dismay when Bess had 
 got as far as this with her story. 
 
 She simply nodded her assent, and went on. 
 There was nobody at the spring, she said, though 
 Dick had carefully searched the locality while she 
 kept watch under the pine-tree. No trace of the 
 missing girl could be found. 
 
 "You trust the negro ?" Mr. Disbrow asked in a 
 tone that implied his own doubt of the recital. 
 " You think he told you the truth ? " 
 
 " Why should he not, brother ? " Bess replied. 
 In her tone there was beyond question unshaken 
 confidence. 
 
 " Well, well," the preacher said, reassuringly, 
 "let us believe him, if you will, but it is a strange 
 matter. I don t know what to think about it. But 
 why do you imagine the girl has come to this 
 house? " 
 
 This was the only tenable conclusion, in Bess s 
 opinion, for the negro had informed the mulatto 
 girl of his intention to solicit help at her hands. 
 Their names were known to the poor creature, and 
 in the hope that they might aid her, she had con 
 sented to hide at the Pine Tree Spring. What had 
 taken her away from the trysting place could only
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 197 
 
 be conjectured. If frightened away, or pursued, 
 her first thought would be of those friends Dick 
 had made known to her. 
 
 "I have no doubt she will come here," Bess 
 insisted. 
 
 " She will be welcome if she comes," the preacher 
 made reply. " But 
 
 A suspicion flitted through the preacher s mind 
 that was left unuttered. Win had entered the gate, 
 and beside him walked a woman. Bess knew the 
 step of one and could make out the dress of the 
 other even in the dark. To the preacher she bent 
 forward to say : 
 
 " Please say nothing to Win of what has hap 
 pened not to-night." 
 
 The newcomers were met by a questionless wel 
 come. Mr. Disbrow had opened his door, and in at 
 it he graciously motioned the newcomers, Bess fol 
 lowing close behind to light the candle. Win s 
 companion was a mulatto girl, whose furtive glances 
 from face to face as she looked about her pictured 
 an extremity of fear. Before Win had time to 
 speak, Bess had reached forth her hand, and to her 
 the trembling creature had sidled, confident of 
 security in the proffered shelter. 
 
 " Here s someone," Win said, " who claims your
 
 198 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 hospitality. Her case, as she tells me, is most dis 
 tressing. I regard it as another sign of the right 
 eousness of our cause that it was my fortune to 
 help her. Now I turn her over to you, Bess, dear. 
 It is a woman s sympathy, not a man s, that she 
 needs. Guard her closely to-night, and we will see 
 to-morrow what ought to be done." 
 
 Bess took the mulatto girl by the hand and led 
 her to the study door. 
 
 " Good-night," Win said to the stranger, " God 
 bless you," to his sweetheart. Bess s eyes were 
 streaming with tears as she went out hand in hand 
 with the girl. 
 
 " A quarter of an hour ago," Win said when 
 alone with the preacher, " I was at the bedside of a 
 little child who was hopelessly ill. All that science 
 in my weak hands could do to save that innocent 
 life had failed. I knew it, and with mortification 
 confessed it to myself. The stricken mother, the 
 heartbroken father, knelt there and poured out 
 their agony in prayer. The little one had roused 
 herself from an unconsciousness that had lasted for 
 days. She had been a patient sufferer, but the sor 
 row of leaving those who loved her, and whom she 
 loved, was breathed into a faint appeal to me to 
 me, the doctor! whose learning and whose skill, ah
 
 THE RED ANVIL. I99 
 
 me ! she and they believed in trusted. Doctor, 
 the little one said, looking into my face, doctor, 
 can t you save my life ? And I lied to that little 
 child as she went to sleep never to wake again. 
 Out of that death chamber I walked, my dear 
 uncle, a beaten man. What help had I been to 
 that afflicted family ? What use my years of study ? 
 A doctor of medicine, I ! No, a mixer of nos 
 trums ! Who gave me the right to heal the sick, 
 I said to myself, whose helplessness had been so 
 woefully proved ? " 
 
 " Ah, Win, we are in God s hands whether sick or 
 well. We are but instruments of His divine power." 
 " I hope that I may prove to be so," Win said, 
 wiping his forehead. " I am trying to find some 
 consolation in the case of this wretched girl. She 
 wandered in my path to-night on my way home. I 
 would have passed her by had she not said she was 
 lost and looking for Bess. Poor thing, she called 
 Bess by name, and begged me to guide her hither. 
 Part of her story she told me, and that her distress 
 is sore there is no doubt. I never stretched forth 
 a hand to a fugitive with as much joy. Coming 
 from that little child s death-bed, do you wonder, 
 Uncle? I could be a little help here. This girl 
 calls herself Cherry Lemoire, and she has escaped
 
 200 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 from her owner, a Louisiana planter, on his way 
 with his family to Niagara Falls. Dick Richards 
 found her at Syracuse, and persuaded her to run 
 away, and it is in his keeping God help her that 
 she has been since she fled two days ago. It did not 
 take her long to find that she had fallen into 
 wrong hands, and in mortal dread she took the 
 first chance to elude him and place herself under 
 the protection of Bess and you she had your 
 name as well Richards having told her of you 
 both. This was the inducement that brought her 
 to Smithboro, after, well well 
 
 " Mary and I have our charge safely disposed of 
 for the night," Bess was saying at the study 
 door, " and I will say good-night." A kiss for each, 
 one a trifle fonder than the other, perhaps, was 
 the only supplement to the parting. The preacher 
 and the doctor both read in Bess s face that Cherry 
 Lemoire had told her story to her new-found 
 friend. 
 
 It followed that the mulatto girl had not come 
 among them for a day. Her disappearance from 
 Syracuse had created something like a sensation 
 where, during her stay in that city, her beauty had 
 drawn out no little admiration. Nature, as cruel as 
 she is kind, had done for this slave girl what would
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 201 
 
 have glorified a queen ; but her gifts of person were 
 shackled when they might have been sceptred. 
 She was of the oriental type, languorously graceful, 
 formed rather for the sultan s divan than for the 
 sculptor s pedestal. She had the odalisque s eyes, 
 big and round and dreamy, and her skin, of the text 
 ure of velvet and the color of sunburn, felt the 
 warmth of the sensuous glow that, like an unkindled 
 fire, lay hidden under silken lashes awaiting a breath 
 to blow it into flame. The editor who, in a printed 
 report of the slave girl s disappearance, spoke of 
 her as " the tall poppy of Dixieland " had poetry in 
 his soul. Cherry came to Bess a ragged outcast, 
 bedraggled by travel and weary in body without a 
 single artifice of the toilet, yet a beautiful woman. 
 But it was a bondwoman s beauty, and it was her 
 curse. As a slave she clung to Bess with a slave s 
 despair. 
 
 By Mr. Calvert, the planter, whose entourage had 
 been bereft by the loss of the girl, it was declared 
 that she had been kidnapped, and on that theory 
 he put forth an offer of a princely reward for the 
 detection of her captors. This offer, he doubled, 
 when at last he was forced to proceed on his way 
 without her. This he did after sending a signed 
 letter to the newspapers, bitterly inveighing against
 
 202 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 an abuse of hospitality that he said had cast his 
 household in deepest gloom and would leave a scar 
 on the hearts of the little children to whom the 
 slave was as dear as a sister. 
 
 "As a Southern gentleman," he wrote, " I do not 
 expect to find sympathy in the North with the 
 system under which this girl was retained in my 
 service ; neither do I hope to convince the people 
 of the North that under this dispensation she was 
 as happy as she would have been had she been born 
 in freedom (though that is God s truth) ; but had I 
 not the right, as the guest of the North, going about 
 minding my own business, to ask protection against 
 common thievery ? The girl Cherry is not a run 
 away ; she has been unwillingly kidnapped, and by 
 misguided fanatics, or worse (I care not which), and 
 is held in bondage against her wish ; and who can 
 say for what vile purpose ? It is against this outrage 
 upon the laws of universal hospitality that I lodge 
 my protest as I leave your city." 
 
 When Mr. Calvert s letter was read by Mr. Dis- 
 brow, he at once decided to leave it to Cherry to say 
 what disposition should be made of her. If it were 
 true, as he half suspected might be the case, that 
 her flight was either forced or regretted, it would 
 be his part to restore her to her master and mistress.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 203 
 
 To this reasonable proposition both Win and Bess 
 cordially assented. 
 
 " No sah, Massa Disbrow, no sail," the slave girl 
 responded when the matter was laid before her. "Dis 
 hyar s good nuff for dis chile. All I asks, honey," 
 she said turning to Bess and catching up a wisp of 
 her dress as if it were a tie to bind, " all I asks am 
 dat I nebber see that nigger Richards agin, nebber, 
 nebber." 
 
 So for the present, it was decided Cherry was to 
 remain in hiding where she was.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " WASN T that Spruce Jim Dick Richards I seen 
 hangin round the parson s house last night ? " 
 queried Clem Jones one night of this eventful week. 
 A row of kindred spirits had taken possession of the 
 tavern steps. You might predict the advent of the 
 seasons by the desertion or occupancy of the tavern 
 steps as surely as by the migration of the birds. 
 The gossiping villagers had come back to the old 
 stand with the first robin red-breast. 
 
 " It looked mighty like him," the landlord of the 
 Lafayette Hotel added, " but I wa n t quite sure." 
 
 " I thought we d got rid o that critter," remarked 
 Haskins the barber, " but I ain t sayin he ain t got 
 as much right here s the next feller, seein this is a 
 free country." 
 
 " Ain t nobuddy seen the feller ? " Jones ventured 
 to ask again. 
 
 " I hain t, hain t you ?" one of the group replied, 
 and in this quaint form the inquiry went down the 
 line without verifying the landlord s suspicions.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 205 
 
 Lyme Disbrow s back was braced against one of 
 the colonial posts of the portico, his legs at the ac 
 customed angle, his lips pursed and his cheeks blown 
 out as if in each he held a Jackson ball. He was 
 whistling " She s bound to run all night," which is 
 to say that he was in no mood for idle talk. Yet 
 he had pricked up his ears when the question of 
 Dick Richards s whereabouts had been casually 
 broached. By Win it had been made known to the 
 picture-taker that the negro had guided Cherry to 
 Smithboro. In all probability, it was agreed, he was 
 skulking in the neighbourhood of the village, with 
 the intention of seeking the first opportunity to 
 claim the right to pass her on to Canada. As an 
 agent of the Underground Railroad he could press 
 this claim. As Win implicitly relied upon the 
 veracity of the negress, Dick s motive, the young 
 doctor was convinced, was of the worst, and to keep 
 her out of Dick s clutches was his stern resolve. 
 Lyme s compassionate nature caused him to put by 
 a theory on which he would have urged his son to 
 a different course, namely, that the best way to be 
 rid of Dick Richards, for good and all, was to con 
 nive at his abduction of the slave girl. It was be 
 cause Win was absolutely without information 
 touching Dick s movements that his father was heed-
 
 206 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 ing the chit-chat of the tavern steps. Win and 
 Bess had not spoken of the negro for obvious rea 
 sons, but it was understood between them that he 
 was as much to be feared as those who might at 
 any moment come looking for the slave girl. The 
 planter s offer of a great reward had whetted the in 
 terest of the pursuers to a keen edge. A watch was 
 kept on Smithboro by more than one man who 
 stole in and out of the village in the guise of a 
 drover or colporteur. One of the slave hunters ac 
 tually covered his mission by peddling Bibles from 
 door to door, but timely warning of this fellow s 
 identity was furnished by Dick, who after that had 
 been invisible even to Bess. 
 
 A month slipped by, and the negress was still of 
 the preacher s household. The wedding of Win and 
 Bess was not far off, and Cherry s dexterity with 
 needle and thread brought her within the charmed 
 circle. She begged like a child asking for sweet 
 meats to be allowed to have a small part in the 
 preparations, and when, as once or twice happened, 
 there was talk of attempting to get her away to 
 Canada, she was on the point of open rebellion. She 
 would have attached herself to Bess for all time 
 with all the joy in the world had she been given her 
 way.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 207 
 
 " I doan want to go to no Promise Land," Cherry 
 said. " What dis chile wants am to stay right hyar 
 wid yo , honey, jess as if yo was Missy Calvert. I 
 doan want to be free, no mo . Yo jess keep me, 
 honey, an , golly, I ll be a good chile, suah, honey." 
 
 In vain Bess tried to explain to the girl that this 
 would be slavery idealized slavery, perhaps, but 
 slavery just the same and that in the end she must 
 be retaken by her owner, or forwarded to a place of 
 safety. The law, as well as her own aversion to ser 
 vitude, Bess endeavoured to make clear, would not 
 permit them to be together. Then Cherry would 
 burst into tears, and in rage berate her protectress 
 for lack of heart, or in agony beseech her to let her 
 rest in it forever. 
 
 " I jess can t go way," she would cry, " I can t, 
 honey. If I does, an yo makes me, den I go wid 
 dat nigger, Dick Richards, and den I m a gone 
 nigger, suah." 
 
 " You mustn t call yourself by that name," Bess 
 always admonished Cherry when she spoke thus 
 contemptuously of herself. 
 
 " I is a nigger, honey ; I is a nigger," she insisted, 
 " an dat s why you doan want to have me bout yo ." 
 
 Then the white girl would take the slave girl in 
 her arms to prove the warmth <>f her affection, as
 
 208 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 well as to vindicate the North, as she merrily put it, 
 from the aspersion of insincerity that was often 
 levelled at the advocates of emancipation. 
 
 This pretty scene was enacted over and over again 
 while they all waited for the ringing of the wedding 
 bells. Usually as an end to it Cherry would go 
 about the daily tasks she had assumed, singing a 
 song of the South, plaintive, sweet, mournful : 
 
 " I went to see Ginny when my work was done, 
 As she put de hoe-cake on, my love, 
 And Ginny put de hoe-cake on ; 
 An Massa he saunt an called me away 
 Fore Ginny got the hoe-cake on, my love, 
 Fore Ginny got de hoe-cake done." 
 
 Bess could not keep the girl quiet when she was 
 in these moods, and hence was in constant dread 
 lest her presence be betrayed to the enemy they 
 feared. 
 
 " Hush yo noise, yo fool nigger," Cherry would 
 answer back, when warned of the danger, and then 
 she would laugh in glee as a child laughs. 
 
 Win had made up his mind at last that the time 
 had come to forward the slave girl out of the 
 country. To the successful accomplishment of this 
 end he had been lately in communication with his 
 friends on the line of the Underground Railroad, 
 and had opened the way through to the point: of
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 209 
 
 embarkation on Lake Ontario. At designated 
 stations Cherry was to be met by men he trusted to 
 be harboured at night under their roofs. The plan 
 was to take her over the route in broad daylight, 
 once she was safely away from Smithboro, this 
 being thought the best course in order to disarm 
 suspicion. Cherry was to be passed off as a white 
 woman. Win was to cover the first stage of the 
 journey himself, and it remained only to persuade 
 the girl that her separation from Bess was impera 
 tive, when he received the astounding information 
 that in every detail his plans were known to Dick 
 Richards. 
 
 Dick himself made the revelation. The men en 
 countered each other outside the preacher s house. 
 Night had fallen and they talked unobserved. Win 
 would have pushed by had not the negro, who had 
 evidently been lying in wait, posted himself directly 
 in the young doctor s path. 
 
 " Fse come to talk with you," Dick said, when 
 Win halted in front of him, " an you s got to talk 
 to me." 
 
 " Well ? " Win answered coldly enough, but at 
 the same time allowing the word to imply his will 
 ingness to listen. It was this man, he remembered, 
 who had saved Peter Gerritt s life in Syracuse.
 
 210 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " I se not goin to low you to steal dat gal in dar 
 from me," the negro said, bending his head signifi 
 cantly towards the little clapboarded house. " She 
 ain t goin to be run off less I go long too. I se 
 done spect you know me, when I done tell you." 
 
 " Well ? " Win repeated as his jaws set hard to 
 gether. 
 
 " No sah, Doctah Disbro ," Dick continued ; 
 " When dat ere gal goes, dis nigger goes, an I doan 
 understan you t ought o dat. So dey done tell me 
 long de line, whar I se bin clarin de track fore you 
 begun." 
 
 The negro had been speaking in an unguarded 
 voice. Dropping his tone several pitches lower he 
 mentioned the names of a half-dozen men whose 
 connection with Win s present exploit left no 
 question of the negro s secret knowledge. 
 
 " So you have been playing the spy ? " exclaimed 
 Win. By a supreme effort he curbed the inclina 
 tion to strike the man in the face. It was the same 
 feeling that possessed him down by the creek. Win 
 would have ended the conversation then and there, 
 but Dick Richards threw his stalwart body between 
 the gate-posts and held the path. 
 
 " Well ? " said the doctor for the third time. 
 
 "You can t scar me, fore de Lor ,yo can t," Dick
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 211 
 
 said. " Dat gal s mine, and you can t steal her 
 way from me. I done took her way from Syracuse, 
 an I se goin to took her to Canady. She s fur me, 
 not fur you." 
 
 This the negro hissed through his teeth in a way 
 that implied a world of things unuttered. 
 
 " Hound ! " Win answered, as with both hands he 
 forced a passage at the gate. " I warn you never to 
 cross my path again do you hear ? " 
 
 " If I done keep off it," Dick shouted after him, 
 " If I does, Missy Bess won have no nigger to tote 
 you, nex time you git you ole head cracked, an is 
 bein kicked to pieces." 
 
 Win stopped short on the gravelled path. He 
 recalled the mob at the Jerry Rescue. 
 
 " Was it you ? " he asked, half frightened lest he 
 hear the truth. 
 
 " Ask Missy Bess," was what the negro replied, 
 and this was all, for he was out of view in an in 
 stant. 
 
 Win stood on the stone steps to collect his senses. 
 No purpose would be served were he to relate to 
 Bess what had just transpired, so he thought, and he 
 decided to let the incident pass. He was keeping 
 faith with himself with respect to the negro. There 
 must be no clouds in his sky on his wedding day.
 
 212 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 More important than all, to his mind, was to per 
 suade Cherry to leave Smithboro as he had planned. 
 Her consent must be obtained that night, for the 
 date had been definitely fixed for her departure. 
 Bess wept bitter tears at thought of what was to 
 come, and at last, when the slave girl was called, 
 that she might hear that the decision was irrevo 
 cable, Bess began to comprehend what Mr. Calvert 
 meant when he addressed his letter to the people 
 of the North after Cherry s flight. 
 
 "Oh, Win," she sobbed as her head reclined on 
 his shoulder, " who knows what grief has been caused 
 in the execution of what we believe to be our holy 
 work. I confess that this girl has entwined her 
 self about my heart, as probably thousands of other 
 slaves have done in Southern homes. Mr. Calvert 
 wrote in his letter that his children would sorrow 
 till death for Cherry and I know now he told the 
 truth. Are we right after all ? " 
 
 " Every great right is achieved," the doctor said, 
 " by the doing of little wrongs. This is one of 
 them, no doubt. If we could only buy this girl s 
 freedom, it would be well, but such a reward as is 
 offered for her makes her money value beyond 
 reach. We must send her back to Mr. Calvert or 
 to Canada. That is the alternative."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 213 
 
 The misery of this night ! The slave girl could 
 see nothing but wilful cruelty in it. She would 
 not believe otherwise than that she was being ruth 
 lessly driven from the door of those to whom her 
 heart had gone out in the very ecstasy of love. 
 She upbraided and caressed Bess in turn as she was 
 storm-tossed on the billows of her own agony. 
 
 " I se jess a nigger," Cherry cried at last, as a 
 strange light flashed in those dreamy eyes, " a no 
 count nigger. I ll go." 
 
 In a state of sullen resignation the slave girl swept 
 out of the room. Bess hardly in better temper 
 followed to console and help her prepare for the 
 dismal to-morrow. 
 
 Past midnight Mr. Disbrow was startled from his 
 sleep by a noise he thought sounded like the slam 
 ming of a door. It was raining hard, and the wind 
 was astir. 
 
 " The front door was unlatched," the preacher 
 said when he crept back to bed, his wife having 
 asked what the matter was. " Doubtless Bess for 
 got to lock it. Poor girl, no wonder ; this has been 
 a hard night for her."
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 OLD IRONSIDES was taking his own time on the 
 Lakeport road. Daylight was not an hour old 
 when he took up the way. Lyme s face was at the 
 front window of the picture-wagon, framed in an 
 upturned collar, for there was still a nip and tingle 
 in the morning air. The picture-taker was talking 
 to his horse. 
 
 " Look here, now," he was saying, " you ll have 
 to hump your back a leetle, you old bag-o -bones, 
 or darn me if I don t swap you for the fust mud- 
 turtle that comes long this road. Don t you know 
 I ain t got no time to waste on this trip that I ve 
 got to be back hum afore next week Thursday so s 
 to be at a weddin that I ve got some perticular in- 
 t rest in? If we go dawdlin along like o this, the 
 fust thing you know you ll wake up in the snow 
 drifts next winter." 
 
 Lyme took up the slack in the reins and snapped 
 them on the horse s back. Old Ironsides straight 
 ened his legs and bent forward against the hames.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 215 
 
 After this spasmodic effort he began to lag once 
 more. 
 
 "You ll have to do some better n that," Lyme 
 said, " or, doggone me ! I ll slit your blinders so s 
 you kin see this gad, an if it comes to that, I ll 
 tickle your hide so s you ll think fly-time s come 
 sooner than expected. You ain t drawin hard 
 nough, no sir, not hard nough to pull a settin hen 
 off her nest. Doggone it! didn t I tell you I d got 
 to be hum for a weddin ? a weddin , I said, twa n t 
 no funeral. Gid ap." 
 
 This time the upraised reins flattened on the 
 horse s back with a vicious crack. Leather and 
 hide had been softened by a copious drip of rain 
 water from the overhanging trees, so that in their 
 contact there must have been a sting like a botfly s, 
 for Old Ironsides suddenly broke into a lively trot. 
 
 " Now you re talkin ," the picture-taker said 
 encouragingly. " Looks now s if we d get some of 
 that weddin cake. Next time we come this way 
 we ll stop an look at scenery, but jest no\v, dog 
 gone it, we ve got to be up an doin over yender, 
 an then back hum lickety-switch for the weddin . 
 I do believe," Lyme remarked, as if other ears than 
 the horse s were listening, " that old boss knows 
 this is one of the clays you read bout."
 
 216 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Of a truth there was much that lay under their 
 eyes that might enthrall the gaze of man or beast. 
 The night s downpour had left a gloss as of bur 
 nished steel on the glorious countryside. The sun, 
 which had risen in a pinkish mist, was tipping 
 every raindrop with a diamond glint. Every blade 
 of grass wore a sparkling jewel, every moistened 
 leaf a diadem of them. There was not a breath of 
 wind in the air, so that the morning came forth as 
 if decked for a bridal festival. It was a picture 
 that Lyme was filling in with pretty details. The 
 plodding horse shook down the opalescent drops 
 that gemmed the overhanging boughs, and he 
 marked their fall for showers of happiness. Every 
 hollow in the road held a pool of water that, like a 
 chain of mirrors, caught the first blushes of the morn, 
 as they must have done, he thought, when in the 
 glare of lightning Night put on her wedding clothes. 
 
 " Hold on there ! " Lyme shouted, as* he jerked 
 hard at the bit. He had come suddenly out of his 
 reverie. "Don t you know nuthin , you old fool. 
 It s bad luck to smash a lookin -glass. I thought 
 you knew suthin ." 
 
 Old Ironsides had been spattering down the road 
 unmindful of the poetry of the thing. He had 
 splintered into atoms every fairy mirror in his way.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 217 
 
 But his owner s rebuke was undeserved. He was 
 knowing enough. So knowing indeed was the 
 horse that if he had minded nothing but the driver s 
 clucking and urging, there would have been trouble 
 ahead this morning ; for with a wedding inarch sing 
 ing in his head Lyme did not hear, nor did he see, a 
 stalwart figure of a man who stepped into the road 
 to hail him as he passed. It was at a bend where a 
 heavy growth of timber alongside afforded ample 
 shelter. 
 
 Old Ironsides came up with stiffened knees and 
 ears thrown forward, jolting Lyme backward into 
 the wagon. 
 
 " What s to pay? " he cried, as he poked his face 
 out of the window. Dick Richards was blocking the 
 way. Lyme stared at the negro until he had fully 
 expended his astonishment. " Well I guess hell s 
 to pay," he continued, " and, by cracky, there s no 
 pitch hot." 
 
 " Mornin , Mistah Disbro, " the negro said, as he 
 reached up and caught Old Ironsides in the velvety 
 hair above the nostrils, and while seeming to fondle 
 the horse held him as if he were in a halter. " I se 
 done been waitin fur you, ca se I kinder thought 
 you d go fur to help a feller long: yes sah, dat s 
 what I thought."
 
 2i8 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Look a here, Richards," Lyme replied ; " Seems 
 to me I ve done jest about as much for you as 
 there s any call fur. Jest to please somebudcly else I 
 turned the old wagon into a cattle cart, an took you 
 in, an no good come of it, either. Did there, now ? " 
 
 " Guess I se been a heap o trubble," said the ne 
 gro. " Niggers am born to trubble." 
 
 "Trouble, eh?" Lyme answered, "Trouble? 
 you re jest seventeen times trouble and carry one ; 
 that s what you are. The day I set you down over 
 yender on the Perryville road, when they wanted to 
 put the law onto you, I told you, didn t I, that I never 
 wanted to see you agin ? Well, what I said I 
 meant. Niggers ain t in my line." 
 
 The picture-taker had gathered up the reins in 
 his hands and had screwed his mouth for the start 
 ing word. Richards s wiry fingers were still in the 
 hollows of the horse s nose. 
 
 " Fse not askin nuthin fur dis hyer poor nigger," 
 he said. " All I wants yo fur to do am to go fur 
 to carry a gal in dis hyer wagon. She s done tired 
 out, dat s what she am, and can t walk no furder 
 fore de Lor she can t." 
 
 Lyme slackened the strain on the bit, and, as far 
 as his position at the window would admit, looked 
 about him.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 219 
 
 " See here now, Mr. Black Man," the picture-taker 
 remarked, when his eyes finally rested on Richards s 
 face, " if there s any gal who d trust herself in your 
 clutches out here in the woods, you d better let me 
 have a look at her, for I ain t got time to linger." 
 
 A rustle of the undergrowth at the side of the 
 road showered the glistening moisture to her feet, as 
 Cherry Lemoire came forward, her skirts dripping 
 at the hem. On her face and hands the rain-drenched 
 foliage had left a spray as she came through it. 
 Lyme s first thought was that the girl had been 
 crying. 
 
 Even after a closer glance assured him that Cherry 
 was not making this mute appeal to him, he was 
 not insensible to her other claims, for, bedraggled as 
 she was, her beauty stood the test of evident de 
 spair. He was moved to pity in an instant. 
 
 " I take you to be that gal that was over to 
 the parson s," Lyme said pleasantly. " There 
 couldn t have been two like you, though they never 
 showed you off when I was round. Ain t that so, 
 my gal ? " 
 
 " Yes, Massa," the negress made reply. 
 
 " Hit it the fust time," Lyme said, " an you 
 want to ride long with me, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes, sah."
 
 220 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " And where might you be goin ? " 
 
 " I se done takin her to Canady, Mistah Disbro ," 
 Dick Richards put in before the girl could reply. " I 
 wouldn t lie to yo , sah, nohow, she s a slave gal, 
 Mistah Disbro , an am runnin away." 
 
 " You shut your mouth," Lyme blurted out, 
 " an let the gal speak." 
 
 Cherry proved willing enough to plead her own 
 case. This she did in a few simple words. With 
 all haste, she said, she desired to get to the Promised 
 Land. She acknowledged that she had set out on 
 this journey unbeknown to those who had be 
 friended her at Smithboro, but gave as a reason for 
 her precipitate flight that her hiding place had been 
 discovered, and that, rather than imperil her friends, 
 she had determined to seek safety on her own 
 account. When her recital was done Lyme was not 
 quite sure what part Dick Richards was playing in the 
 adventure. From the things left unsaid he never 
 theless drew the conclusion that the girl might be in 
 as much dread of her guide as she was of herpursuers. 
 
 " I jest got my fill of this Underground business," 
 Lyme said, as if cogitating upon the chance of help 
 ing the girl, " when I sneaked out of Smithboro 
 with that feller." He was pointing at Dick. "I 
 jest got my fill then, but I ll tell you what I ll do
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 221 
 
 both on you : if I take the gal as far as I go, an 
 then see her started so s she can t go wrong, it s 
 cause I want to get rid of you both, for well an 
 good well an good, d ye hear? " 
 
 In one voice the two negroes promptly acqui 
 esced. Then of a sudden Richards asked: 
 
 " Whar you done goin to take her? " 
 
 " Maybe here an maybe there," Lyme said. " It 
 ain t no truck o yourn, anyways you put it. When 
 that gal gits into this old shay you say good-bye. I 
 don t see no limit to the trimmins you fix onto it, 
 but you say good-bye. An the gal she says the 
 same. She goes to the Promised Land, as you call 
 it, where the wicked cease from troublin an the 
 weary are at rest. You, nigger, git up an git 
 anywhere so s you don t never show your phiz in 
 Smithboro. Is it a bargain ? " 
 
 Cherry s joyous assent to the plan gave the pic 
 ture-taker a double assurance that his first guess 
 was right. Dick was much less positive in his prom 
 ise to live up to the agreement ; but he gave it, and 
 Lyme accepted it for what it was worth. 
 
 Saying nothing but a hurried word of farewell to 
 her companion, the negro girl went into the picture- 
 wagon. Dick would have prolonged the parting, 
 and made as if to do so, but Cherry forestalled this
 
 222 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 intention by stepping briskly into the door when 
 Lyme opened it from the inside. Dick would have 
 held her by the hand had she been less alert. As 
 it was he tried to whisper to her, but without avail. 
 Lyme closed and fastened the door. 
 
 " Now scoot ! " he shouted to the negro from the 
 front window, out of which he put his head, and 
 thrusting a long-lashed whip through the frame he 
 laid it smartly on the horse s flanks. Old Ironsides 
 darted off as if stung by a wasp. 
 
 " Squat down somewheres," Lyme said to Cherry, 
 as the wagon jolted along, " an hang on by your 
 finger-nails, for I ve got to make up the time we ve 
 fooled away." 
 
 Cherry was balancing herself in the narrow space 
 as best she could, while she looked backward through 
 a side window. She had not heeded the picture- 
 taker s admonition. 
 
 " Squat, will you," he repeated, " or the fust thing 
 you know you ll be doin circus tricks, an I ain t got 
 no liniment handy." 
 
 " Yes, massa," Cherry turned to say, " I se goin 
 to do jess as yo say. I se jess wonderin what for 
 dat fool nigger war standin dar so long time. He 
 hain t lifted his big hoof yit jess s standin dar lik 
 nuffin dat s livin .
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 223 
 
 The deader the better," was Lyme s laconic re 
 joinder. 
 
 " Massa Disbro ," the girl said, " if he done foller 
 dis hyar wagon, den what am we uns goin to do? 
 
 " We uns am goin out o the Underground busi 
 ness," Lyme replied, imitating the girl s dialect. 
 "An you uns you an him well, I ll jest dump 
 you in the ditch an hump long on my own hook. 
 A bargain s a bargain, sis, an if that nigger breaks 
 his end on it, I m through for good." 
 
 As if the girl s remark had suggested a new idea 
 to him, Lyme pulled the horse to a walk, the better 
 to continue the conversation. 
 
 "I don t want no gum games played on me," he 
 went on to say. " I ll help you run away from him, 
 but I won t help you to run away together. Dog 
 gone it ! I m doin this anyway to git you both out 
 of Smithboro, but more perticularly him. The 
 seven years itch ain t a flea bite to that nigger o* 
 yourn." 
 
 " He ain t my nigger, nohow," Cherry made 
 answer with a saucy toss of her head. " I doan 
 want to see him nevah no mo ." 
 
 Lyme was looking at the girl, and in the scornful 
 flash of her eyes he read the truth her lips had put in 
 words.
 
 224 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " There, you old chucklehead," the picture-taker 
 broke in to s;iy. " Didn t I tell you ? Didn t I tell 
 you this nigger gal was runnin away from that nig 
 ger man ? Didn t I ? Yes, I did, yes I did ; but 
 you re gittin so deaf you can t hear the grass grow." 
 
 Lyme was leaning out of the window talking to 
 his horse, and the animal s ears were moving back 
 ward and forward as if straining to hear the rebuke. 
 Drawing in his head Lyme said to Cherry : 
 
 " So you re givin him the go-by, eh ? I thought 
 I saw the way the wind was blowin . I usually 
 know which turn to take when I come to the forks in 
 a road. Now you jest squat down an make your 
 self comfortable, an if an old calaboose like this 
 wagon an a hoss that knows more n most men kin 
 help you out of a scrape, you jest count on us. If 
 you are a nigger, you re a woman, an that s what s 
 the matter." 
 
 Lyme stepped through the wagon to the door 
 and unlatched it. A green lane a quarter of a mile 
 long stretched behind them. The picture-taker s 
 eyes scanned it up and down. A meadow lark beat 
 its stout wings against the sunlight where a wood 
 pile marked the advance of civilization in the tim- 
 berland. This bird was the only living thing in sight 
 along the wagon s track.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 225 
 
 " Gid ap," Lyme shouted to Old Ironsides, hav 
 ing closed the door and poked his head through the 
 front window again. Jogging along he lighted his 
 pipe and smoked himself into a day-dream of a 
 wedding.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 IT would have taken a good horse to have kept 
 step with Old Ironsides that day. Lyme was in a 
 silent mood. More than once during the day, 
 when the solace of tobacco seemed to fail him, he 
 put his meditations between his cheeks and 
 whistled the familiar tune. To the negro girl his 
 communications were limited almost entirely to 
 words of caution whenever the picture-wagon 
 approached a settlement or a village, so that she 
 was left wholly in the dark as to his plans for 
 disposing of her, a matter in which, however, she 
 showed no great concern. He did talk to his 
 horse and that glibly. 
 
 "You re some better n a yaller dog, you are," 
 he said, " an if you ain t the best hoss that ever 
 looked through a collar, well, your board is paid 
 for this summer anyway. Doggone it, I didn t 
 know it was in you no I didn t. We re goin to 
 make it, sure, an without bustin a belly-band 
 nuther." 
 
 At one or two places on the way Lyme was
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 227 
 
 solicited to make a halt, with the promise of 
 something in his line ; but his reply was that he 
 was in a hurry, and if there were anxious thousands 
 who fain would secure the shadow ere the substance 
 faded they must wait until he returned, as he 
 announced was his design, within a few days. 
 
 "Ain t got no time to tarry," was his response 
 to these overtures, and he said the same thing over 
 and over again to the horse. At midday they all 
 refreshed themselves at a safe distance from 
 curious eyes. An hour taken in this way to give 
 Old Ironsides a measure of oats was the only time 
 lost in the day s travel. This was at the top of a 
 wooded knoll, at either end of a level stretch three 
 or four rods long, from which the road in both 
 directions could be easily commanded. Lyme 
 walked its length three or four times to keep guard 
 while Cherry had an opportunity to stretch her 
 joints, which she said ached sorely, by reason of 
 her necessarily cramped position in the van. 
 
 He did not have to warn her to be wary of her 
 movements. At the end of the first trip to the 
 brow of the knoll he sa\v her reentering the wagon, 
 and, going in after her, found the girl examining his 
 apparatus where he had fastened it in a sling 
 attached to the glass-covered roof.
 
 223 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Queer fixin s, eh ?" he said, with more suavity 
 than he had been showing. 
 
 "Yaas dey am, massa," said Cherry, quite elated 
 that the long silence had been broken. " Dis am 
 whar you p int dem pictures, I reckon." 
 
 " Don t paint em," Lyme replied. " I m too 
 durn lazy to paint so I jest hires the sun up yender 
 to do it fur me. He s a handy boy with the brush 
 an paint pot I kin tell you. Ever set for your 
 picture?" 
 
 " No-o-o ! " This from the slave girl in a tone 
 that comprehended as a volume might not have 
 done the lowly estate in which her life had been 
 cast. It was one syllable of eloquent astonishment. 
 The picture-taker s question had implied a possi 
 bility to one so benighted a glorious possibility. 
 
 All eyes, Cherry stood there, asking out of them 
 if such might be her rare good fortune. A lighted 
 match blazed above the bowl of his pipe as Lyme 
 wagged his head. He could not help seeing that 
 here was a subject for his camera worth the while. 
 Cherry Lemoire s beauty had not been over-praised. 
 She was speechless with joy, but all the red blood 
 in her veins, that made her sun-touched skin glow 
 as with fire, was an active substitute. 
 
 " Maybe we ll try it on, down there, if the sun
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 229 
 
 ain t doin nuthin particular," Lyme said, his eyes 
 twinkling, " an we have time to spare." 
 
 For the rest of the way Lyme Disbrow was 
 carrying a heavy load of woman s vanity. Cherry 
 watched the sun drop from the zenith towards 
 the horizon and grew weary waiting. Meanwhile 
 she turned to such account as she could her 
 disordered dress, left, as it happened, in a state of 
 great untidiness by her early morning flight through 
 the wet woods. Each mile as they went on dragged 
 after its fellow on heavy feet. 
 
 At last the old horse hauled the picture-wagon 
 out into a sunlit place on the road, beside a mossy 
 embankment, capped by a cluster of white-stemmed 
 birches. It was high ground, and from it, through 
 a jagged opening in the distant tree-tops, a church 
 steeple was seen piercing the blue sky. A patch 
 of dense woods lay between this landmark and 
 their eerie. Over a black line of spruces seemingly 
 at the very base of the steeple, but really a good 
 half-mile beyond, the afternoon sun fiercely glared 
 on a sheet of water, from the calm bosom of which 
 the light was thrown back into the arch of heaven 
 in a million dancing waves. 
 
 " That s where we re makin for," Lyme remarked, 
 as he drew rein beside the mossy bank where Old
 
 230 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Ironsides could nibble at the tender shoots. 
 "We re ahead o time, too, so if you ve got on your 
 best bib-an -tucker, we ll take that picture we 
 talked bout a spell ago." 
 
 Cherry lost no time in making ready. While 
 Lyme leisurely transformed his wagon into a 
 gallery, unloosening a brace here and a strap there, 
 the slave girl prinked excitedly before a little 
 looking-glass that he let down on hinges from its 
 place on the side of the van. 
 
 " I m goin to hang round here for a matter of 
 half an hour or thereabouts," the picture-taker 
 said, as he went on arranging his simple accessories, 
 " so s to get down there into the holler bout sun 
 down. I m goin to drop you there, an say good- 
 by, my gal, an I guess I can fix things up so s 
 you ll get through all right, an send you on to- 
 morrer. I m not in the Underground business 
 myself, but I travel some, an I know one or two 
 of the blamed fools who is ; an it s lucky for you 
 I do, I kin tell you. Josh Hunger down there in 
 Lakeport ould ruther run off a nigger than raise a 
 hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre. That s 
 Oneida Lake you see shinin down there like a tin 
 pan that s jest been sanded, an to-morrer, Josh, 
 he ll whirl you over to Lake Ontario in a jerk of a
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 231 
 
 lamb s tail. Guess you ll be all hunky after that 
 though I ain t sposed to know nuthin bout this 
 Underground business." 
 
 " Dat Massa Mungo ll fin clis chile ready fur to 
 go any time," Cherry said. " I se allus ready, 
 Massa Disbro . " 
 
 This obvious suggestion to the picture-taker that, 
 so far as she was concerned, he need not delay 
 preparations for the promised sitting, was entirely 
 lost on Lyme. At the same time the girl was still 
 grimacing before the looking-glass, shaking out the 
 folds in her petticoat, smoothing the wrinkles in her 
 bodice, dampening her finger-tips to imprison the 
 vagrant locks on her temple and retying for the 
 hundredth time the bandana which she wore as a 
 fillet around her forehead. There could be no 
 question the Promised Land she yearned for was a 
 long way this side of Canada. It was veiled only 
 by the mysteries of the picture-taker s camera. 
 
 The natural grace with which Cherry fell into the 
 pose he wished piqued all of Lyme s artistic resour 
 ces. In the pains he was taking, therefore, to do her 
 justice and score a triumph for his art, the girl gave 
 him a hearty second. She had not laughed that day 
 till then, but for very joy in this new experience 
 she let out her heart in rippling melody. When at
 
 232 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 last all was ready, and the picture-taker, stepping 
 off, solemnly admonished her, as became the tradi 
 tions of his craft, to look pleasant, he committed a 
 fatal error ; for here was a child of Nature, with 
 whom consciousness wore the face of sorrow. It 
 was therefore a sad face that Lyme Disbrow s cam 
 era caught. As the artist s watch ticked off the 
 slothful minutes her heart beat with it. 
 
 " You sit right there," Lyme said when the agony 
 was over, " till I finish this here tintype. I m goin 
 to give you this one, an make another for yours 
 truly. I ll be with you in a jiffy." 
 
 Then he went behind the curtains, which when 
 let down from the wagon roof made an enclosure 
 for the dark room, and in the black recesses of which 
 he practised the occult secrets of which he was 
 popularly presumed to be the master. Cherry had 
 watched him from the beginning with staring eyes, 
 as he brought forth the black slide from its hiding- 
 place behind the curtains, and having transfixed her 
 image on it through the focused lens, noted his 
 disappearance with it as one steeped in superstition 
 might have followed a feat in oriental jugglery. 
 The fresh fumes of the chemicals in which he worked 
 only served to deepen the mystery of this devil s 
 trade of his. The slave girl trembled while she
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 233 
 
 waited. Her imagination, already the playground 
 of plantation sorcery, with its troops of voodoos and 
 hobgoblins, caused her to sit spellbound in the 
 wagon, fearing to look to the right or left. 
 
 A distant cry, as of someone in distress, reached 
 her ear. It sounded from the depths of the woods, 
 on the borders of which the wagon had halted. 
 
 " Massa, massa," she gasped, " the debbil am corn- 
 in . I done hear him screech." 
 
 Lyme came through the curtains at this instant 
 with the wet plate in his hand, and, not regarding 
 the girl s outcry, showed her what the magic of 
 photography had accomplished. Delighted at the 
 result she would have forgotten her fright, had not 
 the still air been broken again by the same cry. 
 
 " Dar he am agin," Cherry said as she caught 
 the picture-taker s wrist. " Dat s the debbil, 
 suah." 
 
 The girl was mortally afraid. 
 
 " Sure," Lyme repeated in a sepulchral voice. 
 " And he s got feathers on his tail, an eyes as big 
 as a barrel-head, an he looks mightily like an owl." 
 Then he tried to drown her fear in a laugh. 
 
 "Yaas, massa, " Cherry said, trying to believe 
 what she had been told. 
 
 Now the voice became articulate, and, coming
 
 234 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 through the trees in an agonized strain, phrased the 
 wortl : 
 
 "Help!" 
 
 Lyme listened. A squirrel chattered in a tall 
 maple a gun-shot away. Lyme was at the door of 
 his wagon looking back into the thicket whence the 
 sound had seemed to come. Once more the same 
 word came wailing to the ear, but this time from a 
 gorge into which Lyme could look from the open side 
 of the road. Its rocky sides, however, were overgrown 
 with scrub pines and brakes impenetrable to sight. 
 
 " If that s the devil, gal," Lyme said, " he s a fast 
 goer. He yelled from over there fust off, an now 
 he s down there in that hole." 
 
 Cherry was shivering like a leaf in the wind, when 
 Lyme, handing her the piece of thin metal on which 
 her portrait was imprinted, and telling her to dry it 
 in the wind, stepped out into the road. The girl 
 clapped the tintype into her bosom and crouched 
 in the corner. 
 
 " Halloo, you ! " the picture-taker shouted in a 
 voice that rang out strong and clear. There was no 
 answer from the gorge. Again he called, this time 
 leaning as far over the edge of the precipice as he 
 dared. 
 
 Within a second or two a human voice answered.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 235 
 
 " Help ! " was the call, in a pitch that was weak 
 and painful. 
 
 " You stay here an watch the hoss," Lyme 
 shouted to Cherry, as he broke through the brush 
 and began to clamber down the side of the gorge. 
 It was a perilous descent he was making, but by 
 taking a zigzag course, he was able to pick out a 
 foothold here and there on the ledges of stone that 
 a thousand storms had washed free of interwoven 
 roots and mould. Part way down he hung by a 
 tangled pine, whose knotted trunk gripped a 
 boulder like strands of rope, and hallooed at the 
 top of his voice. Not a sound came from the deep 
 gully. Then he circled a boulder, which, as he 
 looked up from below, seemed to dangle in mid-air, 
 and by a circuitous path, broken out by his own 
 hand, reached the bottom. The briers had pricked 
 his skin, and he was bleeding. A jagged rock had 
 ripped a pantaloon leg to its boot top, and his hair 
 was tossed like an untidy boy s. 
 
 " Halloo ! " he cried again with what breath was 
 left in his body. Still no answer. lie was stand 
 ing, he found, on the brink of a brook, which hid 
 den from view from the road went singing to the 
 glen into which the gorge opened. Stooping he 
 took a drink of water in his palm and dashed an-
 
 236 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 other on his sweating forehead. It was a stream of 
 good width ; a deer might leap it. On either side of 
 it a trail was plain, and Lyme was not slow to guess 
 that back and forth upon this path the farmer boys 
 fished for trout, which with half an eye he saw 
 abounded in its shimmering pools. There were 
 fresh tracks on the trail, too, heel prints that must 
 have been set down within an hour, for some of 
 them were in the soggy sand, sharply moulded. 
 Lyme was woodsman enough to know that given 
 an hour to dry these edges would begin to crumble. 
 Having caught his breath again, he took account 
 of his situation with more deliberation. He had 
 spent his strength without stint on the way down. 
 The channel of the trout brook was a long and 
 straight tear through the rocks. Looking up and 
 down he could not find an occasion for the cry of dis 
 tress that had brought him there. The purl of the 
 waters was all he heard. In vain he tried to follow 
 the footmarks. The trail at many points was too 
 hard and stony to receive any impression. As he 
 pursued it down stream he found it led out into the 
 glen, and, a quarter of a mile away, was accessible 
 from the road down an easy incline. Retracing his 
 steps he went into the gorge up stream, only to 
 have his climb unrewarded, except that he found a
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 237 
 
 side path deep in the shadowed archway, that he 
 had no doubt led up into the road over which he 
 had lately driven. This way out had been trodden 
 by human feet before he toiled up the ascent, but 
 to tell how recently was impossible, though the 
 ground looked as if newly broken in half a dozen 
 places. 
 
 " Well, that beats the Dutch," Lyme remarked as 
 he came panting into the road, being careful all the 
 time to note whether the twigs closing in the trail 
 had been snapped off. No such signs of late inva 
 sion were visible. 
 
 He stood in the road and mopped his face of per 
 spiration which was running from every pore. 
 
 " I never hearn tell," the picture-taker said to 
 himself, "that this neck o woods was ha nted, but 
 that noise was made by a ghost or a boy either of 
 2m s pesky nough. That s the hardest work I ve 
 done since I shingled the meetin house at Hope 
 Flats. The very next time I hear a voice from 
 leaven bellerin for help, doggone me, if I don t 
 loller back : Tune up your harp an see if the an- 
 jels 11 lend a hand ? Phew ! " 
 
 Old Ironsides browsed on the green bank the dis- 
 ance of a five minutes walk. Lyme came to the 
 vagon, his coat on his arm, his wrist-bands flaring
 
 238 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 open and his hat in his hand. On his face was the 
 flush of fatigue and overheated blood. 
 
 At the door of the picture-wagon he surprised a 
 young man in hunting costume who, with his head 
 well inside the van, was evidently puzzled to know 
 what manner of thing he had encountered. 
 
 "Do you own this shebang?" Lyme inquired. 
 
 " I ? No," was the answer. " Somebody s gone 
 off and left it. I ve been standing here for half an 
 licur wondering if anything had happened to the 
 owner. What had we better do?" 
 
 " Better give it to me, I guess," Lyme replied. 
 
 The young man saw that the picture-taker was 
 laughing in his sleeve. 
 
 " Does it belong to you ? " 
 
 " It makes out to," Lyme retorted. " The gal 
 inside might have told you that if you d asked her, 
 an there s no tellin how many chipmunks you 
 might ve peppered while you waited." 
 
 Lyme was recalling that his passenger was too 
 pretty to escape notice, and he had his suspicions 
 regarding the motives which had checked the prog 
 ress of the hunter. He meant his last remark to be 
 stingingly sarcastic. 
 
 " Excuse me," was his victim s rejoinder, "but I 
 didn t see anyone to ask."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 239 
 
 "Well, maybe there wasn t, after all," Lyme 
 quickly put in. His eye had followed the stran 
 ger s into the wagon. Cherry was not in sight, and 
 what was hidden under the black curtains belonged 
 
 t> 
 
 to his art. He was sorry his tongue had run away 
 with him, and he was in haste to made amends for 
 his fault. 
 
 " I guess I m a leetle kaflummoxed to-day," he 
 went on to say. " Fust off I thought I heard some 
 one shoutin for help clown there in the hole, an 
 that s how I come to leave the rig. Down I went 
 to see, an there wa n t a thing alive to lay my eyes 
 on. Then I tell you to ask that camera there to 
 say who owned it, an hand out a business card. 
 You ve got one on me, stranger. This is what 
 comes of slidin down greased poles." 
 
 " Greased poles ? " 
 
 " That s what I said greased poles. Jest you 
 try a short cut to the bottom of that hole, an get 
 in trainin for the next Fourth of July." 
 
 " No, thank you," said the hunter, " I m willing to 
 take your word for it. I guess I ll mog along. 
 Perhaps I can knock over a squirrel or two before 
 dark. If you are going to the village, I may see you 
 there. My name s Thurston Morgan Thurston 
 and when I m not hunting I practise law, and I m a
 
 240 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 plaguey sight better lawyer than I am a hunter so 
 old Judge Daniels says. I m in his office, and he 
 gives me a day off once in a while because he likes 
 the taste of game. Good bye." 
 
 With these parting words the young man gave his 
 game bag a hitch to lift it to his shoulders and, gun 
 in hand, strode off. He went on over the road in 
 the direction of Smithboro. Through the gap where 
 the steeple showed the flaming sun hung low on the 
 horizon line. It seemed ready to drop out of its 
 azure frame into a seething sea of red beneath it. 
 The lake water was the colour of blood. 
 
 " Much obleeged to you for keepin an eye on the 
 old cart," Lyme shouted after the young man in a 
 jestful tone. 
 
 " Not at all," the cheery answer came back. 
 " Don t believe in leaving a horse alone." 
 
 " Nuther do I," Lyme said loud enough to be 
 heard along the road. Then in an undertone that 
 was a merry chuckle, he added : " An* if you d been 
 as cur ous as you re perlite you d a seen that when 
 you go huntin the fust thing to do is to find your 
 game." 
 
 He was in the wagon now and had parted the 
 curtains. The dark room was empty. Cherry Le- 
 moire was one.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 AT the beginning of the same day a discovery as 
 inexplicable had been made at the parson s. It was 
 a tearful day in the little household. At first Bess 
 refused to be persuaded that Cherry had been 
 guilty of such a cowardly thing cowardly she 
 called the girl s flight and when in the end her 
 hope that the girl would redeem herself by return 
 ing or, if not that, by sending some word of explana 
 tion, had been worn out by unrewarded waiting, she 
 was woefully cast down. Cherry s threat that she 
 might be badgered into again placing herself in Dick 
 Richards s hands preyed on Bess s mind, and more 
 than once she upbraided herself for having con 
 sented to drive the poor creature to this act of des 
 peration. 
 
 Win, who had been summoned into council when 
 the girl was first missed, wanted to take upon him 
 self the burden of the blame, and, that every effort 
 might be made to guard the fugitive from harm, he 
 volunteered to institute a systematic hunt for her.
 
 242 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Yes, Win, we must hunt for her and find her," 
 Bess was prompt to insist. " I feel like a criminal 
 to have driven her out of this house, after pretend 
 ing to be her friend and protector. We did drive 
 her out, now didn t we, Win, although it was for the 
 best ? If any harm should come to her through me 
 I d never forgive myself never. So we must find 
 her. Where will you look ? " 
 
 From the first Win s proposition looked like a 
 chimera, and, disturbed in mind as he was, no one 
 knew this better than its author. Where would he 
 look ? Truly, here was a problem. The girl s flight 
 might have been in any of twenty directions. Which 
 would he take? It would be obviously impracti 
 cable out of the question, in fact to sound a 
 general alarm as if it were to be a search for a lost 
 child. She was a fugitive slave, for whom no worse 
 fate could be imagined than that she should fall 
 into the hands of others than her friends. What 
 was more, a price was on Cherry Lemoire s head. 
 To allow the merest whisper to get abroad that she 
 was in the neighbourhood would start a hue and cry 
 from which escape would be impossible. 
 
 " Where will you look ? " 
 
 Win was forced to take time to consider the 
 inquiry ? As a measure of precaution he finally said
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 243 
 
 he would see if by any chance the girl had sought 
 refuge elsewhere in the village. She could not have 
 failed to learn in what families in Smithboro the 
 grim law she was running from was held in light 
 regard. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Win." Bess said. " Poor child, she may 
 have thought others would not be as heartless as 
 we. She had a right to think so, Win, she had 
 indeed." 
 
 The doctor made the rounds, assisted by Mr. 
 Disbrow, without finding trace of the missing girl. 
 
 " I can only think of one reasonable thing to do," 
 Win said on his return with the news of his ill 
 success, - and that is to go to Lakeport. I was to 
 drive the girl there, you know, and turn her over 
 to one of our friends Josiah Munger. She was to 
 stay with him over night, and he was to deliver her 
 to Sidney Parshall at Palermo. Mr. Parshall was to 
 meet Frank Crow there, and he was to finish the 
 trip to Mexico Point. Cherry, of course, knew 
 nothing of this, but Richards did. He told me so 
 himself last night at your gate, Uncle, just before I 
 came in." 
 
 "He! You? He told you?" Bess asked in utter 
 
 amazement. 
 
 " Yes, Bess dear, he warned me that he knew our
 
 244 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 plans for getting the girl away. He had learned 
 them of our friends. They do not know him for 
 what he is as we as I do. He had probably been 
 over the line looking for assistance in his design to 
 take her, and anyway he knew our plans and the 
 names of our friends who were to help." 
 
 " Did he know she was to be taken away at once ? " 
 Mr. Disbrow inquired. 
 
 " I doubt if he did," was Win s answer, " and it was 
 on that doubt that I acted. Mr. Mungerwas to be 
 notified of my starting by Mr. Wood. I had ex 
 plained how difficult it was going to be to get 
 Cherry to consent, and, as I knew that we must 
 not delay after she had agreed, I was to send him 
 word that way. After leaving here last night I 
 dropped in three logs, all carrying the same mes 
 sage, telling him to expect me this afternoon. 
 He was to be on the lookout for Mr. Wood every 
 day so as not to miss word. The water in the creek 
 is unusually high now, so that one of the logs was 
 sure to get through. When I went down to the old 
 place to set them afloat, I had to take the logs 
 around to the north side of the mill the water was 
 so swift it would have swung them into Davis s 
 Cove." 
 
 " Richards knew nothing of this, of course ? " Mr. 
 Disbrow suggested.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 245 
 
 " Of course not," Win replied, " but, knowing 
 that Munger s was to be the first station, he might 
 have gone there, and that s why I m going to Lake- 
 port. He d hardly attempt to have Cherry walk 
 farther than Lakeport. If she got that far on foot, 
 Richards could easily convince Mr. Hunger that he 
 was acting for us, and have him go on. The thing 
 is to catch him before he starts to-morrow, and if 
 Richards and Cherry are indeed together, and are 
 walking, I can overtake them." 
 
 " When did you say that Mr. Munger expected 
 you ? " 
 
 Mr. Disbrow was coolly calculating all the 
 chances in the exploit. In reply Win produced 
 from a fold in his wallet a sheet of paper that he 
 spread out on the table. It contained a scrawl in 
 lead pencil that looked like a cryptogram. It read : 
 
 SS ? i W 3 f 4 f PI * 
 
 " This is the message," Win said. 
 
 " Smithboro station, April 22d, one woman, ar 
 rive April 24, between four and six o clock, P. M. 
 Previous instructions. Signature." 
 
 Mr. Disbrow read the cipher as if it were the page 
 of a primer. 
 
 "It s worth trying," the preacher said, having
 
 246 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 thought out the possibilities for a moment. " More 
 than likely Richards would look for help from our 
 friends." 
 
 " I shall start at once," Win said. 
 
 He turned to Bess to say good-bye. Tears had 
 started anew in her eyes, and, as he kissed her, he 
 felt her lips quiver beneath his touch. Her hands 
 clutched him tightly as if she would not have him go. 
 
 " What is it, love ? " he whispered, reading some 
 thing unexpressed by words in her uplifted face. 
 
 " That man," she said, her voice wavering with 
 emotion. " He is desperate. You must take no 
 risk, Win darling, no risk for yourself even if you 
 find Cherry with him. Promise me that. Don t 
 try to take her from him by force. If she isn t 
 willing to leave, God help her, let her go. Your 
 safety is precious to me more precious than any 
 thing in the world." 
 
 "There is no occasion for fear," Win said. 
 " He s a coward at heart." 
 
 "You have not promised, Win," Bess said, throw 
 ing a world of entreaty into her tone. "If you go 
 without promising me I shall fear for you I shall 
 not let you go unless you do promise me. He does 
 not value his own life, and would go to any length. 
 Promise ! "
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 247 
 
 Win released her from his embrace, but holding 
 her tenderly with one hand, as if to chide her, with 
 the other lifted her chin upward so that their gaze 
 met eye to eye. Her lids drooped as she saw his 
 face light up with a smile. 
 
 " I know what you are trying to tell me," Win 
 said. "I know what a little fraud you are. I have 
 discovered your secret. You might have told it to 
 me yourself. I wouldn t have loved you any less, 
 or any more, because well, nothing in all this 
 world could make me do that. But I know it was 
 Richards who dragged me out of the crowd the day 
 of the Jerry Rescue." 
 
 Bess raised her eyes to his. He knew she thought 
 the debt stood against him. 
 
 " Have it your way, sweetheart," Win went on. 
 " I owe him my life, and shall not forget the obli 
 gation ; but, had he not flaunted me with it, I would 
 fear him more were we to meet as man to man. 
 He lacks the moral sense. I think of him as I do 
 of a bull dog. I shall treat him as one. There 
 will be no encounter, no dispute, no fight. I 
 promise. Now, you little deceiver, if you have 
 any more secrets on your heart, you d better out 
 with them, for I want to be sure your very soul is 
 mine."
 
 248 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " My heart is full of you, Win, and there s no 
 room in it for anything else," Bess said as their 
 hands tightened in a parting clasp, and lover s ca 
 resses were showered in her hair, for her head was 
 buried in his bosom. 
 
 Win was on his way to Lakeport. At the first 
 settlement, where he stopped to give his horse a 
 draught of water, he learned that the picture-wagon 
 had been seen hurrying over the road earlier in the 
 day. Win knew his father was bound that way, 
 but was left to wonder what summons he was 
 answering that had required great haste. Lyme 
 Disbrow s journeys were usually of the leisurely 
 order. At the next stop Win was informed that 
 the picture-wagon had passed some three hours 
 before. He made up his mind, therefore, that his 
 father was likely to spend the night at Lakeport, 
 and that conclusion proved a matter of infinite sat 
 isfaction. They could confer together upon the 
 subject of his errand. 
 
 Night was settling over Lakeport when the young 
 doctor s horse came at a smart jog to the crown of 
 the hill that overlooked the village. It was yet 
 light enough to show the lake beyond fading into 
 the descending shadows like a misty stretch of wan 
 colour, and dark enough to reveal the spot where like
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 249 
 
 a dimple the reflection of the North Star lay upon 
 the waters as if they were smiling in their sleep. 
 
 Morgan Thurston hailed Win as he approached 
 and bluntly asked for a ride. When the horse was 
 checked he was spinning along under the lash 
 the hunter was at the rear of the buggy. Win 
 leaned out and beckoned him to get in. 
 
 o 
 
 " I m in a little bit of a hurry," Win remarked, as 
 Thurston, evidently out of breath, came alongside 
 and waited as if he was not quite certain what to do. 
 
 " So am I," the hunter replied, putting one hand 
 to his left side to still the beating of his heart. 
 Win saw that he looked like a man distrait. " But 
 I ve got to have a minute to think," Thurston con 
 tinued. " I ve been hunting, and about a mile back 
 there in the woods I found the body of a dead 
 woman. I think she s been murdered ! I was run 
 ning to the village to give the alarm when you came 
 along. Perhaps one of us had better go back and 
 watch the body while the other goes on. What do 
 you think? " 
 
 Win had dropped the reins upon the dashboard 
 and leaped from the buggy at the first words of this 
 revelation. 
 
 " A woman ! What kind of a woman ? " he 
 cried. " Where was it you say ? "
 
 250 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Back there not over a mile," answered Thurston, 
 " But it may be farther, as in my excitement I lost 
 my bearings and had to hunt for the road. Come 
 to think, I guess we had better drive on, as I doubt 
 if I could find the place now. It s getting pretty 
 dark." 
 
 It was indeed ; while the sky was still luminous, 
 as one peered into the woodland blackness alone 
 could be seen. A glance satisfied both men of the 
 futility of a search at that hour. 
 
 " Jump in, quick," Win cried, as he led the way. 
 The other was no less alert, and before either of 
 them was fairly seated, the horse was going at break 
 neck speed through the gathering gloom into Lake- 
 port.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE lights in the windows of Lakeport twinkled 
 far into the night. The sedate village was keeping 
 late hours. Its normal quietness had been rudely 
 disturbed by the news which Morgan Thurston had 
 brought in, and thus cheated of its rest, it was turn 
 ing midnight into noonday. 
 
 At the village inn the neighbours were gossiping in 
 excited groups. It was there that Win had dropped 
 Thurston, and then turned his horse s head towards 
 the willow banks across the creek, where Josiah 
 Hunger lived. Before he was out of hearing Thurs- 
 ton s news had been told to the loiterers of the inn. 
 One of them volunteered to hunt up the Justice of 
 the Peace and broke through the door on a run. 
 
 " Sid Fairman s the man we want," shouted 
 another villager, and he too showed his heels as he 
 rushed into the dark. Sid Fairman was the Deputy 
 Sheriff who stood for the majesty of the law in Lake- 
 port. 
 
 A game of pinochle at the harness-maker s and an 
 experience meeting at the Methodist church went
 
 252 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 by the board as a result of these hasty summonses. 
 Before the Justice and the Deputy came running to 
 the inn from different directions the dread tidings 
 that a murder had been done at the door of this or 
 derly community was being carried from house to 
 house. The women came out with the men to 
 learn the particulars. 
 
 Once the Justice and the Deputy put their heads 
 together sharp work was made of getting the law in 
 motion. A posse of citizens was organized to un 
 dertake a search of the woods and, guided by Mor 
 gan Thurston, they set out in such conveyances as 
 could be immediately brought into service. Sid 
 Fairman, the Deputy, was in the van of this formi 
 dable cavalcade. He was armed to the teeth with a 
 huge horse pistol which he held aloft with no little 
 show of pride. In the wake of lantern light which 
 this procession left behind there trailed an unofficial 
 body of men and boys, some on foot and some in 
 wagons, all hurrying up the hill out of the village 
 streets. In most of the doorways a black figure was 
 silhouetted. Through the lighted panes intent faces 
 peered. It was a spectral scene on which the stars 
 looked down. 
 
 Win Disbrow, his heart thumping against his ribs 
 like a trip-hammer, was finding his way to Jo.siah
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 253 
 
 Hunger s on the willow banks. Little had been 
 said as Win and Thurston came at the horse s best 
 gait to the inn. There had been little time to say 
 it in. Thurston knew that he had found a lifeless 
 body and that it was the body of a woman, but 
 aside from this he could not speak, for his examina 
 tion had not gone beyond the glance of a startled 
 man. If the murdered woman was Cherry Lemoire, 
 Win could not draw the fact from his companion, 
 although all his inquiries had tended adroitly in 
 that direction. 
 
 Before the two men parted at the steps of the inn, 
 Win wished Thurston had been more taciturn. 
 
 "There s something mighty queer about this 
 murder if it is a murder," the young lawyer had 
 said. " On my way up the road to where I struck 
 into the woods, I ran into an old codger with one of 
 those picture-taking wagons, who ll have to explain 
 some things before I get through with him." 
 
 Win s heart stood still at the words. " What 
 about him ? " Win inquired with a painful effort. 
 
 "Oh, as to that," Thurston continued, "as to 
 that, perhaps I d better keep my mouth shut. He 
 didn t act just right, that s all." 
 
 " Didn t act right? " said Win, echoing his com 
 panion s phrase. " What did he do ? "
 
 254 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 "Nothing to speak of," was the curt reply, "and 
 at the time I didn t think anything of it ; but it 
 looks different now." 
 
 Win was in a fever. His temples throbbed and 
 his power of speech failed. His impulse was to grip 
 the young fellow by the throat and choke his lying 
 tongue to a pulp. 
 
 "What is it the man did?" This Win at last 
 asked falteringly, but calmly. He had mastered 
 himself. 
 
 " I tell you I am not going to say anything about 
 it until the time comes," Thurston answered. " I m 
 enough of a lawyer to know when to speak and 
 when to keep still." 
 
 Had not Win s face been veiled in darkness he 
 might have succeeded better. There was a look of 
 horror on it that called for a candid response. 
 
 After a pause Win ended the talk with a " I d keep 
 still if I were you," that made his companion look 
 at him in sudden surprise. 
 
 What mystery was this ? Something to be 
 explained by a picture-taker ? What things ? A 
 murder and his father concerned in it ! It was of 
 his father Win felt sure of that that this man 
 spoke. His father! Who dare invent so foul an 
 aspersion ? A chattering monkey, who had run from
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 255 
 
 a shadow in the woods, and imagined he had 
 stumbled over a corpse ! In these phantom shapes 
 Win Disbrow s mind clothed his fleeting thoughts 
 as he whipped his jaded horse into a run towards his 
 destination at the willow banks. In a last mad 
 dash of which the poor beast was capable he rode 
 into Josiah Hunger s door-yard. It was not far 
 from the inn but it seemed as if the horse would 
 drop in his tracks before the journey ended. 
 
 The front door of the house was flung open before 
 he had time to alight. In the lighted space stood 
 not only the owner of the house, but Lyme Disbrow 
 as well. 
 
 " Win ! " cried the picture-taker in a burst of 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Father ! " was Win s response in a voice that 
 was instinct with filial affection. 
 
 Mr. Hunger, a gray-bearded man, bent at the 
 shoulders, but a giant in frame, lifted a candlestick 
 from its socket in the hall, and held it above his 
 towering head. Its rays put the horse and driver 
 in an inky profile. 
 
 " Ain t the gal with you ? " Lyme inquired, as he 
 shaded his brows and strode out. 
 
 " Cherry Lemoire, you mean ? " Win replied, 
 jumping from his seat. " I hoped she might be
 
 256 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 here. Have you seen her ? Do you know where 
 she is? " 
 
 Lyme shook his head and motioned Win into the 
 house. " What s our business is our n," he added, 
 while he looked hard out into the dark as if to catch 
 a skulking eavesdropper. 
 
 "Go ahead," Mr. Hunger said. " I ll look after the 
 horse. Guess you came along at a pretty good clip." 
 He was drawing his fingers through the sheeted foam 
 on the horse s side. 
 
 At the other side of the door Win caught his 
 father convulsively by the shoulders and volleyed 
 him with questions. He was visibly agitated. 
 
 " What are you doing here, father? Have you 
 seen the slave girl ? Do you know anything about 
 her ? Have you heard about the " 
 
 His lips could not form the word " murder." He 
 spoke in a whisper that sounded hollow and 
 uncanny. 
 
 " Hold your hosses, Win, my boy," the picture- 
 taker said. " What s got into you, boy?" 
 
 " My God, father ! " Win, exclaimed. Let me 
 think." He threw himself into a chair and beat his 
 hand against his forehead. Then he looked at his 
 father in a fixed stare that sent a shudder of appre 
 hension through Lyme s body.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 257 
 
 " Doggone it, Win, don t take on so bad," Lymc 
 said, laying his hand on Win s hair. " All the nig 
 gers on top o the green earth ain t wuth it. She ll 
 turn up. I ain t scared a mite. I thought she 
 would come here to Hunger s house sure when she 
 gave me the slip in the woods." 
 
 " You ? Was she with you ? Did you take her 
 away ? " 
 
 There was an agony of despair in Win s words. 
 He had risen to his feet and was steadying himself 
 by clinging to a chair. 
 
 " I didn t tell you cause you ve kind o discom- 
 bobolated me," Lyme replied while Win wildly 
 stared. " Yes, I picked her up this side o Smith- 
 boro, this mornin . She was with that imp o 
 darkness, Dick Richards. Like a fool I took her 
 into the wagon, and got as fur as the last patch o 
 woods t other side o the village, when she ske 
 daddles lights right out, takes leg bail. I told 
 her when we got to Lakeport I was goin to turn 
 her over to Hunger, an I thought she d come here 
 on her own hook. That s what brought me here. I 
 ain t jest comfortable here. You know Win, you 
 Underground fellers ain t my kind. But Hunger s 
 better n the gineral run an when he asked me to 
 wait an see if the gal come long, I thought I d do
 
 258 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 it. When we heard you come into the yard, we 
 thought sure it was her. She told me she d run 
 away from Ab s cause she hearn tell her owner d 
 got wind of where she was hidin ." 
 
 " She did run away," Win said in atone of utter 
 dejection. " I started after her." 
 
 " Likely nough I poked my nose in business 
 that wa n t no consarn of mine," Lyme said, seem 
 ing to construe his son s manner as a rebuke. 
 " Likely s not. I allus burn my fingers when I 
 touch niggers. But I gave the gal a lift to git her 
 out of Richards s claws an to get her way from 
 Smithboro. She ll turn up yit. Don t you go to 
 carryin on so bout it. It s only one nigger more 
 or less." 
 
 " I m not thinking of the girl," Win said. His 
 face was drawn and his tongue thick. " Father," 
 he continued, " did you meet anyone on the road, 
 anyone near here a man with a gun who was hunt 
 ing?" 
 
 " Yes I did. A chap all slicked up nice and tidy- 
 like, with a lot o fancy fixin s, who said he was out 
 gunnin . Not much of a shooter, I guess. Mighty 
 perlite, though. He was snoopin round the wagon 
 when I come up from the bottomless pit, where I d 
 beenhuntin for angel voices. Nuther of us brought 
 down any game."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 259 
 
 What it was that had aroused Morgan Thurston s 
 suspicions, Win was keen to learn, and finding noth 
 ing in the comments just made especially enlighten- 
 ing, he insisted on having his father carefully narrate 
 what had happened in the glen and on the road. 
 This Lyme proceeded to do, innocent entirely of the 
 significance which had been attached to the episode. 
 
 " That man," said Win at the conclusion of the 
 recital, " says he found a woman s body in the 
 woods and, father, he says she was murdered. I 
 brought him to the village in my buggy." 
 
 The words were hardly out of his mouth when 
 the door opened to admit Mr. Munger. " Excuse 
 me for interrupting," he said, " but I want to tell you 
 something. A neighbour of mine, Charles Willard, 
 just drove up. He says a woman s been murdered 
 over in the big woods. Everybody s out looking 
 for the body. I guess I ll walk over and see if 
 there s any truth in the story. If it s so you don t 
 think it could be the girl the girl we re waiting for, 
 do you ? " 
 
 The dead silence that followed the propounding 
 of this question was too ominous to require inter 
 pretation. The grim possibility was sinking into 
 the minds of the three men. No one ventured to 
 soeak for the space of several seconds.
 
 260 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " Well," Mr. Hunger said, breaking the spell, 
 " You just make yourselves to home and I ll see 
 if there s anything in the story." 
 
 When their host had gone, father and son looked 
 into each others faces, as lost in contemplation 
 they vainly sought words in which to continue 
 their conversation. At last Lyme, putting his 
 elbow on his knees, rivetted his son in his eye, the 
 while a glint of humour played about the corners of 
 his mouth. It was as if he had had a sudden 
 inspiration to talk. 
 
 " Win," he said, "did that hunter chap o yourn 
 say anything that made you think he d got his 
 suspicions bout me ? " 
 
 Then Win told his father what he had hitherto 
 concealed. Lyme did not have to be assured, nor 
 did his son take the trouble to say, that such a 
 suspicion as applied to him was monstrous. At the 
 same time they both agreed that it was a slender 
 thread on which a terrible accusation might be 
 hung. Should it prove true that a woman had been 
 slain, and if that woman was Cherry Lemoire, the 
 slave, revelations must follow that would involve 
 those dearest to them, as it must lead to the 
 unfolding of secrets the preservation of which was 
 as precious as life or honour. That a charge so
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 261 
 
 horrible as murder should lie, even as lightly as a 
 breath, against his father, bowed the son s head 
 in shame. Lyme, philospher though he was, felt 
 the chill of the cloud that was dropping down upon 
 him. 
 
 " Fust off," he finally remarked as nonchalantly 
 as possible, " we ll wait an see if anybody s been 
 killed ; an then we ll see who tis. If it s the 
 ni gg er gal well I ll have to face the music, I 
 s pose. I ve got one consolation they can t do no 
 more n hang me. Can they, boy ? " 
 
 Mr. Hunger returned while he was speaking. 
 It was with word that the search in the woods was 
 over, for the lights could be seen through the gap 
 stringing along the road. As yet the evil news had 
 not been verified. 
 
 Win accompanied Mr. Munger back to the inn 
 where half a hundred villagers of both sexes were 
 keeping vigil. Lyme would have gone too, but he 
 was persuaded to remain where he was by the 
 earnest entreaties of his son, Lyme s protest that 
 this seemed like self-accusation proving of no avail. 
 
 When the two men reached the inn they could 
 see the searchers at the head of the main street, the 
 lanterns showing like blotches of phosphorus in 
 the mist that had rolled over from the lake. First
 
 262 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 the wagons came rumbling along in a file like a 
 funeral. Close behind, people could be discerned 
 through the diffused light keeping up with the 
 horses by main strength. Far in the rear others 
 lagged, the lanterns they carried at their sides look 
 ing like will-o -the-wisps as they swung to and fro. 
 As the head of this ghostly procession neared the 
 inn the waiting throng broke into pieces, a mad 
 rush being made for the foremost vehicle. In it 
 sat Sid Fairman, the Deputy Sheriff, in a pose that 
 plainly indicated official guardianship. 
 
 " What d you find ? " yelled a dozen voices. 
 
 There was a hush when the officer of the law, 
 taking the lantern from the dashboard of the 
 wagon, held it so that its faint beams fell on the 
 upturned face of a woman, whose body, stretched 
 out in the long wagon-box, made a ghastly sight. 
 
 Win was at the wagon s side as quickly as he 
 could push his way there. He looked but once. 
 Turning to Mr. Munger, who had edged his way 
 forward in the crowd, Win whispered : 
 
 " It s Cherry Lemoire."
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 " GUESS I might as well go over to Sid Fairman 
 an tell him all I know bout it," was Lyme s cas 
 ual observation when Win came back with the 
 tidings. " I don t know a better way to git the 
 bulge on that hunter chap. He won t hold his 
 hush over night." 
 
 It was, however, decided that they should sleep 
 upon the question touching the best course to pur- 
 sue. Mr. Hunger would harbour them ; indeed, he 
 would have it no other way. As Lyme went, candle 
 in hand, to the room provided for him, his only 
 words were words of compassion for the slave girl, 
 and his heart seemed to be in every syllable of 
 them. 
 
 " I m thinking of my father," Win said as he 
 took leave of his host. 
 
 Win passed a wakeful night. A score of times 
 his fitful rest was broken by imagined noises that 
 he took to be the dreaded voice of the law. Hag 
 gard and worn he joined the household at the
 
 264 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 breakfast table. Lyme, on the contrary, came 
 downstairs in excellent spirits. His pillow, he 
 announced, had not been haunted by anything in 
 the least resembling a ghost. 
 
 " The Disbrow family has a duty to perform," he 
 said, having finished a cup of coffee and a slice of 
 toast, " and here goes." 
 
 Whereupon Lyme took down his hat from its 
 peg in the hallway and placed his hand on the 
 latch of the door. It was easy to see there was no 
 such thing as stopping him. He had thought it 
 over and his mind was made up. 
 
 " Just as you say, father," was Win s loyal re 
 sponse to this declaration. Father and son struck 
 hands in absolute silence. 
 
 Side by side, still silent, they made their way 
 towards the inn. Half-way there, where the main 
 streets crossed, they came face to face with Sid 
 Fairman and Morgan Thurston. 
 
 " You re jest the feller I m lookin fur, Lyme," 
 the Deputy remarked. 
 
 " Out huntin ? " Lyme said, as his gaze swept 
 by Thurston to the officer s good-natured face. 
 
 The young lawyer s notice was centred on Win. 
 Obviously the meeting under such circumstances 
 had been a surprise. When this had passed he
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 265 
 
 greeted Win cordially, but received in return the 
 coldest of nods. 
 
 " Me and my son thought we d drop round an 
 see you, Sid," Lyme went on to say. " You don t 
 know my son, Dr. Winfield Scott Disbrow of 
 Smithboro? " 
 
 The officer and the physician shook hands. 
 
 "Glad to meet you," Fairman said. " Knowed 
 your father sence the year One. He s the kind o 
 feller you kin bet money on. Thet s what I tell 
 Mr. Thurston didn t I Thurston ? " The young 
 lawyer gave prompt assent to this testimonial. 
 " But law s law, Lyme, and here I be to ask some 
 p inted questions. It s bout that woman we found 
 dead over in the woods las night. Know anythin 
 bout her ? " 
 
 At this point Mr. Thurston suggested that it 
 would be more circumspect to prosecute the in 
 quiry at the Justice s office, and as that was plainly 
 the thing to do, the party of four promptly headed 
 in that direction. 
 
 " Don t want to put no wrist irons on me, do you, 
 Sid?" inquired Lyme, before they had taken a 
 dozen steps. " I might want to light out." 
 
 The Deputy laughed. " Oh, but I ve got the 
 implements," he said, rattling something in his coat
 
 266 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 pocket, " but I m goin to keep em for the feller 
 what s done the deed. Guess it s a murder, sure, 
 though. She s got three as nasty gashes in her side 
 as ever you did see. One of em s long nough to 
 kill a beef critter." 
 
 At the Justice s office it was developed that 
 Lyme Disbrow had been brought into the case by 
 the bare statement of Morgan Thurston that the 
 picture-wagon had been on the road in the vicinity 
 of the crime if crime it was late the preceding 
 afternoon. His knowledge of this fact the young 
 lawyer had disclosed after a tintype of the woman 
 had been discovered in the bosom of her dress. 
 One thing had suggested another. Of course, 
 Sid Fairman was considerate enough to say that 
 though tintypes were not to be picked up on every 
 bush, because Lyme Disbrow happened to be a 
 picture-taker and happened to be in that neighbour 
 hood, it was no reason why if a woman was found 
 dead with a tintype on her, that Lyme Disbrow 
 took the picture. All Lyme had to say was that 
 he never saw the picture before and everybody in 
 the county would believe him. So said Sid. 
 
 " Where s the picture?" asked Lyme. " Show it 
 up and then I ll know if it s fust-class work like o 
 mine."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 267 
 
 " Hold on a minute, Mr. Disbrow," put in 
 Thurston. " This is a very serious matter. You 
 should not be allowed to do or to say anything to 
 incriminate yourself. If you acknowledge the 
 tintype is yours it will tend to show that the 
 woman was in your company yesterday. That has 
 not yet appeared." 
 
 The crude proceeding of the Deputy Sheriff s 
 inquiry had provoked a protest from the apostle of 
 the law. As well meant as was this interruption, 
 Lyme did not take it in the best part. The Deputy, 
 too, gasped in amazement. He had thought 
 Thurston was a State witness. 
 
 It was Lyme who spoke. " Get long, sonny," 
 he said dryly. " We ain t out huntin chipmunks." 
 
 Win, on the other hand, was inclined to listen to 
 the lawyer s advice. He whispered to his father 
 that it might be advisable to make no admissions. 
 
 Sid Fairman, having recovered his composure, 
 produced from his pocket the tintype. It was well 
 nigh bent double by a blow that had left a sharp 
 indentation on the enamelled surface that bore the 
 image of Cherry Lemoire. 
 
 " The knife did that," the Deputy said dramati 
 cally. " He druv it right in whar the picture 
 wuz right over her heart, where it wuz secreted
 
 268 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 when I wuz lookin fur evidence. Mighty good 
 piece of metal this ere." And the officer rattled it 
 between the fingers of his two hands, before hand 
 ing it to Lyme. 
 
 11 1 can t go back on my own art," Lyme said, as 
 he held the picture to the light. " That bears the 
 sign manual of Lyman Disbrow." 
 
 Instantly there was a hush of voices in the room. 
 The good people of Lakeport, who had tiptoed into 
 the presence of Justice, turned their heads to look 
 at one another. They nodded wisely as they 
 looked. A pitying sigh was breathed here and 
 there that told of popular sympathy with the 
 picture-taker. There was that in their faces, 
 however, that could not be misunderstood. They 
 believed that Lyme Disbrow was deliberately 
 putting his neck in the hangman s noose. 
 
 " Go on, Lyme, tell us all you know bout the 
 woman," said Sid. A frown of judicial austerity 
 had mounted to his shock-head. He was using 
 the lingo of the cross-examination. 
 
 "This is entirely improper," Thurston interrupted 
 to say. " I advise him to say nothing more." 
 
 Lyme turned on the young lawyer with a 
 withering gaze. 
 
 "I don t want none o your lip," he said, "an
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 269 
 
 when I do want what you call your advice, I ll come 
 round an buy an pay fur it. Now all I ve got to 
 say bout that tintype is I took it yesterday. The 
 woman rode in my wagon from this side o Smith- 
 boro. She said she was comin this way, an I 
 gave her a lift long the road, jest as I d do to- 
 morrer if she asked me. In the woods yender, I 
 heard someone callin* for help down a side hill, an 
 I left the wagon with the woman in it, to see what 
 the rumpus was bout. I didn t find nuthin there, 
 nor in the wagon nuther, when I come back, for 
 she d dug out. I don t think that s a hangin 
 matter, do you, Mr. Lawyer?" 
 
 The ejaculations that ran round the room showed 
 that the picture-taker was making headway against 
 suspicion. 
 
 " Who was the woman ? " asked the Deputy 
 Sheriff. 
 
 " That s where you ve got me," was Lyme s 
 cheery reply. 
 
 " Don t know her name ? " 
 
 " She didn t tell me, and I didn t ask her. I kin 
 be as perlite as some other folks, now and then." 
 
 His eye was in a merry twinkle as it rested on 
 Morgan Thurston. 
 
 Sid Fairman s inquisitorial powers were being 
 piqued. The villagers had begun to grin.
 
 270 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " See here now, Lyme Disbrow," he said showing 
 some temper. " This ain t no poppy show. Ain t 
 it kinder funny that you rode from Smithboro to 
 Lakeport with a woman an didn t find out her 
 name, an a dummed fine-lookin woman ter boot ? 
 What you know you ve got ter tell." 
 
 Lyme was scratching his head as if his ideas were 
 playing the truant. The onlookers began to wear 
 solemn faces again. Had Lyme been run to cover 
 by the clever Deputy Sheriff ? 
 
 " Say, Sid," the picture-taker said at last. 
 " Maybe this woman was like a friend of your n an 
 mine, Larry Burke, over to Morristown the one 
 that used to be the court crier when Thad Wilson 
 was Sheriff. Guess you knowed Thad, didn t you ? " 
 
 " Knowed him ? " the Deputy Sheriff answered, 
 " you d better b lieve I knowed him." 
 
 Lyme had penetrated the thin veneer of Sid Fair- 
 man s official importance with a word. The pros 
 pect of a good story at Lyme Disbrow s hands had 
 utterly disarmed him. The villagers drew closer to 
 listen. Lyme s fame had spread farther than Lake- 
 port. 
 
 " Did I ever tell you bout his hoss trade ? " 
 
 " No, you didn t," Sid replied, his eyes sparkling 
 with anticipation.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 271 
 
 " Well, Larry had a bay mare with a star on her 
 for ead that was some pumpkins. She was some 
 Arabian, I guess, anyways she d go like sixty. 
 Thad wanted that hoss, but Larry wouldn t sell fur 
 no money. You know Thad? If he wanted any- 
 thin he wanted it bad. Larry hated to come to 
 court cause Thad pestered him so bout that mare. 
 I don t want to dwell on the painful details, so I ll 
 tell you what happened. Larry put a price on the 
 bay mare a price as big as a barn. Thad, he 
 thought it over, an when he found out there wa n t 
 to be no deviation, he forked over the spondulicks. 
 I d hate to tell you how much you wouldn t b lieve 
 it. Happy ? He was the happiest man in Morris- 
 town, Thad was. That is, till he found out the 
 hoss was blind of an eye. Then he swore a blue 
 streak, an got over to where Larry hung out, jest 
 as quick s he could. Doggone you, he says, you 
 sold me this bay mare. Larry acknowledged the 
 corn. He had to, he had the money in the 
 Cazenovia bank. See here, says Thad, why 
 didn t you tell me this hoss was blind of any eye ? 
 What did Larry say? What? Jest this: You 
 see/ says he, when I bought that hoss the man 
 who sold her to me didn t tell me, an I naturally 
 thought he didn t want it known. Guess that s
 
 272 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 why that woman kept her name to herself. She 
 didn t want it known." 
 
 Sid laughed at the story as heartily as any of the 
 listening throng. Not until Lyme reminded him of 
 it did he resume the inquiry. There had been a 
 painful pause after the laughter died down. 
 
 " Is there anything further before the conven 
 tion ? " Lyme asked. 
 
 The Deputy Sheriff was still pondering upon the 
 point of the anecdote. Then for the first time dur 
 ing the interesting proceedings he deigned to consult 
 with the Justice of the Peace. This formality being 
 concluded, Sid announced, with as much solemnity 
 as he could command, that until the identity of the 
 murdered woman could be established nothing 
 further could be done. In the meantime he ex 
 pected the arrival of the Sheriff from Morristown, 
 and possibly the District Attorney, and that the 
 wheels of justice might not be clogged, he informed 
 Lyme that until those dignitaries took hold of the 
 case, he would have to ask the picture-taker to re 
 main in the village. 
 
 Lyme Disbrow was under arrest.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 WIN went back to Smithboro a heavy-hearted 
 man. It was his father s insistence that sent him 
 away, and the argument that prevailed was that 
 Bess should hear the news from his lips rather than 
 from a stranger s. He was just in time, for before 
 he reached Smithboro it had become known along 
 the road that a murder had been committed near 
 Lakeport, and the vague report of the crime had set 
 the people agog. It had been passed along from 
 farm to farm, and it lost nothing by this method of 
 its telling. The preacher had heard it at the Post 
 Office, and had spoken of it casually at home, with 
 out, it appears, having excited serious interest there, 
 inasmuch as among other embellishments added to 
 the gruesome story as it was handed from narrator 
 to listener, was an identification of the victim by a 
 name that was not the slave girl s. 
 
 Win got to his uncle s house by a road that avoid 
 ed the village streets, though he might have safely 
 passed that way, seeing that it was long after dark 
 when he arrived. His brain was in a whirl. He
 
 274 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 was the bearer of fearsome tidings, and the nearer 
 he came to those on whom his words would fall with 
 the heaviest weight of woe, the more he shrank 
 from the ordeal. Worse than all he had become 
 convinced that in having left the officials at Lake- 
 port uninformed of Cherry s identity he had acted 
 without taking due account of the consequences. 
 In withholding this information he had been guided 
 by a desire to shield the slave girl s protectors from 
 what must prove a most unfortunate connection. 
 How futile this move must be, Win determined af 
 ter it had been deliberately thought over. Once he 
 had actually pulled his horse to a standstill, resolved 
 to return and give the girl s name. The fear lest the 
 stupid officials might look on this course as an ad 
 mission that there was something to conceal alone 
 deterred him. So he went on. But to the end of 
 his journey he could not persuade himself he had 
 not taken what might prove a fatal step. 
 
 " Have you any news? " Bess asked the question 
 in a voice that rang with terror. She had not mis 
 taken the hard lines that seemed to furrow the face 
 against which she pressed her flushed cheeks. 
 
 " Only bad news, Bess dear," Win said, his voice 
 choking. " Only bad news. There has been a mur 
 der at Lakeport."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 275 
 
 "Yes, Win, we ve heard of that poor woman," 
 Bess replied. " But what about Cherry ?" 
 
 The preacher and his wife had come into the 
 room. Mr. Disbrow told how the story ran in 
 Smithboro. Win without breaking silence had 
 seemed to ask it. He was glad enough for a mo 
 ment in which to collect his thoughts. 
 
 "The woman was not shot," Win said at last, 
 " nor is her name the one you give. Cherry " 
 
 Bess had staggered into a chair, but she looked up 
 as if she would take the words from his quivering 
 lips. 
 
 " Is murdered ? " she cried. 
 
 " She is dead," Win said. 
 
 As if this was not misery enough, he had yet to 
 tell her all. He tried to form the words into a 
 sentence that would not leave a blister on his 
 tongue, but broke down utterly and sobbed in tear 
 less agony. Time and time again he struggled to 
 rise above his emotion, but his lips would not do his 
 bidding. The fateful words stuck in his throat. It 
 seemed as if the din of battle was sounding in his 
 ears. In vain he tried to lift his voice above the 
 roar. Even to whisper the words that his father was 
 accused was like making the accusation himself. He 
 would be an unnatural son to do it ! But by and
 
 276 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 by the truth was told. It was dragged out of him 
 little by little, and beside this grief the other was 
 wiped away, in a plenitude of tears. 
 
 God be thanked that it was from his lips that this 
 awful thing had fallen on the hearing of those he 
 loved ! It was the property of everybody the next 
 day. Across the intervening miles the story flew that 
 the Lakeport murder was laid at the door of Lyman 
 Disbrow, the picture-taker, and pitilessly vulgar 
 curiosity caught up the meagre scraps of gossip fact 
 and fable mingled in a hopeless state of chaos that 
 came drifting to Smithboro. The people pounced 
 on every detail of the murder that reached their 
 straining ears and laid it side by side with what 
 they knew of the accused to his condemnation or 
 exculpation, according to each one s point of view, 
 or prejudice, or love, or hate. 
 
 Lyme Disbrow was like most other men who live 
 their life in the open ; he had his friends and his 
 foes. How strong they were on one side or the 
 other he was to learn. His was a time, too, when 
 the test was supreme. Oh, the cruelty of it ! 
 Friends were to prove cravens ; foes forgiving, and 
 that was to be a blessing. 
 
 The father had broken faith with the son. From 
 him the clumsy myrmidons of the law at Lakeport
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 277 
 
 had learned who it was whose death had balked 
 their skill. Cherry Lemoire, a slave girl, fleeing 
 from bondage, he had told them she was, whereat a 
 motive came to light that quickly laid the charge of 
 murder at his door. Had not his hand been against 
 the runaway slaves always ? A thousand voices 
 could be found to condemn him out of his own 
 mouth. 
 
 It was a terrible time ! Why should there be 
 anything appalling in such an accusation ? The 
 accused man might be a good man, never so good, 
 but if he did not love the black man as his brother he 
 must needs hate him, and hatred has ever darkened 
 the pages of history with foul deeds. It was a ter 
 rible time ! A saintly man, a member of God s 
 ministry, had stood in his pulpit in Boston and de 
 clared that before he would jeopardize the safety 
 of the Union by resistance of the Slave Law 
 he would see his own mother dragged back to 
 slavery ! What might not a simpler soul, if he felt 
 as deeply, do under a provocation to him as great? 
 Would the killing of a runaway slave be more hei 
 nous than such profanation of the holy temple ? It 
 was a terrible time ! 
 
 Look at the reverse side of the picture. Mar 
 garet Garner, a slave mother, overtaken in her flight
 
 278 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 in Kentucky, had put her own child to death rather 
 than let it take in another breath of air in servi 
 tude. 
 
 It was a terrible time ! On the outstretched palm 
 of Jonathan Walker, as he stood pilloried in the 
 streets of Charleston, was burned the odious brand 
 of slave-stealer that Whittier s song glorified as a 
 prophecy of coming redemption. Charles T. Torrey, 
 a clergyman who died in a Southern dungeon as 
 a penalty for devotion to the work of rescue, was 
 denied the last rites of his church, and that in the 
 North, lest those who knelt where he had led in 
 prayer might sanction what he did. Was it not a 
 terrible time ? What had Lyman Disbrow, the 
 picture-taker, with his quips and his quibbles, ever 
 done to escape the rigours of such a time? There 
 would be no virtue, he would find, in a little cheap 
 philosophy ; no saving grace in a sunny smile ; no 
 weapon of defense in his harmless life ; no hope in 
 anything. It was a terrible time ! 
 
 " I allus thought as how he d come to some bad 
 end," remarked Sime Benson. " Ef it hadn t a bin 
 fur his brother, the preacher, I d bin furdrivin him 
 outer taown long go. It s my pinion, and I ain t 
 fraid to say it nuther, thet eny of these ere folks 
 who don t b lieve as we does, would jest soon kill a
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 279 
 
 slave as they would a woodchuck. Thet s what I 
 say." 
 
 Not all the Abolitionists were as rabid. Univer 
 sal horror there was beyond question ; demands, too, 
 that without regard to bleeding hearts the law must 
 sweep relentlessly to its revenge ; conviction even 
 that where the guilt was, there the law had laid its 
 heavy hand, but the yelp of one cur like Simeon 
 Benson was a thousand times less cruel than the 
 common air of pity that marked the prevailing tem 
 per of the village. To bear with this taxed Win s 
 patience as nothing else did throughout this trying 
 period. The complaisant way in which people he 
 had esteemed as friends would force their sympathy 
 upon him, without crying out against the infamy of 
 the charge, wrenched his very soul. When they 
 hoped that everything would come out all right 
 as if in the providence of Heaven the result could 
 be otherwise it seemed to him as if he must go 
 mad with suppressed rage. If, as often happened, 
 he chanced to overhear bitter words and these 
 were not lacking the sting left no such wounds. 
 
 " My God," he said, when, as was sometimes the 
 case, he gave way to his grief under the soft pressure 
 of Bess s sustaining love, " My God, what s the use? 
 My father, who has never harmed a living thing!
 
 28o THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Was ever in all this world a man more kind, more 
 gentle, more straightforward ? To what purpose 
 should a man live a decent, upright, honest life, if it 
 will not stand against a million such suspicions as 
 are invented to ruin him now ? Was there ever such 
 a travesty on justice? And our friends our fair- 
 weather friends who have worked with us in what 
 we have thought the holiest of causes ! Think of 
 them 
 
 " Not all have been so heartless, so wicked," Bess 
 had broken in to say. " We have not been disap 
 pointed in those whose steadfastness has been best 
 worth having. What is nobler than Mr. Gerritt s 
 conduct ? Does not that stand against all the 
 rest ? " 
 
 " I have not forgotten him," Win declared. 
 "Such friendship is a religion of itself. I think of 
 nothing else, Bess darling, and the more I think of 
 it, the stranger seems the treachery of the smaller 
 men. Why couldn t the others prove as true ? Is 
 such charity as his the virtue alone of greatness? " 
 
 Mr, Gerritt had indeed hastened to Smithboro 
 from Washington to silence the hue and cry that had 
 been raised against the picture-taker. He left Con 
 gress to its own devices that he might bear the 
 shield before his stricken friends, and having weighed
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 281 
 
 the evidence that so many others were hailing as 
 indubitable, made the most of his time among his 
 neighbours to forestall an adverse judgment in the 
 public mind. This he did with so much of fervour 
 that it alienated not a few of those good people who 
 had been counted as next his great heart. He went 
 to Morristown, where Lyme was awaiting trial, to 
 tender his kindly offices and to assure the father, as 
 he had assured the son, that he need not fear lest 
 his inability to obtain the ablest counsel should im 
 peril his defense. It was his retainer that brought 
 Edgar Bartlett upon the scene, and as there was no 
 lawyer at the criminal bar who was acknowledged to 
 be his match in skill, the word went forth that 
 Lyman Disbrow was going to have a fair chance for 
 his life. 
 
 " Our cause is on trial," the liberator insisted 
 when this mark of devotion was offered. " It must 
 follow that some of our operations must be exposed 
 to light, and that while justice is being done no 
 harm shall befall innocent persons, we shall have 
 the benefit of the best talent. I cannot admit dis 
 pute of my right to do this in the circumstances. 
 It is a solemn obligation, not a kindness." 
 
 Lawyer Bartlett plunged into the case with his 
 usual enthusiasm. He was not disposed to belittle
 
 282 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 the ugly look the accusation wore. Men had 
 stretched hemp on slimmer evidence, so he said, not 
 stopping to pick phrases that would sound less 
 brutal. It was a way Lawyer Bartlett had, and 
 often, after having gone over the outlook with him, 
 Win had felt that into every wound vinegar had 
 been poured. Lawyer Bartlett s reputation as a 
 forensic giant had preceded him from Syracuse, so 
 that whenever he was in Smithboro or Morristown 
 he never lacked for listeners. His appearance in 
 court was anticipated in those parts as if it was to 
 be a show. 
 
 "The Gordian knot in this case," Lawyer Bart 
 lett said to Win, is contained in that cipher mes 
 sage found in the picture-wagon. I think I know 
 juries well enough to assert without fear of contra 
 diction that a verdict against us could not be secured 
 on the other facts on which our friends of the prose 
 cution are relying. Disbrow will go on the stand 
 and admit that the slave girl rode with him. He 
 will admit that he knew she was running away. He 
 will admit that he took her picture, and that the 
 picture found on her person was the identical pic 
 ture he took. How she disappeared from the 
 picture-wagon while he was engaged, as he thought, 
 in an act that I shall eloquently touch on as a heroic
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 283 
 
 example of manly courage, we may depend on him 
 to describe so as to flood the court room with tears. 
 I have studied your father, and I feel confident that 
 he will develop the dramatic possibilities of this 
 situation." 
 
 " He will tell the simple truth," retorted Win, not 
 by any means certain that by employment of the 
 atrical effects the case was to be well served. 
 
 " Of course, of course," the lawyer observed. 
 " But just how much truth we want that is, just 
 how much it is safe for the jury to know is the 
 vital question. I shall let the witness testify on his 
 own behalf, for instance, that the blood stains they 
 found on his shirt came from the scratches he re 
 ceived while clambering in the briers on the hillside. 
 No doubt they ll make a lot of that bloody shirt 
 when they get into court. I used to be up to tricks 
 of that sort when I was public prosecutor. I wish 
 they hadn t got hold of that ensanguined garment. 
 Oh, that smart District Attorney of yours will dan 
 gle that shirt before the jury s eyes ! The best that 
 I can do is to dispute that the stains are blood if he 
 gets too frisky. But I rather think the accused can 
 take the curse off by telling a good story." 
 
 " Let s have the truth, Mr. Bartlett," Win said in 
 an icy tone.
 
 284 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 " So far, so good," Lawyer Bartlett went on. 
 " But there s a point we ought to stop at even in 
 having the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
 the truth. How did that cipher message get into 
 the wagon ? You ll say he doesn t know, and 
 that is the truth. I believe it and so do you, but 
 will the jury? There s the question. As I re 
 marked before, that s the Gordian knot. You know 
 that cipher message,just as those snooping constables 
 found it on the floor of the wagon, was written by 
 you. You know it referred to the escape of the 
 girl Cherry. You don t know, any more than your 
 father does, how it reached the wagon, and how it 
 reaches forth its grisly hand to grip him by the 
 throat, holding him while the hangman adjusts the 
 fatal noose." 
 
 Win shuddered. 
 
 "Stop!" he cried in despair. " For God s sake, 
 stop ! " 
 
 " I shall," was the imperturbable reply of the 
 lawyer. " But just where ? That cipher is all 
 Greek to the people in this case. The District 
 Attorney doesn t know what it means. He doesn t 
 know where it came from. It s a sealed book to 
 him. But he ll wave it aloft as something mys 
 terious, a kind of second fiddle in the performance
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 285 
 
 to the bloody shirt. He ll riddle us with innuendo. 
 He ll say here is the heart of the mystery ! Here 
 is the damning proof ! I would if I stood in his 
 boots. He d be a stotenbottle if he didn t do it. 
 What is this ? he ll yell, and an awful doubt will 
 cloud the jury s mind. Who brought it to the 
 wagon ? Then he ll say, Who but the prisoner 
 at the bar ? " 
 
 Win trembled when he saw the effect of this sort 
 of sophistry. The lawyer was making it a startling 
 picture in his mind. 
 
 " Why not tell what our suspicions are ? that 
 Dick Richards left it there, that he is the 
 murderer? " 
 
 " Suspicions are not evidence," Lawyer Bartlett 
 answered coldly. " Richards hasn t been seen in 
 this part of the country for months, except by 
 members of your family, and your evidence would 
 not count it would be thought prejudiced. No, 
 that won t do. Now what I am thinking about is, 
 shall we unfold the mystery ? Shall we decipher 
 that message, and throw ourselves on the common 
 sense of the jury, saying that if that message were a 
 proof of the prisoner s guilt, we would leave its 
 contents unrevealed until the crack of doom, until 
 the last trump ? I shall have to think over this
 
 286 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 aspect of the case. It s the Gordian knot, I tell 
 you." 
 
 Win went away with his heart full of trouble , 
 the lawyer with his mind full of doubt.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 IN connection with the sorrow that had come to 
 the Disbrow family Smithboro gave itself up to 
 deepest regret when it learned that the wedding 
 had been indefinitely postponed. This was common 
 ground on which friend and foe could stand. The 
 moistened eye of sympathy, the turned-up nose of 
 spite, told the simple tale of village life. In 
 Bess s heart no robin red-breast was singing. 
 Its joyful note of a few weeks ago had died out 
 in a mournful echo. All the little trumperies of 
 that blissful time, not so long ago, were laid away 
 with a brave heart. Bess was brave. Win had said 
 it a thousand times. 
 
 Now he came to tell her that she must be braver 
 still. While the blackest of clouds hung over the 
 good name he bore it would be monstrously wicked 
 in him to hold her to her promise. This was the 
 avowal he made following his talk with the lawyer. 
 He had heard enough to convince him no other 
 course was open to an honourable man. 
 
 " Until now," he said as his eyes streamed, " I
 
 288 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 have thought only of the disgrace of the accusation. 
 Mr. Bartlett spares me the bitterness of hearing 
 that the defense is not sure is not absolutely sure. 
 If 
 
 Win could not bring himself to speak the fearful 
 words. It was not required that they should be 
 spoken. In vain Bess begged the privilege of 
 being at his side through it all ; he would not 
 yield. No, he would bear the cross alone. Bess s 
 courage was overtaxed at last. She flew to 
 Dorothy that she might hide her unutterable grief 
 in the bosom of a true friend. 
 
 At the door of the Gerritt mansion she met 
 Morgan Thurston coming out. Dorothy was doing 
 the honours of her father s house and had ushered 
 the lawyer to the threshold. 
 
 " Oh, Bess," she exclaimed, " how lucky ! 
 Perhaps you can tell me what to do if Mr. Thurston 
 will kindly come back." 
 
 Dorothy, herself under a strain, did not see the 
 look of entreaty in Bess s face. The young lawyer 
 had graciously responded to Dorothy s wish. 
 There was nothing left for Bess to do but follow 
 them in, which she did, with the hope that he 
 could be quickly dismissed. Her anguish would 
 not wait long.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 289 
 
 When she found that this was the Mr. Thurston 
 of Lakeport, whose name was widely known in 
 connection with the charge against the picture- 
 taker, Bess was even less inclined to prolong the 
 interview. Yet she could discover nothing re 
 vengeful in the young man s bearing, which, on the 
 contrary, was extremely gracious and cordial. He 
 had called on Mr. Gerritt, and was sadly dis 
 appointed to find him in Washington. To Dorothy 
 he had appealed in this extremity, feeling that it 
 was a duty to make known his errand before it 
 was too late. In a word, he had come to ask Mr. 
 Gerritt to allow him to be associated with the 
 defense in the coming trial, on the ground that 
 being thus related to the case, his appearance as a 
 witness might possibly be avoided. The dubious 
 efficacy of this device was not apparent to the 
 young women, nor did the young lawyer attempt 
 to guide them through the legal labyrinth into 
 which his enthusiasm had led him. As became a 
 limb of the law astute enough to devise such a 
 desperate remedy he went no further than to arouse 
 their sympathy. 
 
 " I am a believer in Mr. Disbrow s innocence of 
 this crime," he explained to the young women. 
 " It is this conviction that moves me. Unfortunately
 
 2 9 o THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 I have been brought into the case in a way that 
 I fear may damage the defense. My story if told 
 in court could be distorted by a sharp lawyer to 
 Mr. Disbrow s great injury. I see what could be 
 done with it. At one time I misconstrued his 
 conduct as suspicious. I believe a jury would do the 
 same. I do not want to throw even the weight of 
 a straw against him. I have told Miss Gerritt 
 that I thought her father would see what my motive 
 is, and acquit me of resorting to an underhanded 
 method of thrusting myself forward. You see I 
 take that risk in thus offering my services. You 
 may not know it, but my course is most unusual ; but 
 I am urged to take it because a life is at stake." 
 
 Bess and Dorothy were listening with grave at 
 tention. It was Bess who suggested timidly for 
 the matter sorely perplexed her that as Mr. Bart- 
 lett was in Smithboro, Mr. Thurston had better lay 
 the matter before him. 
 
 " I hesitate to do that," replied Mr. Thurston, 
 " because it would seem to be a breach of pro 
 fessional etiquette. I had hoped that Mr. Gerritt, 
 to whom Mr. Bartlett owes this case, might take 
 the initiative. I likewise fear to broach the subject 
 to either the prisoner or Mr. Disbrow. They might 
 distrust my motives."
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 291 
 
 " I wanted Mr. Thurston to go to Win," Dorothy 
 said. " That was why I was so glad you came 
 when you did. I think Win ought to talk with 
 Mr. Thurston. Don t you, dear?" 
 
 Bess answered in the affirmative. Her voice 
 wavered, but its tone was sincere. Morgan Thurs- 
 ton s frankness had won her. He seemed to be 
 the soul of honour, and Dorothy was plainly on his 
 side. Being the daughter of her father, she always 
 believed in the better nature of the species. Bess 
 being a woman of more contemplative habits, 
 reached the same conclusion by a different process. 
 Assuredly they had found a fast friend. Broken in 
 spirit as Bess was, deep as she was in the depths of 
 despair, she hailed him as a proof that the world 
 was not so pitilessly cruel after all. Win was put 
 ting too low an estimate on the inherent good of it. 
 
 Nevertheless it was Dorothy who took Morgan 
 to Win, that a matter of so much importance might 
 be duly considered. Bess, who had never failed in 
 courage until now, confessed she was not equal to 
 this test. Win thanked the young lawyer cordially 
 for his proffered help and went with him to Mr. 
 Bartlett. 
 
 The famous pleader stroked his beard in a state 
 of meditative uneasiness while he listened to the
 
 292 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 strange proposition. He grunted, as was his habit 
 when he was pleased, and smiled grandly when he 
 saw a weak spot in the presentation. 
 
 " Not half bad," he said in the end, " not half 
 bad. I m inclined to think there s the making of a 
 lawyer in you, Thurston. Of course, that s not 
 saying you ve hit on a feasible plan ; but it s 
 tricky, mighty tricky. You see I haven t thought 
 of you as a dangerous element in the case ; but the 
 best of us are mistaken sometimes, and perhaps 
 you might cut more of a figure against us than I 
 have thought. I know about what you could tes 
 tify to Disbrow s nervousness when you met him 
 on the road and all that. In these big cases little 
 things count for a good deal at times. The jury 
 has to bring in the verdict, and no one can ever tell 
 how a jury will cut up. But I think I can make 
 use of you, Thurston, and if you ll agree not to be 
 disappointed if I don t work out the idea as you ve 
 planned it, I ll take you into the case. I want to 
 think it over." 
 
 It was known all the country round about, within 
 a day or two, that Morgan Thurston, the young 
 lawyer of Lakeport, was to appear in Lyman Dis 
 brow s defense, as the associate of Ed^nr Bartlett. 
 The great man himself spread the news in Smith-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 293 
 
 boro. It was commented on in various ways, 
 mostly as indicative of the great man s resource 
 and cunning, for had he not recruited the defense 
 from the ranks of the enemy ! 
 
 Lawyer Bartlett was prodded upon this flattering 
 interpretation of his resourcefulness. 
 
 "Moonshine," he exclaimed in reply. " Thurs- 
 ton is as much the people s witness as he ever was. 
 He is not privileged to keep silent, because what he 
 knows of the case was learned before he assumed 
 the relation of counsel to Disbrow. Of course," 
 he said, winking knowingly, " it would be out of 
 the usual procedure for the people to call him to 
 testify against his own client, but the people can 
 do it if they want to. Young Thurston won t 
 flinch either. He s as good a citizen as he is a 
 lawyer. I took him as a lawyer chiefly for the 
 reason that I wanted someone who could be of 
 help to me in making up the jury. You know it s 
 all with the jury. We lawyers don t amount to a 
 hill o beans, anyway." 
 
 But folks- would not stop talking. Lawyer Bart 
 lett was thought a bigger man than ever. But 
 Morgan did not stand in the most enviable light as 
 the rumour grew to be something more than a 
 whisper that he had been bought off. Nor did the
 
 294 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 young lawyer s troubles end here. As he found it 
 necessary to be frequently in Smithboro during the 
 summer, and on these visits spent much of his time 
 with Bess and Dorothy, the tongues of the gossips 
 were not long idle. The people of Smithboro had 
 eyes in their heads. That there had been an es 
 trangement between Win and Bess was a truth not 
 to be hidden, and that the vacant place in her heart 
 had been filled by another, the villagers were quick 
 to imagine as, in an unhealthy state of morbid fret- 
 fulness, they told off the lagging days to the time 
 fixed for the trial of the picture-taker.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 LYMAN DISBROW was under sentence of death. 
 
 He had been pronounced guilty of the murder of 
 Cherry Lemoire, the slave girl, by a jury of his 
 peers on a sullen day in October, when from out a 
 scowling sky there came a patter of rain-drops on 
 the court-house panes, and the murmur of far-away 
 thunder over the seared hills. The wet of the clouds 
 and the warmth of the earth enshrouded the old 
 town in a steaming fog. Morristown was buried in 
 a mist of tears. 
 
 Lyme had passed out from the seat of justice to 
 the cell of the condemned through a white-faced 
 throng bordered on either side by bowed heads. 
 As he walked with downcast eyes across the jail- 
 yard to the ivy-grown prison a matting of fallen 
 leaves, yellow like the meadow-lark s breast, brown 
 like the buckwheat harvested on the distant fields, 
 red like the drip of a new wound and black like a 
 band of mourning, deadened his footfalls on the 
 uneven flags. A golden harbinger of the autumn
 
 296 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 fluttered down from the skeleton fingers of an oak 
 bough above his head. 
 
 Lyme stopped short in his walk, and stooping 
 caught up a handful of the dead leaves, upon which 
 he again loosened his hold to let them drop lightly 
 at his feet. 
 
 "They never harmed nobuddy, he said, with 
 just the trace of a smile on his face that dimmed 
 the vision of the guard who strode beside him. 
 
 When this man turned the key in the cell door, 
 Lyme was whistling the old tune. 
 
 Everything possible had been done to save Lyme 
 from this fate. Edgar Bartlett s fame as a great 
 lawyer would live in those parts if he had never 
 darkened a court-room before or after. It had been 
 a spectacular trial. At the very outset, when the 
 whole country was wondering whether the District 
 Attorney would force Morgan Thurston into the 
 witness chair to accuse his own client, Bartlett had 
 closed an impassioned opening of the case with the 
 surprising declaration that the defense demanded 
 that his young associate be called ! Throughout the 
 county this was looked upon as a master stroke in 
 criminal practice. It acquitted the defense of any in 
 tent to take an unfair advantage of the prosecution. 
 It made a hero of Morgan, for he went on the stand
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 297 
 
 with such a flourish that the District Attorney was 
 utterly disarmed. It was admitted everywhere 
 that that official staggered under this turn of events. 
 It was an adroit frustration of his plan to leave 
 Morgan unsummoned, with the object in view of 
 impressing on the jury in the summing up the fact 
 that here was the man who, skulking behind his 
 professional privileges, was cheating the gallows of 
 its honest prey. But the wind had been effect 
 ually taken out of his sails, and all Morristown 
 was laughing at the disconcerted District Attorney. 
 
 " We made up our minds to try the people s case 
 as well as our own," Lawyer Bartlett said sportively 
 where he sat in the village tavern surrounded by a 
 host of admiring listeners that evening. 
 
 But the District Attorney evened the score when, 
 as a final witness, he called Winfield Scott Disbrow 
 and wormed out of him scrap by scrap the damning 
 admission that it was he who had pencilled the mys 
 terious message in cipher that had been found in the 
 picture-wagon. Then Win was compelled to put 
 its contents into plain English, and thereby to ex 
 pose the secrets of his brotherhood, a revelation he 
 resisted until he saw that every question was being 
 cunningly framed by his tormentor to beguile the 
 jury rather than himself. Of this exploit, it goes
 
 298 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 without saying, the clever lawyer made the most in 
 his closing speech. To the theatrical appearance of 
 Morgan Thurston as a witness he pointed as a con 
 temptible attempt to play upon the sympathies of 
 the jury, that through the blinding mist of their 
 tears they might not see another witness sneak 
 away in the darkness ! 
 
 " From its inception to its accomplishment," the 
 District Attorney said, " I have never known a 
 scurvier trick to be practised in the courts of this 
 State." He was still smarting under the ridicule 
 that had been heaped on him as the prey of Edgar 
 Bartlett s cunning. " We were to be persuaded 
 you, the jury were to be persuaded that the de 
 fense had nothing to conceal, that its record was an 
 open book, that it asked no quarter, and begged no 
 mercy. I am not saying whether duty would, or 
 wouldn t, have induced me, as the public prose 
 cutor, to call Thurston on my own motion, but 
 you have seen how he was used to mask the real 
 purpose of the defense. You have seen it, and 
 maybe like myself were for the moment deceived 
 by the chicanery of it. But has it not been apparent 
 that my distinguished opponent in this case has 
 attempted to trick and blind you ? On the pretext 
 of being willing to sacrifice everything to get at the
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 299 
 
 heart of the mystery, he offered Thurston to the peo 
 ple as a witness, letting the impression go abroad 
 that in so doing he was aiding the prosecution. 
 But if that was his honest purpose, why did he not 
 go a step further, and let the people know where 
 the prisoner s son stood in this case ? I should like my 
 distinguished friend to answer that. As you have 
 seen, gentlemen, the missing link in this chain was 
 the authorship of the cipher message sent in the 
 floating log, and the only man in the world who 
 could make it plain was Disbrow, the son. Need I 
 dwell on this sad feature of this trial? I think not. 
 But I want you to remember that Winfield Scott 
 Disbrow was not called by the defense. It was left 
 to the people, through me, as their humble repre 
 sentative, to drag to light the fearful secret hidden 
 in that scrap of paper." 
 
 Lyme s own protest, when he went on the witness 
 stand, that he knew nothing of all this, and that the 
 cipher was unknown to him, the District Attorney 
 laughed to scorn. 
 
 " It was the poor girl s death warrant," the Dis 
 trict Attorney cried. " I do not say that Win Dis 
 brow wanted her killed, or knew she would be ; 
 but I do say she was in the way she was in the 
 way. And I do say she was alive in the prisoner s
 
 300 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 wagon for a whole day and was dead at night. I 
 am not here, gentlemen, to rake up the ashes of 
 political discord, that they may be fanned into 
 flame by the wind of passion. A temple of justice 
 is no place for that. But we must not lose sight of 
 the fact, nevertheless, that upon the grave questions 
 of governmental policy which at present divide this 
 community, this prisoner is arrayed on one side. 
 It is in the evidence of this case that he has never 
 been slow to show his hostility to the negro fugi 
 tives who, we know from the evidence of his own 
 son, are being hurried through the North to places 
 of safety on foreign shores. Most of you know 
 where I stand on this question and know that I 
 speak with no prejudice against this man s hatred of 
 the black race. But I am in duty bound to insist 
 that it was a misfortune to this murdered woman to 
 have been taken under the care of one who had no 
 sympathy for her kind. It would not have been 
 her choice or the choice of those who succored her. 
 I am impelled to say this with sorrow, but I am 
 speaking as an instrument of the law, and have no 
 alternative." 
 
 The passions of men were not so lightly stirred 
 in those days that a plea so specious would miss its 
 purpose. Known, as the District Attorney was, to
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 301 
 
 be a sympathizer with relentless execution of the 
 Fugitive Slave Law, this bit of pettifogging was 
 hailed as a marvellous exhibition of zeal on his 
 part, and it had the desired effect on a jury well 
 known to be of anti-slavery predilections. 
 
 " As to the motive for this crime," the prosecutor 
 continued, " the doctors have told you what that 
 was. I leave the sickening, the horrible, details of 
 what it must have been, to your imagination you 
 gentlemen who have wives and daughters. Cherry 
 Lemoire was a beautiful woman, but a slave, a run 
 away slave, whose life under our laws was her 
 master s, but her honour was her own. If she died 
 protecting it, what is our duty towards her slayer ? 
 I tell you gentlemen, the civilized world is watching 
 you to-day. In a sense, this wretched woman was 
 a hostage in the North. Think of that. If there 
 be those amongst us who would teach our brethren 
 in the South that there is a line at which in the 
 treatment of these people these slaves brutality 
 must stop and humanity must begin, let us not fail 
 to mark it. A human life has been taken, a black 
 woman s though it be, and a life must pay the for 
 feit. That is God s law, as well as man s." 
 
 Swayed by a process of reasoning no better than 
 this Lyman Disbrow has been convicted of Cherry 
 Lemoire s murder.
 
 302 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 Lyme s genial philosophy was his support and 
 prop through it all. He whistled more industriously 
 than ever. He had no fault to find with what had 
 been done on his behalf, and, when informed of the 
 steps being taken to secure a new trial, expressed 
 himself as pleased, but without being lifted to any 
 thing like heights of enthusiasm. The one sorrow 
 that weighed him down was the knowledge that a 
 spectre had come between Win and Bess. Of this 
 he often talked during the winter, which with 
 ghost-like tread was abroad in the land. Win and 
 Bess went to see him at Morristown, frequently 
 making the journey over the drifted roads at no 
 little pains but they never came together. They 
 had met inside the jail once or twice, on one occa 
 sion when Morgan had driven Bess over. To neither 
 had Lyme broached the hope that, whatever hap 
 pened, their happiness might not be sacrificed. 
 How could he ask this girl to be the mother of 
 children who would be taught to lisp no word of 
 love for the grandfather whose name they bore ?
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE jail-yard was ringing with the blows of the 
 carpenters hammers. They had been at it out 
 there since dawn, and Lyme had grown used to the 
 dismal sound, as he had grown used to every other 
 note of ominous import that led up to the day 
 of execution. The strokes were rueful, fateful, 
 sepulchral, though they betokened nothing save the 
 sharp impact of iron against iron as the nails were 
 driven through the timbers. It makes ghastly music 
 to build as they were building, with a gallows for a 
 sounding-board. Men s voices, too, in that gloomy 
 pile of ivy-covered limestone came to the ear as 
 uncannily as echoes in a cavern. 
 
 It was all over and Lyme knew it. When, in com 
 pany with Win, Lawyer Bartlett had gone to the 
 jail to tell him that the law s intricacies had been 
 searched in vain for a remaining hope, that the 
 Governor would not put forth a succoring hand, he 
 listened without sign of fear. This scene wrung 
 Win s heart as it had not been wrung before. A
 
 304 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 thousand times more painful was his father s resig 
 nation than if they could have wept out their sorrow 
 on each other s breasts. The lawyer knew what it 
 meant when Win walked down the corridor out of 
 sight. 
 
 " It ll hit him hard, Disbrow," Bartlett said. 
 " And I don t know but you re making it worse for 
 him, trying to keep up trying, did I say? You re 
 doing it. This is martyrdom, this killing of you, and 
 you re dying like a martyr. I ve seen many a man 
 in your fix, Disbrow, but you take the rag off the 
 bush for cold nerve." 
 
 " O I m jest tryin to take things as they come ; 
 that s all I m doin , * Lyme replied. " As to nerve, 
 p rhaps I ain t got any. I didn t ever tell you, did I, 
 bout Joel Barto, the fellow that invented the 
 famous Barto patent churn ? The contrivance wa n t 
 much of a go when he started in with it over in 
 Cazenovia where he sot up makin em for the 
 market. You see he kinder run short o capital, and 
 thought as how he d take some other fellers in to 
 help him long. One day he got hold of Delos 
 Todd, who you mayn t know is bout as slick as they 
 come. He kept bank over in Oneida. Well, as I 
 am tellin you, Joel and Delos sat down beside the 
 churn to look it over. He was a talky cuss, Joel
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 305 
 
 was, and Delos was beginnin to see things jest as 
 the inventor wanted him to, when suthin mighty 
 peculiai happened. Delos was lookin at Joel, 
 when he saw a fly light square on Joel s eye-ball an 
 stay there yes sir, stay there Joel never movin a 
 muscle. That fly jest walked up an down that eye 
 ball as independent as a hog on ice an Joel, he 
 took no more consarn bout it than if it was on top 
 o the house. Delos couldn t jest go that. He 
 jest got up an dusted, saying he had to git hum 
 for supper, or to lock the bank safe, or suthin. He 
 said arterwards, not to Joel, who never knew what 
 struck him that he didn t care to have any dealin s 
 with a feller who had so much nerve he could let a 
 fly play tag on his eye-ball. You see he didn t 
 know that Joel had a glass eye. He didn t have 
 any more nerve than the rest on us. P rhaps my 
 nerve s made o glass." 
 
 " By the Great Horn Spoon, Disbrow, I guess 
 tis, I guess tis," was the lawyer s reply. " Your 
 heart is glass anyway. I can read you right through 
 it. But those jurors were as blind as bats. This 
 thing s the damnedest outrage on justice I ever knew 
 anything about. It makes a man sick he ever had 
 anything to do with the law. A glass heart ? Yes, 
 that s just what you ve got, but that jury couldn t
 
 306 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 look into its depths with those Abolition eyes of 
 theirs. They re going to hang you to-morrow not 
 for what you did, but for what you said. It s all 
 up and I m here to say good-bye." 
 
 And these two men said the final word with hands 
 clasped and smiles on their lips. 
 
 It was May of the year. It had been a backward 
 spring with leaden skies and a cold chill in the air. 
 For days not a ray of sunlight had peeked into the 
 dungeon. To-day the day before the end it 
 poured down upon the bleak walls as if it would 
 wrap the bars in a white heat and melt them in their 
 sockets. The songs of the birds filtered through 
 the massive walls the picture-taker s old friends 
 the birds ! They would see him merrily on his way ! 
 The carpenters hammers could not silence them. 
 Pound as mercilessly as you will, you blind hire 
 lings of a blinder justice, yon gallows tree will rot 
 at its foundations ere you drown their parting carol ! 
 
 The preacher had come to say farewell to his 
 brother. They sat down together in the corridor 
 where the sun fell full in their faces. 
 
 " I have never spoken to you, brother," the preach 
 er said, " of those things which concern your spirit 
 ual welfare." 
 
 " We ve followed our two trades long different
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 307 
 
 paths," Lyme replied, as his brother ..esitated for a 
 word. 
 
 " I have refrained from exercising my prerogative 
 as a minister of God," the preacher went on, " be 
 cause, Lyme, I have not known many men who 
 were better. More religious men I have known, 
 men who come nearer what I have been taught and 
 verily believe is the Christ-like ideal ; but that you 
 have been a good man, good to most men, and to 
 yourself less than all, I know." 
 
 "Perhaps that s why I m goin to die young," 
 Lyme said, smiling grimly. 
 
 " Sooner or later, we all must die, Lyman," said 
 the preacher. He was holding the picture-taker s 
 hands fast in his own and looking straight into his 
 eyes. " I come to-day as your brother in the flesh, 
 not your brother in the Lord. Were I not a clergy 
 man, I would be a believer in the divinity of the 
 Saviour, in the completeness of His forgiveness of 
 sin, in His power to save souls. Let s forget that I 
 ever lift up my voice by such authority as the church 
 gives. In the pulpit I preach that salvation is 
 secure only through Christ and Him crucified. I 
 preach this because I believe it, as I believe you 
 have never laid a finger by way of harm on a living 
 thing. I should be afraid to die without believing
 
 308 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 as I do. Yet, brother, I may be wrong. The life 
 of common honesty, of common goodness, that you 
 have led may stand as well on the Judgment Day 
 as that of professed religion, which I try to live. 
 God help us all, I trust the atonement of sins means 
 nothing less than this. But, believing as I do, I 
 want to stand on the threshold of eternal life with 
 you, confident, serene, hand in hand, as a brother 
 should. Let me not harbour for the moment, in 
 these dreadful last moments, the thought that for 
 all eternity you are not safe." 
 
 Lyme s face wore a reverent look. He remained 
 silent while his brother prayed. 
 
 " We can stand hand in hand wherever they put 
 us, Ab," Lyme said at last. " Our God is mother s 
 God, and I ve never had no other. To my thinkin 
 he s such a good God that we needn t go huntin 
 him as some preacher I once heard p rhaps it was 
 you called up doctrinal heights. But honestly, 
 Ab, I d be lyin on the brink of the grave if I told 
 you I thought what s to come fur all time was to be 
 all good or all bad accordin to what I d done down 
 here. That wouldn t be a fair shake, Ab, an a 
 good God yourn, an mine an mother s wouldn t 
 make it that way. God don t make mistakes same s 
 men do. He wouldn t be God if He didn t have
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 309 
 
 a way o rightin things if men got em wrong. God 
 wouldn t be any better n a jedge an a jury if that 
 wa n t so. It don t seem to me, an never has, that 
 a man could crowd enough hellishness into this 
 little spell o weather we call life to earn damnation 
 till the crack o doom. That s man s fashion of doin 
 things, not God s, Ab, an I m talkin bout your God 
 an mother s God an mine." 
 
 The preacher was content. His cheeks were wet 
 with tears. 
 
 " Mother s God is all sufficient," he said and again 
 bowed his head in prayer. 
 
 "Twa n t like you, Ab, to see this thing in any 
 other light," remarked Lyme, as he rose, and, with 
 hands folded behind him, walked back and forth in 
 the sunny glow. " You were allus like mother." 
 
 " If mother were here now, brother, what would 
 she say to us grown men as we are, but more in 
 need of a mother s love to-day than ever we were in 
 our lives what would she say ? " 
 
 The preacher felt that the parting hour had 
 come. Doubtless the law would not be so savage 
 as to snatch its victim from his side without giving 
 as many opportunities for talk as the fleeting time 
 would afford ; but now, if ever, it was pitifully appar 
 ent that the brothers must say whatever was to be
 
 3 io THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 said that no other ears should hear. Yet the man of 
 God knew not what to say. Lyme s eyes rested 
 wistfully on his brother s agonized face, and he 
 seemed to understand. 
 
 " I guess I know what s on your mind, Ab," the 
 picture-taker saicl. " You re kinder up the stump. 
 You wonder why I seem to be takin my medicine 
 in this mess I ve got into without makin all sorts o 
 faces an bellerin like a baby. You re as sure as 
 kin be that I never done this thing, an Oh, I 
 know, Ab, don t say nary a word you re sure on 
 it, and that s nough. But you wonder why I 
 haven t said I wa n t guilty. You remember 
 mother, how when we d been blamed fur doin 
 suthin maybe we had, an maybe we hadn t an 
 p raps dad d laid on the gad she d come stealin 
 into our room, after we d gone to bed, an jest look 
 at us an look at us with the candle where we could 
 see her face an she could see ourn. She knew 
 without askin us how bad we d been. I never dast 
 look at her if everything wa n t all right. There 
 weren t no other eyes like her n in all the world. 
 I ve seen times, Ab, when your eyes looked like 
 mother s. They do now, an , Ab, I m not hidin 
 my face in the pillow, same s I did when we d been 
 up to suthin . Am I now ? "
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 311 
 
 The preacher reached forth and folded his 
 brother to him in a strong embrace. There was 
 silence between the men for a long time. At last 
 the preacher spoke. 
 
 " And you ll see mother there," he said, " if 
 they Oh, my God, it s cruel, cruel, cruel ! " 
 
 " If they kill me out there on that gallus," was 
 Lyme s calm wording of his brother s unexpressed 
 dread. " Yes, Ab, I ll see her, an that ain t so 
 bad, is it ? I ve made up my mind to it, Ab, an I 
 guess I ve got to go through with it. You ll say I 
 ain t much of a Christian an I guess you ve got 
 it bout right but there must be somewheres to 
 go after a feller s passed in his checks, somewheres 
 where the birds sing. I ve been thinkin it over an 
 there must be some such place some place where 
 trouble ends. You remember, Ab, don t you, how 
 mother used to like to hear us laugh ? I can t git it 
 out my old noddle that some way or t other mother 
 an Heaven go together. If that s so, there s goin 
 to be lots of children laughin till they can t stop, 
 an jest fillin the hull world with innocent joy. 
 That ould be a purtier picture to me, Ab, than a 
 lot of grown folks sittin on the wet edge of a 
 cloud playin jew s-harps. Anyways, there ain t 
 goin to be any cryin , an say, Ab, I want you to
 
 3 i2 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 tell em all not to cry bout me Win and Bess an 
 all cause it s all right ; it s all right. We ve got 
 to shake hands an say good-bye, but I want it 
 cheerful, jest as if I was steppin into that old 
 wagon o mine an goin down the road behind Old 
 Ironsides. I d have to go bimeby, an what s the 
 odds ? Jest you make up your mind, Ab, I m goiri 
 down the road. I want you to look at it that ways 
 an Win an Bess, tell em that s how I d like it. 
 Doggone it, Ab, it s got to be that way, an no 
 other." 
 
 The preacher bore this message to the outer world. 
 Its mandate was respected as one after another of 
 those nearest and dearest to the doomed man 
 hurried past the death shadows that brooded over 
 the prison, where, fortified and strengthened by this 
 happy conceit of what his infamous end was to be, 
 he met them without a quiver of the lip, without a 
 furtive tear, building up an illusion in the dungeon 
 that flooded it with the glorious light of hope. 
 There were no agonizing leavetakings, even when 
 Bess came, as she understood for the last time for 
 she was to be spared the trial of a sojourn in Mor- 
 risto\vn until the morrow. 
 
 To Win the dreadful day was like a dream. His 
 vision would not pierce the dark beyond. Before
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 313 
 
 his eyes there showed a rainbow. He could not 
 but see it in his father s face, serenely cheerful to 
 the end, that the storm had passed. 
 
 " I m jest goin down the road to-morrer," Lyme 
 said, and that was all. It was a consoling fancy, 
 truly, and dried the tears of woe.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Till-: village folk who saw Bess Malcolm drive into 
 Smithboro, about the middle of th.it afternoon, liad 
 little j>ity in their facets. Inasmuch as Morgan 
 Thtirston came with her they wisely wagged their 
 he. ids and declared what they had been saying all 
 along was true. There was no shelter from this 
 unkind gossip even in the presence of the preacher s 
 wife, whose escort, as well as Ness s, the young 
 lawyer had been on that dismal ride. As it 
 happened it was sheer luck which brought him, 
 though for hisown part he had an object in cowing, 
 aside from a chivalrous tender of his company, 
 which no amount of pressing would have made of 
 avail had not Hess remembered that all hearts in 
 the world were not bleeding like her own. 
 
 "Thank you." Hess had said when Morgan offered 
 to drive with her. " My sister and I can get along 
 very well, and Dorothy is to meet us at the house, 
 .ind remain with me until for a day or two. I 
 would accept your kindness if I thought it necessary,
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 315 
 
 but it really isn t. I know what I must do and am 
 going to do it." 
 
 Dorothy s name had not been spoken without 
 effect. To the fact that Bess had noted it through 
 her dimmed eyes was due the fortunate presence of 
 a safe counsellor, in the emergency which faced them 
 when they arrived at the preacher s gate to find 
 Dick Richards awaiting their coming. The negro 
 arose out of the shadows of the dooryard like a 
 ghostly thing. In Bess s sight, affrighted as she was 
 by the dread of the man that connected him with 
 every evil-omened event in her life, he looked a mon 
 ster from whose approach she shrank back in mortal 
 terror. What new misery did this visitation por 
 tend ? No wonder the terrifying image of every 
 thing that was making her heart to stand still was 
 in the girl s face, and Thurston marked it at a 
 single glance. 
 
 What he saw was a stout fellow, seemingly spent 
 by travel, holding fast to the gate-post. The great 
 globes of Dick s restless eyes were blood-shot. His 
 brows were knit and his jaws were set. There was 
 a terrible earnestness in his look that might be 
 mistaken for vile intent or the wringing of a soul ; 
 the human face mirrors feelings in such a diversity 
 of fashions. Thurston did not pretend to decipher
 
 3 i6 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 it. Too plainly he observed that it was no common 
 fear that this man had inspired. Drawing close he 
 discovered that he confronted a negro. It came to 
 him as a shock. 
 
 " Richards ? " he inquired, speaking to Bess. 
 
 She bent her head to confirm the conjecture. 
 Thurston did not stand unmoved. Was this the 
 man, he thought, who, rather than the other, should 
 stand under the gibbet to-morrow ? The name this 
 negro bore had been on the lips of people when they 
 talked of Cherry Lemoire s murder, but aside from 
 a fruitless search made for him as a witness, he had 
 not come into the case as an important factor. As 
 if he would tear out the heart of him that its secret 
 might be read, Thurston fixed his gaze on that 
 scowling riddle of a face. He would have spoken 
 first but Richards stopped his mouth by saying he 
 had come a long way to tell Bess something. His 
 voice was the voice of a man not to be denied and 
 Thurston, as well as Bess, felt what he said to be in 
 the nature of a command. 
 
 While Thurston paced the gravelled walk the 
 others went within stunned if not stupefied by the 
 horror of it all. Bess was no longer mistress of her 
 faculties, following simply where she was led 
 through the open door in which Dorothy stood with
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 317 
 
 outstretched arms, promising with a smile that, even 
 though the chill of death lay within, there would be 
 a warmth of hearts at that hearthstone. 
 
 " I shall not be far off," Thurston said. It was 
 in answer to a beseeching look Bess gave him as she 
 disappeared through the cottage door behind the 
 negro, her sister and her friend. 
 
 A minute, not more, had elapsed when Bess 
 staggered back again. She had come to call the 
 young lawyer, but her voice failed for words and 
 broke into a wild, unnatural, hysterical cry. A step 
 or two took Thurston to her side, and he was not 
 too soon, for he caught her as she reeled in a swoon 
 from the threshold of the door. 
 
 Bess had heard an awful truth that lifted the veil 
 of mystery from the murder in the Lakeport ravine. 
 Cherry Lemoire s life had been taken by Dick Rich 
 ards. It was an alternative of the slave girl s own 
 choosing according to the grim recital of the only 
 man who could tell the story ; for she might have 
 lived on his hideous terms, poor wretch. Was it not 
 a story to make the blood run cold ! What marvel 
 that, as it was summed up in a half-dozen words, 
 the negro s confession struck down one weak woman. 
 Thurston was hearing it now, and if he had possessed 
 the courage of a thousand men, he too, would have
 
 318 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 quailed as, in a state of emotional frenzy, the self- 
 confessed murderer laid bare his guilty soul, from 
 the moment he first conceived the crime to its dread 
 accomplishment. How he skulked in the shadow 
 of Win Disbrow and intercepted the message in the 
 floating log ; how, thus informed of the plan for the 
 slave girl s departure from Smithboro, he was at hand 
 to guide her when she fled despairing from the roof 
 of her protectors ; how, by striking across country 
 through by-paths it had been his habit to pursue when 
 his errands were errands of mercy, he had outfooted 
 the picture-wagon to the ravine ; how by cries of 
 distress he had decoyed the picture-taker into its re 
 cesses, and, having the girl at his mercy, had dragged 
 her into the woods to let her say whether she would 
 live or die these were the brutal truths of his tell 
 ing. Silent the others listened. No word passed the 
 negro s lip that, rudely or otherwise, was designed 
 to strike a sympathetic chord. The horrible malice 
 of the deed was without extenuation. As a fero 
 cious monster, endowed with the divine gift of speech, 
 he doggedly uncovered the vileness of his fearful 
 purpose. There was no touch of pity in it all ; no 
 remorse that his hands smelled of blood. A heart 
 of stone ; a mind of leaden mould ! Yet there was 
 the impress of one simple, noble thought a dog s
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 319 
 
 gratitude for what Elizabeth Malcolm had done for 
 him. This had brought him to her now, by his own 
 word dooming himself to death, that she might have 
 her heart s wish not that an innocent life might be 
 spared, not that a black crime might be adequately 
 expiated. There was no pretense of such heroism 
 in his confession. 
 
 Thus the murderer gave himself up. 
 
 " I se done ready, Missy Bess, ter took dat ol 
 man s place," the negro said in a voice that abso 
 lutely had no trace of feeling in it. " Y u done 
 bought dis black man wid y u own money, an I 
 jess wants ter pay y u back." 
 
 When the negro was done Thurston sat lost in 
 thought. 
 
 " No man all white, no man all black," he was 
 thinking, " would put his crime or his repentance in 
 such a light. Which is the better part of him the 
 black or the white ? " 
 
 But this was the metaphysics of the matter. 
 Like cobwebs Morgan brushed them aside. What 
 was there to do ? What to be done to make this 
 strangest of revelations effective. The hangman s 
 noose dangled over the head of an innocent man ! 
 
 The lawyer knew that but one instrument could 
 stay the hand of the executioner. Therefore he
 
 320 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 set himself the task of getting the Governor s re 
 prieve. While he drove north with the negro at 
 his side to catch the night train to Albany at 
 Canasango, it was to be Bess s mission to get back 
 to Morristown with word of what they hoped to 
 do, and Dorothy was to bear her company. It 
 was to be a wild chase to Canasango, a good twelve 
 miles away, where the night train was due to pass 
 at six o clock, and it was now lacking a scant half- 
 hour of five. If all went well it was Thurston s 
 calculation that he would be in Albany before mid 
 night, and, a life being at stake, he had no doubt 
 the reprieve would be in his hands in time to let 
 him take the morning train starting from Albany at 
 six o clock and arriving at Canasango at noon. 
 
 Upon Bess and Dorothy rested as grave a re 
 sponsibility as his own. Though the law claimed 
 the forfeit of Lyman Disbrow s life no later than 
 twelve o clock, their injunction was that by 
 entreaty, by threat, by fair means or foul, defying 
 the course of the sun in its resistless progress, the 
 bright orb of day must reach no meridian in Mor 
 ristown on the morrow until there was time to lay 
 the Governor s reprieve in the Sheriff s hands. 
 
 So it happened that the hangman was held at bay 
 by a power no more potent than a woman s tears.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 MORRISTOWN had no other business on hand this 
 day than to put Lyme Disbrow to death. It went 
 about it in a cold-blooded way after the fashion of a 
 village that thought itself as much better than its 
 neighbours as the county seat could make it. A 
 hanging now and then was something on which the 
 inn-keepers of Morristown counted as a legitimate 
 source of profit, and in anticipation of which they 
 always laid in extra supplies with a keen notion of 
 enterprise that, it is fair to say, had never been dis 
 appointed. 
 
 This day the village awoke to find its streets 
 already alive and doing. There had been a con 
 siderable influx of farmer-folk before daybreak, the 
 sound of whose whirling wheels had breached the 
 winking hours of dawn, ere even the birds who 
 nested in the ivy on the prison walls were happily 
 astir. By breakfast time there was not a hitching 
 post on the main street that remained unclaimed, 
 so that the later comers were forced to make a
 
 322 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 choice between stabling at the taverns and paying 
 for the privilege, or hunting what few vacant places 
 were left under the church sheds. An hour later 
 the tardy ones were tying their horses to the fences 
 and trees in a gradually widening area of pre 
 empted territory. Each vehicle set down its full 
 complement of good people, who made haste to 
 join the throng that headed for the jail, leaving every 
 thing behind except their whips, which were borne 
 away as if to emphasize the sorry truth that there 
 is a point beyond which common honesty cannot 
 be trusted. 
 
 The temper of the crowd, as it grew larger and 
 larger, was neither doleful nor exultant. It moved 
 to and fro as the fit took it, in a holiday mood as 
 aimless as it was harmless. It talked only now and 
 then of the baleful spectacle that was to be enacted 
 there that day. A firecracker drowns the thunder 
 of the mighty call to arms that Thomas Jefferson 
 wrote into the Declaration of Independence ! Is 
 the manger of Bethlehem always in our thoughts 
 when we take down our Christmas stockings? 
 These honest men and women who came to Morris- 
 town to get within the shadow of the scaffold were 
 more apt to gossip of their household chores than 
 drop a word, either of sympathy or horror unfor-
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 323 
 
 giving, of the hapless man whose doom was near 
 at hand. That hempen symbol of the law, hanging 
 from a beam in yonder yard, meant nothing in 
 particular to most of these good people. They 
 would stare idly at the forbidding walls, pass the 
 time of day with their neighbours, do their trading, 
 munch their cheese and crackers on the*court-house 
 steps, and, after all was over, wend their several 
 ways homeward, no wiser, no better, no worse. 
 To be sure, there were those abroad that day who 
 said that Lyme Disbrow deserved a better fate, 
 and if there were not many to say it, it was because 
 his friends had found it easier to stay away. Some 
 of the meanest of the throng jested of what was to 
 happen. Others still gilded their hatred in biblical 
 phrase and made blasphemy preferable. 
 
 Where the sightseers flocked in greatest numbers, 
 opposite the very door of the jail, a noisy pedlar 
 hawked his pinchbeck wares in a strident sing-song. 
 The hired man who bought his simpering compan 
 ion a tawdry breast-pin from this pack saw nothing 
 ghoulish in the transaction. A husky yokel, much 
 the worse for liquor, reeled by, jeered by a juvenile 
 mob tagging at his heels. Strutting about in the 
 full pride of a little brief authority were a dozen 
 men or so, who wore upon their breasts the shining
 
 324 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 badges of their office. They were Deputy Sheriffs, 
 sworn in for the day, to keep the peace, and were 
 much to be envied, as things went, because they 
 were to " see the old man swing." 
 
 Stretching over the main street, to the extreme 
 height of the cornices at either side, was a great 
 rope, the purpose of which was not revealed until 
 the gymnast who was to tread it in mid-air came out 
 to mingle with the throng in the full glory of worsted 
 tights and tarnished spangles. This mountebank 
 passed tiptoeing through the crowd, hat in hand, 
 to test the public appetite for the aerial art he 
 practised. At intervals he would mount to the 
 roof, and show himself in statuesque attitudes, as if 
 about to dance out over the people s heads. This 
 ruse to whet the popular interest in his exhibition 
 he followed by swift descents to the street, where 
 the taking of the collection would be renewed. 
 
 It was on one of these excursions that the fellow 
 was accosted by an indignant citizen of the village 
 who would have shamed him for trying to ply his 
 trade on such a day. The glib tongue of the rope- 
 walker quickly drove the good man from the street. 
 
 " The Sheriff shall stop this ghastly sacrilege," 
 the citizen cried in his ire, and followed by a hun 
 dred men, some of his mind, some of the other s
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 325 
 
 and some of no mind at all, he went to the jail to 
 lodge complaint. 
 
 It was no ordinary thing to invoke the authority 
 of the Sheriff, and it goes without saying, everyone 
 was anxious to see what came of it. 
 
 It was the self-same citizen who brought out the 
 startling news that there might be no execution 
 after all. This was the first inkling the village had 
 of what was in the wind. 
 
 " A reprieve is coming ! " was the word that took 
 wing through Morristown. It was soon on every 
 body s tongue. The people jammed and huddled 
 against the jail building in a senseless crush. You 
 could not say they were sorry or glad of what had 
 come to their ears. There was a burst of laughter 
 when the rope-walker s regalia had suffered mutila 
 tion by rough handling in the unruly crowd. A 
 woman fainted and a baby squalled. The Sheriff 
 now appeared at the door, and he was greeted by 
 instant silence. All that he would say was that 
 possibly the sentence of death would not be ex 
 ecuted that day. and that in all probability a 
 reprieve from the Governor was on its way to 
 Morristown. Fifty watches clicked to a single 
 impulse. What was the hour ? 
 
 " They ve got to git here afore twelve o clock, or
 
 326 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 he s got ter go ; that s what I say," said a gruff 
 voice. It was Sime Benson who was speaking, and 
 in his steely eyes there was a wolfish gleam. " He 
 ain t got long ter wait : that s what I say." 
 
 True enough. If the drop of the gallows was to 
 be timed to the swing of the pendulum, Lyman 
 Disbrow had not an hour to live. It was past 
 eleven o clock on his doomsday. Inside that prison 
 of stone they were taxing their hearing for the first 
 sounds of the expected messenger. It was Win 
 who had told his father a reprieve might come and 
 of the negro s story on which their hopes rested. 
 This was Bess s right, but she joyfully gave it to 
 Win. With Dorothy she kept a vigil at an upper 
 window commanding the road over which the re 
 prieve must come, holding up with such strength as 
 God had given her to wait on that fearful uncer 
 tainty. There might have been an end to it at any 
 moment, the strain was so hard, were this all her 
 duty. But she must keep the Sheriff to his prom 
 ise to let his dial record a false reckoning of the 
 time. It was to be twelve o clock until it was one, 
 and one o clock until it was two. After that the 
 law must take its course. 
 
 So they watched and waited. All other eyes in 
 Morristown peered towards the North, between the
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 327 
 
 parted hillsides through which at the end of 
 eighteen long miles the message of life must be 
 carried if it came in time. Nothing could have 
 diverted that intense gaze. People spoke under 
 the breath, lest ordinary conversation might cheat 
 them of the earliest warning. The neigh of a horse 
 seemed to have the resonance of thunder, so still 
 the village was. The twitter of the birds, which 
 was music as Lyme Disbrow listened, rang like a 
 discord on the common ear. 
 
 Would the reprieve come ? This was what every 
 heart was asking. Thus the sands of a man s life 
 were running out, while a race against death, un 
 seen, unheard, unknown, was turning a country road 
 into an Olympian arena. 
 
 The reprieve was coming ! 
 
 Morgan Thurston and Dick Richards had come 
 as far as the rails would carry them, and, as for the 
 rest, it was with them and their horses. It was 
 asking a great deal on such an errand as theirs to 
 encumber their journey with a third man ; but there 
 was no help for it, as the negro had been put under 
 arrest, and the officer from Albany was not to be 
 left behind. In vain Thurston had pleaded that 
 precious time could be saved by letting him be the 
 messenger; but he could not have his way the 
 reprieve and the prisoner must go together.
 
 3 28 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 It was an unmerciful employment of horseflesh, 
 as under a tireless lash they plunged madly forward. 
 One after another, they swept past the little 
 settlements that marked the way, throwing each 
 community into a passing tremour of excitement as 
 they faded from sight like wraiths in a tempest, leav 
 ing the astonished inhabitants gaping after them in 
 a state of supernatural dread. If the strange 
 vision took on a form less weird the comment of 
 the road went to the other extreme of conjecture. 
 
 " Horse thieves ! " some cried. " Guess the 
 Loomis gang knows where the Sheriff is to-day." 
 
 Where the dust lay thick on the track they 
 travelled, they sent it curling into the sky, fantas 
 tically shaped and mountainous in height ; as 
 through the thick of it they urged the horses on 
 and sent them panting for breath into the free air 
 again. In the hollows of the road, mired by the 
 trickling crevices that topped the frowning ravines, 
 the wagon rolled in a blinding spatter. Here, where 
 the roughness of the way denied them full speed, 
 the horses were hauled to a trot, and the three men 
 gasped for breath, while Thurston told off the 
 passing time by hurried glances at the face of his 
 watch. But these respites were few and far 
 between. There was too much at stake to spare
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 329 
 
 the beasts or their burden, and although the pace 
 was telling on man and beast alike, they kept it 
 heartlessly, forgetting peril, fatigue and all, as long 
 as they hammered out the dreary miles that 
 stretched out before them. 
 
 At Mile Strip a hame strap parted and let the 
 wagon tongue down in the road, and shot the three 
 passengers in a heap out of their seats, upon the 
 sweltering horses backs, all scrambling for safe 
 positions. Once down they found the repairs 
 were to be readily accomplished, but looking into 
 the faces of the wretched animals, whose endurance 
 was their hope, they noted their bloody nostrils, 
 their leaden eyes, their broken wind. It was plain 
 the horses were spent. They would not last the 
 rest of the trip. 
 
 "We ll drive them as far as we can," Thurston 
 said. "There s nothing else to do. Every horse 
 in the county is in Morristown to-day." 
 
 " The thing s all over with before this," the 
 officer put in. " I don t believe the Sheriff would 
 dare wait. This kind of driving is all damned 
 foolishness. You re too late now." 
 
 " I don t agree with you," Thurston replied 
 savagely. " There s a God in Israel. The truth He 
 made this man tell is not to go for nothing."
 
 330 THE RED ANVIL, 
 
 Dick s nimble fingers had now supplied a fasten 
 ing in the broken harness. 
 
 " If the hosses done guv out," the negro said, 
 speaking for the first time, " 111 git dat paper 
 dar if you ll let me. Tain t more n ten mile an I 
 kin run it/ 
 
 " We ll all go tog-ether or not at all," the officer 
 
 o o 
 
 said. " I m going to deliver my prisoner and the 
 reprieve at the same time." 
 
 "Jump in, then/ cried Thurston, and the next 
 moment they were again in motion. The hors.es 
 showed signs of refreshment as the result of their 
 short rest and resumed the race as if they meant 
 to finish it. Giving this encouragement, they were 
 urged to do their best, and they did it to the top of 
 their ability, which lengthened the drive not over a 
 mile. Then the nigh horse sank on his knees as if 
 he had been struck with a sledge-hammer. His head 
 was waving in a death struggle. His legs quivered, 
 then stiffened and he was dead on the turnpike. 
 The other horse, rearing in the entangled harness, 
 was hurled off his feet by the momentum of the 
 wagon at his heels and fell in a mesh of broken 
 straps beside his mate. The wagon had careened, 
 and from their places the three men were pitched 
 headlong out. The officer was writhing in a stiite
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 331 
 
 of insensibility in a ditch. Thurston s plight was 
 scarcely less serious, for, while he still had his wits 
 about him, he was unable to rise on the maimed 
 legs twisted under him. Richards had not been so 
 unlucky, it seemed ; as he managed to pick him 
 self up when the first shock was over. 
 
 " Thank God you re left," Thurston murmured. 
 " Hurry, man. Get the horses up, and get us 
 started again." 
 
 The negro was swift to obey. He reached down 
 to grip the head of the dead horse, but his arm 
 swung limp and useless at his side. A bone had 
 snapped in the fall. A second look showed 
 Richards how desperate was their situation, with 
 one horse a carcass, and the other dead beat beyond 
 all doubt. The poor beast sprawled in a helpless 
 mass on a splintered wagon-tongue, jerking the 
 buckles and leather apart as his taut muscles 
 relaxed in spasmodic pain. 
 
 The negro did not have to speak. Thurston had 
 crawled near enough to see how complete the wreck 
 was. 
 
 " There s only one way," he groaned. " Have 
 you strength enough to go ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then take it."
 
 332 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 The negro was kneeling beside the prostrate 
 officer in the space of a breath. The reprieve was 
 inside his buttoned coat. At the first motion to 
 take it from him, the officer opened his eyes, and 
 clutched wildly in the air. Richards pinned him 
 to the earth and snatched the packet from the 
 loosened folds of the coat with the one hand that 
 was good for anything. 
 
 The negro gripped the packet hard between his 
 fingers. He stood fast at the side of the man he 
 had undone. The light of triumph shone out of 
 his eyes, a light almost ferocious, that said in a 
 thousand tongues that he was master of the situa 
 tion. 
 
 " You ll take it there, Richards ? " Thurston found 
 strength to ask, raising himself by a supreme effort 
 and transfixing the negro with a look. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " A life an innocent man s life depends on you. 
 You know what it means to you ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "You do not fear you ll not fail? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then go." 
 
 With this promise on his lips Dick Richards left 
 his companions to whatever luck might come their
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 333 
 
 way. His fist was closed around the packet as he 
 sped with all the strength of a practised runner over 
 the highway. It was not long before he knew the 
 odds were not in his favour. His broken arm, hang 
 ing loose where every footstep jarred its shivered 
 bone, racked his whole frame with the tortures of the 
 damned. The chimney of a farm house lifted above 
 the crest of a hill he was breasting. He would stop 
 there he thought and beg a strip of cloth for a sling. 
 To go on as he was was impossible. An overgrown 
 boy, coatless and bare-headed, with a red apple for 
 a face and huge hands as lumpy as a potato, rode 
 out into the road on the back of a springy horse, as 
 Richards came running up. 
 
 The negro put his request for the sling in hurried 
 words. The stupid boy snuffled and grinned, but 
 made no sign of doing the simple kindness. With 
 out further parley Richards, as if seized by a sudden 
 inspiration, caught the clumsy rider by the collar 
 and shook him from the horse s back. The mount 
 was difficult on account of his disablement, but, be 
 fore the blubbering bumpkin comprehended what 
 had happened, the negro was astride the animal, 
 well started in his flight. 
 
 The pair was well mated. Horse and rider were 
 of the same mind, that was certain, for the gait they
 
 334 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 struck was to test what both could do. The mare 
 thought it a frolic. She was a colt and knew no 
 better. She did know, or gave every sign of know 
 ing it, that she was under a rider who prized mettle, 
 and to prove herself worthy of praise she matched 
 her footfalls against the wind. It was as if she felt 
 the thrill that was in her rider s breast. Then Dick 
 was saying things to the horse as in an arc of steel he 
 bowed his sinewy legs around her unsaddled back, 
 and, tightening his heels under her loins, went 
 splitting the air through mile on mile of distance. 
 Her hide was as greasy as a frying-pan under his 
 weight, compelling him to put the loop of the rein 
 over his good wrist, and knit his fingers into her 
 mane where the glossy hair took root. Spume 
 poured out of her mouth ; lather rolled off her flanks. 
 
 " Nearly dar, nearly dar ! " the negro repeated 
 with every spare breath. 
 
 All this time the good mare showed that there is 
 a bottom even to the best that is in a horse. The 
 smooth neck was growing less rigid, the stride more 
 uneven, the ears as limp as rags. Richards s arm 
 ached cruelly, but his suffering only drew the 
 muscles by which he held his seat into harder knots. 
 If his mount lasted, he would. His pain had made 
 him numb.
 
 THE RED ANVIL. 335 
 
 " Nearly dar, honey ! " he said over and over 
 again. 
 
 A demon on a demon horse, he went lunging into 
 the cleft of the hill that set him squarely into the 
 staring eyes of all Morristown. An outcry that be 
 gan in a low murmur and burst into a clangour of 
 tongues greeted their coming. If Dick Richards 
 heard it, he gave no outward token that his senses 
 were his own. But the uplift of the voices as he 
 swept by the selvage of the crowd into its very 
 heart, where it opened a way for him, gave the jaded 
 beast who bore him the prick of new life. She gave 
 a tremendous lurch forward, as if unhaltered for a 
 gambol in the meadow grass, and would have rushed 
 on, leaving the jail at her rear, had not a hundred 
 men flung up their arms as a signal to stop. The 
 mare s drooping neck went up in fright ; her fore 
 legs wedged in the hard earth of the streets ; and her 
 spine arched like a cat s as she stumbled and fell, 
 throwing her rider headforemost twice the length 
 of his body beyond. 
 
 In the death grip of Dick Richards was held the 
 packet he had brought. The fall had broken his 
 neck. It was Win Disbrow who unlocked the 
 negro s fingers from the crumpled paper and told 
 the murmuring people that he was dead. A higher
 
 336 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 law than man s mocked at the lauded thing of 
 man s invention. 
 
 It was not yet two o clock of this May-day after 
 noon when Win and Bess went behind the prison 
 walls to receive Lyme Disbrow s blessing.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THERE was warrant of law in the United States 
 for the recovery of fugitive slaves from July 13, 1787, 
 on which date there was inserted in the Northwest 
 Ordinance a clause providing that when " any person 
 escaping into the same [Northwest Territory ] from 
 whom labour or service is lawfully claimed in any of 
 the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully 
 reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his 
 or her labour or service." 
 
 September 13, of the same year, the Federal Con 
 stitution was amended to protect the right of recov 
 ery of fugitive slaves escaping into States which by 
 " law or regulation " had attempted to offer them 
 an asylum. 
 
 February 12, 1793, the first Fugitive Slave Law 
 was enacted by Congress. This enactment required 
 the Governors of all States in the Union and of the 
 Territories northwest or south of the Ohio river to
 
 33 8 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 give executive authority for the arrest of persons 
 charged with treason, felony and other crimes in 
 States other than their own, and on satisfactory evi 
 dence of guilt being produced, to secure the delivery 
 of such persons to the States demanding them. 
 This law gave to owners of slaves the right to sum 
 marily seize fugitives, but invested the circuit or 
 district courts of the United States with the sole 
 power to pass upon the evidence produced in justifi 
 cation of such arrest or seizure. Identity of the 
 supposed fugitive was to be established by " proof 
 to the satisfaction of such judge or magistrate," 
 which being furnished gave the certificate of the 
 court immediate effect as a warrant of removal of 
 the fugitive by the claimant. Any interference 
 with the execution of the law, through obstruction 
 of the claimant, rescue or concealment of the fugi 
 tive, if known to be such by the offender, was pun 
 ishable by a fine of five hundred dollars. 
 
 February 18, 1850, was the date of the enactment 
 of the second Fugitive Slave Law. It was an act 
 supplementary to the act of 1793. By it a new 
 tribunal was erected for the decision of the various 
 questions arising out of the arrest of fugitive slaves 
 in the free States, In the exercise of this authority
 
 APPENDIX. 339 
 
 the courts were virtually superseded by hearings 
 authorized to be held by commissioners appointed 
 by act of Congress or by the circuit courts of the 
 United States. These commissioners were given 
 the largest magisterial powers. The marshals and 
 deputy marshals of the United States were placed 
 under their authority, and they had power as well 
 to appoint without restriction other officers with 
 coordinate authority, and to " call to their aid the 
 bystanders, or posse comitatus" more effectually to 
 enforce the law. An officer who after the arrest of 
 a fugitive allowed his prisoner to escape, "with or 
 without the assent of such officer," became liable for 
 damages to the claimant based on the value of the 
 slave so escaping. Refusal on the part of an officer 
 to execute a warrant, or other process, was punisha 
 ble by a fine of one thousand dollars, on motion of 
 the claimant. All good citizens were commanded 
 by the law to aid and assist in its execution. 
 
 The most drastic provision of this law was that 
 which permitted the owner, or the agent or attorney 
 of the same, to seize a fugitive slave in any State or 
 Territory where found, without warrant or other 
 process. Such seizure having been made, it was re 
 quired that the prisoner should be taken forthwith 
 before a Federal judge, or a commissioner, whose
 
 340 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 duty was defined to be " to determine the case of 
 the claimant in a summary manner." In the event 
 of the claimant s being able to present to the judge 
 or commissioner a " deposition," " affidavit," or 
 " other satisfactory testimony," taken or made un 
 der the laws of the State or Territory from which 
 the fugitive might have escaped, and bearing the seal 
 of " some legal officer, or court," this seal was to be 
 deemed competent proof of the identity of the 
 fugitive and the claimant was to be afforded the 
 protection of the law in returning the fugitive to 
 the State or Territory whence he or she might have 
 escaped. It was further provided that " in no trial 
 or hearing shall the testimony of the alleged fugitive 
 be admitted in evidence." In plain terms the 
 claim of ownership was to be established on ex part t 
 evidence. Identification rested on the record of the 
 court, or " legal officer," to which the claimant first 
 appealed in his own State. This record the law 
 described as " a general description of the person so 
 escaping, with such convenient certainty as may 
 be," and provided that the record, " being exhibited 
 to any judge, commissioner, or other officer author 
 ized by the law of the United States to cause per 
 sons escaping from service or labour to be delivered 
 up, shall be held and taken to be full and conclusive
 
 APPENDIX. 341 
 
 evidence of the fact of escape, and that the service 
 or labour of the person escaping is due to the party 
 in such record mentioned." In the absence of such 
 record identity could be established by " other satis 
 factory proofs." 
 
 Interference with the law, either before or after 
 the arrest of a fugitive, was covered by a far-reach 
 ing clause. Persons who concealed or harboured a 
 mnaway slave, knowing him or her to be such, were 
 liable to a fine of one thousand dollars and imprison 
 ment for six months. To aid or abet an escape, or 
 an attempted escape, or in any other way lend as 
 sistance to the defeat of the law, was made a crime of 
 equal enormity. In addition the claimant of the 
 fugitive was afforded civil redress against obstruc 
 tion, a value of one thousand dollars being placed 
 on each slave lost through circumvention of the 
 law. 
 
 In the way of fees for the apprehension and trans 
 portation of fugitives the law provided an induce 
 ment well-calculated to appeal to the mercenary 
 instinct. The foundation of this system of payment 
 was ten dollars a head for each arrest of a fugitive 
 proved to be such ; five dollars in a case where the 
 proof failed. Additional fees covering the service 
 of processes, attendance on court, the care of the
 
 342 THE RED ANVIL. 
 
 prisoner, etc., were limited only by the discretion 
 of the court, or commissioner. An officer charged 
 with the duty of transporting a fugitive back to the 
 State or Territory from which he might have escaped 
 was allowed " to employ so many persons as he 
 deemed necessary " to overcome such force as he 
 suspected might be encountered in that effort.
 
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