She slipped into his arms and he crushed her to his heart.
"I love you," she whispered. "I can trust you. I'll never ask your secret until you wish to tell me. Just love me, forever. That's all I ask."
"I can do that, and I will!" he answered solemnly.
They were married the next night in the parsonage of the Methodist Church of which she was a member. And the foundation was laid for a tragedy involving more lives than one.
CHAPTER XXVIII
From an old log farmhouse on the hills of Maryland,—overlooking the town of Harper's Ferry, the panther was crouching to spring.
For four months in various disguises Brown had reconnoitered the mountains around the gorge of the two rivers. He had climbed the peak and looked into the county of Fauquier with its swarming slave population. Each week he piloted his wagon to the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, thirty-five miles back in the hills.
The Humanitarians through their agents were shipping there, day by day, the powder, lead, guns, knives, torches and iron pikes the Chosen One had asked.
These pious men met him for a final conference in the home of Gerrit
Smith, the preacher philanthropist of Peterboro.
The canny old huntsman revealed to them just enough to excite the unconscious archaic impulse beneath the skin of culture. He told them that he was going to make a daring raid into the heart of the Old South and rescue as many of the "oppressed" as possible. They knew that the raid into Missouri had resulted in murder and that he rode back into Kansas with the red stains on his hands.