“Pretty good for a peddler,” remarked another.
“Do you call that man a peddler?” queried a third.
“Didn’t you see ‘Clocks’ on the cover?” came back from No. 2.
“No, indeed,” was the reply, “I was too intent in looking upon the horses to notice anything else. Some down easter I suppose; sold out his load over among the pennymights, and is now on his way home likely.”
Breakfast over the traveler inquired of the landlord if he knew one Col. C. O. Shepard, of Attica.
“Very well,” was the reply, “he is here attending court.”
“I shall be glad to see him. As he is a stranger to me, you will please call him in.”
The Colonel soon appeared when the stranger said, “This is Col. Shepard, I believe.”
“Shepard is my name, but I have not the honor of knowing you, sir.”
“It is not essential that you should; to me it is politic you should not. I wish to make a little consignment to you,” saying which he led the way to the barn, followed by the Colonel and a number of by-standers, where he opened a box in his vehicle from which emerged a well-formed octaroon woman of some thirty summers and a sprightly girl, white as any in the homes of Warsaw. At the sight of these there went up a rousing three times three, at the conclusion of which the stranger said, “These, gentlemen, are what among my neighbors are called chattel and treated as such, and that with my tacit endorsement, at least. Ten days ago if any man had told me I would assist one to escape, I should have laughed him to scorn; but when this poor woman who had worked faithfully in my family to earn the wherewith to buy the freedom of her own flesh and blood, which, against honied professions to the contrary from him who should have been the innocent one’s firmest protector, was about to be sold into an ignominious servitude, came to me and pleaded for the deliverance of her child and my wife quoted, ‘Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you,’ my sense of right and humanity rose above all political antecedents and predilections and here I am. Since leaving the Potomac, no human eye has looked upon these beings but mine until this moment. My affiliations and the fact it was well known I was coming north on business will shield me from suspicion, therefore ask no questions. To the direct care of Colonel Shepard, of whom the slave-owners in Dixie well know and to the protection of you all, I now consign them, trusting that no master’s hand shall ever again be laid upon them.”