"Come with me, Douglas, for God's sake," he begged. "I'll defend you with my life. I want you for a special purpose. I'll capture Harper's Ferry in two hours. They'll be asleep. When I cross the line on the mountain top and call the ten thousand slaves in Fauquier County—the bees will swarm, man! Can't you see them? Can't you hear the roar when I've placed these pikes in their hands?—I want you to hive them."
Douglas hesitated for only a moment. His vivid imagination had seen the flash of the hell-lit vision of the slave insurrection and his soul answered with a savage cry. But he slipped from Brown's arms, rubbed his eyes and flung off the spell.
"My good friend," he said at last, "you're walking into a steel trap.
You can't come out alive."
He turned to Shields Green, the negro guard who was now one of the old man's disciples. Green had been a friend of Douglas' in Rochester. He had introduced him to the Crusader. He felt responsible for his life. He had a duty to perform to this ignorant black man and he did it, painful as it was.
"Green, you have heard what I've just said to my friend. He has changed his plans since you volunteered. You understand, now. You can go with him or come home with me to Rochester. What will you do?"
His answer was coolly deliberate.
"I b'lieve I go wid de ole man!"
With a heavy heart Brown saw Douglas leave. It was the shattering of his most dramatic dream of the execution of the Great Deed. When the black bees should swarm he had seen himself at the head of the dark, roaring tide of avengers, their pikes and rifles flashing in the Southern sun. Around his waist was the sword of George Washington and the pistols of Lafayette. His Aide of Honor would ride, this negro, once a fugitive slave. Side by side they would sweep the South with fire and sword.
On arrival at his headquarters on the hill he learned that a revival of religion was going on in the town below and he fixed Sunday, the seventeenth of October, as the day of the Deed. Harper's Ferry would not only be asleep that night—every foe would be lulled in songs of praise to God.