Dan McCowan.
N. B.
Planters should taik panes to let me know, while the niggers tracks is fresh, if they want quick work and a good job.
It is scarcely necessary to say that his services were frequently employed to catch and bring back the poor runaways, and more than once had the Harcourt family been awakened in the night by his hounds, as they made the woods echo with their baying. Often had they pictured to themselves the terror of the poor wretches, over whose trail, with unerring scent, swept the monsters, who would tear them limb from limb, and whose only choice was death at their hands or the old life of labor and the lash.
Mr. Harcourt was a strong anti-slavery man. Holding these views, he had ever spoken consistently against slavery. He was also a man of deeds, as well as words, for many a poor fugitive had been assisted by him on his long and perilous journey northward in search of friends and the freedom he craved.
Owing to these proclivities, and to the fact that he had never taken pains to conceal his views, a mutual antipathy had long existed between Mr. Harcourt and Dan McCowan, the nigger-hunter. While the latter had no direct proofs, yet he had long suspected Mr. Harcourt of being a friend to, and a sympathizer with the very runaways whom it was his business to catch and return to the bondage they were endeavoring to escape from. Notwithstanding his dislike for the father, however, the fellow had conceived a violent attachment for Mary Harcourt, his daughter, and for a year past had greatly annoyed not only the poor girl herself, but the whole family, by his uncouth attentions.
Finally, Mr. Harcourt told him plainly that his attentions to his daughter were extremely distasteful to her, and added a polite, yet firm request, that he cease his troublesome visits.
Mary, who was a young lady of sweet and lovely disposition, possessing both intelligence and refinement, shrank from the fellow as she should from a viper in her path; while his odious attempts to lavish his unsought affections upon her so disgusted and frightened her that she always avoided his presence.
Dan McCowan, however, was just the man, when thwarted in his plans, to at once take steps for revenge. For some time he had kept a close espionage of the house and the movements of its inmates. He had somehow obtained possession of the knowledge that young Harcourt was in the Union army, and he determined to use this in his well-laid plans to persecute the poor girl, who had been so unfortunate as to have been the object of his passion.