II.
Immediately a portion of the people of Cadiz found a slave had been incarcerated in the jail for safe keeping, whilst the master was in search of others, they sued out a writ of habeas corpus, and there being none to appear against the prisoner or show cause why he should not be released, he was soon set at liberty by the judge. Grown wiser by experience, he betook himself to the cover of forests, secluded pathways and darkness and all trace of him was soon lost.
After a vain search for the others, Mr. Jones returned to Cadiz only to find that the official cage had been opened and that his bird was flown. His imprecations upon the devoted town were terrible, but no damage was done farther than shocking moral and religious sensibilities, and when the ebullitions of his wrath had somewhat subsided he returned home, where in a few days he was accosted by Sam’s faithful Dinah, whom he most impiously rebuffed when she inquired as to the whereabouts of her husband.
III.
Infused with the hope of making a fortune out of the Morus multicaulis speculation which spread as a craze over the country during the later years of the decade, there came to Massillon, from the east, in 1837, Cyrus Ford, a man of progressive ideas, who soon associated himself with the Quakers of the neighborhood in acts of underground philanthropy. His hopes with regard to mulberry riches failed, but his fears with respect to the ague was more than realized, as he imbibed the dense malarial exhalations arising from the Tuscarawas to such an extent as to shake him in his boots, and in 1841 he abandoned the valley and settled himself on a purchase east of what was then known as “Doan’s Corners,” now East Cleveland, a short distance from where Adelbert College stands. For years he resided in an unpretentious house situated just in front of the site of the present hospitable home of his son, Horace Ford, Esq., Euclid Avenue.
One September morning, in 1843, young Horace had been started early after the cows, but scarcely had he left the door when, in the early dawn, he was hailed from the roadside. Approaching the caller he found standing at the gateway the Williams turnout from Massillon, and on the box the old gentleman’s son Ed, a young man about his own age.
“What’s up, Ed?” said young Ford.
“Not much. Don’t thee see the curtains are down?” was the reply.
“O, ah, I see.”
“Not exactly thee don’t, for them curtains are opaque, but there are two persons within for whom, as we believe, search is now being made in town yonder. Massillon was thoroughly searched, and it was not until last evening we dared to start out. Thee and thy father must now provide for the poor beings and see them off to the Queen’s Dominion.”