“If you go I suppose I must,” broke in Mr. Maybee.
“But you don’t know what you’re about,” he continued as they left the room together: “You must remember, mister, that these people are only niggers and Injuns.”
“Niggers! Mr. Maybee, what do you mean?”
“It’s a fac’. The boy is a fugitive slave picked up by White Eagle in some of his tramps and adopted. The girl is a quadroon. Her mother, the chief’s wife, was a fugitive too, whom he befriended and then married out of pity.”
“Still they’re human beings, and entitled to some consideration,” replied Warren, while he muttered to himself, thinking of the tales he had heard of American slavery,—“What a country!”
“That’s so, mister, that’s so; but it’s precious little consideration niggers and Injuns git aroun’ hyar, an’ that’s a fac’.”
For all his hard words, Ebenezer Maybee was a humane man and had done much for the very class he assumed to despise. He did not hesitate to use the methods of the Underground railroad when he deemed it necessary.
When Warren returned to the room, the two children stood where he had left them, and as soon as Mr. Maybee joined them they started out.
Through mud and rain they made their way, the rays from the lanterns but serving to intensify the darkness. Very soon a vivid flash threw into bold relief the whiteness of the hissing lake.
“What did you come over in, Judah, canoe or boat?” shouted Mr. Maybee, who headed the party.