Together the two men went down to the little thicket, and there the Elder not only exhibited the passenger, but to remove all suspicions, showed him the scars that indicated the floggings to which the slave had been subjected, a sight which Mr. Drury often afterwards said came very near making him swear outright. Thus commenced a friendship between the two men long continued and fraught with many acts attesting the generous nature of both.
XI.
When evening came, time being precious, our conductor drew the reins over Mr. Drury’s best roadsters, and about midnight deposited his passenger at the doorway of an old-fashioned house, with gable to the street, wing projecting northward, and a large elm tree nearly in front, standing on Federal Hill, in what is now South Erie, and for the first time XXX greeted officially a most redoubtable Keystone agent, known as the “Doctor,” in those days one of Erie’s well-known characters. He had gained some knowledge of herbs and roots, which he learned to apply medicinally, thus acquiring his appellation, which he wore with great satisfaction, soon coming to look upon all mere “book doctors” in great contempt. He was accustomed to drive about town with an old brown horse attached to a kind of carryall vehicle; always took his whisky straight and in full allopathic doses, though he affected to despise the practice generally, and prided himself on being the most reliable agent in Erie county.
Into the Doctor’s private sanctum Jack was at once admitted, and properly cared for for a number of days, until measurably recuperated from his weeks of incessant vigil and solicitude, when he was taken in charge by Thomas Elliott, Esq., of Harborcreek, and conveyed to Wesleyville, four miles east of the city. Here, inasmuch as fresh news was obtained of his pursuers, it was thought best to secrete him anew, and he was therefore deposited in Station “Sanctum Sanctorum”—the garret of the Methodist Church.
Whoever passes through the village on the “Buffalo Road,” fails not to notice this unpretentious little brick structure standing by the wayside. Like most churches built so long ago, it has undergone various remodelings. The “battlements” have been taken off; doors and windows have shifted places, but within it is little changed; the seating below and the three-sided gallery remaining much as of old.
From the time of its first dedication onward, it has been the scene of many a revival, and for years it was the “horn of the altar” upon which the panting fugitive laid his hand, and was safe, for its use as a “station” was known only to a “selected few.”
OLD CHURCH, WESLEYVILLE, PA.
At the time we speak of, a protracted meeting had already been begun, for the bleakness of winter had early set in. The services were conducted by Rev. Jas. Gilfillin, a sterling old Scotchman, who had received a large part of his training in the collieries of his native land, and before the mast as a sailor on the high seas, assisted by Rev. William Gheer, a young man of timidity and all gentility of manner. The interest was most marked, and crowds came nightly to listen, to weep, to become penitents, not only from up and down the “road,” but from Gospel Hill, and far beyond, bringing even grand old father and mother Weed, who had assisted at the formation of the society over thirty years before, from away up in the “beechwoods,” and with them Nehemiah Beers, an exhorter, particularly felicitous in the construction of unheard-of words and expressions.
Under such circumstances Jack was deposited, early one morning, in his rude apartment, measurably warmed by the pipe which came up from the great box-stove below, and cautioned that he must keep particularly quiet during the devotional exercises below. Here he remained for several days, listening to the praises of new-born souls and the hosannas of the older brethren during meeting hours, and then descending and making himself comfortable in the well-warmed room when all was quiet and safe. Indeed, so well did he play his part as fire-tender, that the Chambers boys, who chopped the wood, which was hauled to the church “sled-length” by the brethren, emphatically declared, as they wondered at the marvellous disappearance of fuel, “It takes a power of wood to run a red-hot revival, and we shall be glad when the meeting closes,” and it required no little effort on the part of their father, the main source of supply, to induce them to persevere in their “labor of love.”