Josephine rose and felt of the bosom of Clara’s dress till she distinguished the weapon of which Esha had spoken. Then a smile, so sincere as to forbid suspicion, broke over the quadroon’s face, and she exclaimed: “Let me kiss you! Let me hug you!” And having given vent to her satisfaction in an embrace, she unlocked the door, and there stood Esha.
“What does it all mean, Esha?” asked Clara, bewildered.
“It mean, darlin’, dat Massa Ratcliff hab tracked you to dis yere place, an’ we two women mean to pull de wool ober his eyes, so he can’t do yer no harm no how. You jes do what we want yer to, and we’ll bodder him so he sha’n’ know his head’s his own.”
Josephine then communicated all the facts that had come to her knowledge in regard to Ratcliff’s pursuit of Clara, together with her own conversation with him that morning, and the plan she had contrived for his discomfiture. “As soon,” she said, “as such an opportunity offers that I can be sure you can be put beyond his reach, I will supply you with money, and help you to escape.”
Truth beamed from her looks, and made itself musical in her tones, and Clara gratefully pressed her hand.
“And shall I have Esha with me?” she asked.
“Yes; and Mrs. Ratcliff, though an invalid, will also befriend you. ’T will be strange indeed if we four women can’t defeat one man.”
“But I shall have all the slave-hunters in the Confederacy after me if I try to get away.”
“Do not fear. We have golden keys that open many doors of escape.”
Clara did not hesitate. She had faith in Esha’s quickness, as well as in her own, to detect insincerity. And so she was persuaded that her safest present course would be to go boldly into the house of the very man she had most cause to dread!