“Oh, you think you smell something, do you? Well, just come right along with me and see what you can smell in my room.” But she could not quite reach him, and she began tossing to one side the smaller sticks. In a moment her eyes fell upon the boarding of the hidden room. “What can that be?” she wondered, pausing in her work. With Charlotte, to have her curiosity aroused was only to fire her determination to have it assuaged. So now she eagerly threw out of the way the remaining pieces and saw plainly the tiny house. “There’s a door in it!” she whispered, and straight-way stepped up and peeped in.
There she saw the negro runaway asleep upon the straw pallet. On the bench were the remains of his dinner, with pans and plates and cups which she recognized as having come from their own cupboard.
For a moment she stared, bewildered. Then, as the boy stirred in his sleep, she picked up Bully Brooks, shut the door softly and hurried back to her room. Her thoughts darted at once to the heart of the mystery.
“They’re stealing niggers, that’s what they’re doing, father and Rhoda! My! It’s worse than stealing horses, or money!” Her face was hot with indignation and her eyes blazing. “They ought to be arrested, even if they are my father and sister. Why, it might be one of Jeff’s niggers they’re stealing. Just think of it! Nigger thieves! They ought to be punished—they deserve to go to prison—and they would, too, if it was known!”
She stopped in the midst of her fuming as an idea flashed across her mind. It took her breath away for a moment. Then she drew back from it with a little feeling of repugnance. But in a moment more her busy, resentful thought was hovering around it, experimenting with it, considering it with more and more of favor.
“There’s no telling how many slaves they’ve hidden in there and sent on to Canada. Thousands of dollars worth, it’s likely. And their owners just raking the country and spending money trying to find them. Oh, it’s a shame the way these black abolitionists act! Father and Rhoda are just as bad as any of them. Nigger thieves! O, my! And that nigger out in the woodshed, he belongs to somebody just exactly the same as if he was a horse or a cow. He ought to be taken back. He’s somebody’s property, and it’s wrong and against the law to steal him, or to help anybody else to steal him. If I don’t tell somebody that he’s here, so he can be taken back to his owner, I’ll be a nigger-thief, just the same as they are.”
She tied her bonnet under her chin, adjusted her cape around her shoulders, took a last look in the glass, and turned toward the door. Her eyes chanced to fall upon the letter, lying on the table.
“O, my goodness, I’m about to forget that!” she exclaimed, seizing the missive. She giggled and tilted her chin and said aloud, “Yes, I shall, I shall do it!” Then she touched her lips to the superscription and airily waved the envelope toward the south. With another gay little laugh she tucked it into her pocket. And so it happened that when the mail-bag left the Hillside post-office that afternoon it carried three letters for Jefferson Delavan.
As she came out of the post-office Charlotte found herself face to face with her admirer, Billy Saunders. “Is Susie at home?” she asked.
“Yes, and expecting you. Are you going there?” He turned and walked up the street at her side. Her cheeks still showed a heightened color and the fires of her indignation glowed in her eyes. “You’re looking mighty pretty this afternoon, Charlotte. What’s happened?”