"Never will I consent to such a scheme."
"But listen—"
"You listen to me, young man. The bare mention of this thing again and I shall refuse to see or speak to you. Do you accept my decision, sir?"
Hoyt agreed at once. Only in this way could he keep in touch with the man whom he had come to save.
"The last thing on this earth I would ask," Brown continued sternly, "is to be taken from this jail except by the State of Virginia when I shall ascend the scaffold."
Hoyt looked longingly at the old-fashioned fireplace in his prison room.
Two men could have crawled up its flue at the same time.
His refusal did not stop Higginson's efforts. He appealed to the forlorn wife at North Elba, New York, to go to Harper's Ferry, ask to see her husband and whisper her plan into his ear. He sent the money and got Mrs. Brown as far as Baltimore on her journey when Brown heard of it and stopped her with a peremptory command.
The determined conspirator then worked up the proposition to buy a steam tug which could make 18 knots an hour, steam up the James River to Richmond, kidnap the Governor of the Commonwealth, Henry Wise, and hold him for ransom until Brown was released. The scheme only failed for the lack of money.
Higginson had seen one thing. Brown saw a bigger thing.
Higginson's refusal to flee was based on sound psychology. He knew that from the day John Brown struck his brutal blow at the heart of the South and blood had begun to flow, the Blood Feud would be the biggest living fact in the Nation's history.