On her way downtown one day Rhoda saw a new handbill on the trunk of a tree at the crossing of the two main streets. It was of a sort that had been familiar to her since her childhood. At one side was a crude woodcut of a negro on the run, a bundle on the end of a stick across his shoulder. She stopped to read it, wondering if it concerned any of the blacks who had been sheltered under their roof. It offered three hundred dollars reward, told of the running away of “my negro girl, Lear White,” gave a detailed and accurate description of her, saying she was “light-colored and good-looking,” and was signed, “William H. Burns,” with his address in Louisville. Rhoda walked on, smiling, thinking in what a little while that poster would be of no consequence whatever to Lear White, for they were to start the next morning.
In the afternoon Marcia Kimball came, to help Rhoda with the final preparations. They tried upon Mary Ellen the gown, in which they had just set the last stitches, that she was to wear on the journey. Much pleased with its effect, Marcia whitened her face with a fresh dusting of powder, and she stood before them a handsome brunette with a pale complexion, big, soft, black eyes and coal-black, waving hair. Marcia clapped her hands, exclaiming:
“Splendid, Rhoda! Nobody would ever guess! Oh, you’ll get through all right!”
Rhoda, standing beside the window, glanced out and her face grew grave. “Come here a minute, Marcia,” she said. Some men were entering at the side gate. Miss Kimball paled. “Marshal Hanscomb!” she whispered.
“Yes, but I don’t believe they suspect that she’s here. There are three men in the cellar, that Mr. Gilbertson is going to stop for this evening. We must put on a bold front. Don’t let Mary Ellen know—she’d be scared to death, and they might guess. Come,” she exclaimed in a louder voice, turning gaily from the window, “let’s go downstairs and have some music. Marcia, you ought to hear Mary Ellen sing ‘Nellie Gray’! Come down and you and she sing it together, and I’ll play!”
Laughing and talking, with every appearance of gaiety, though the hearts of two of them were beating fast, the three went down to the living-room and took their places at the piano. With ears strained to catch the sounds from the other parts of the house, Rhoda struck the opening notes and the two voices sang:
“There’s a low green valley on the old Kentucky shore,
Where I’ve whiled many happy hours away,
A-sitting and a-singing by the little cottage door
Where lived my darling Nellie Gray.”