Patty got her water-colors out to show to Mr. Mason and Fanny just at the moment that her mother slipped away to get Abe down and out of the house into the garden. He had to pass through the front hall to get from the garret stairs to the back stairs, and just at the critical moment, when she knew that Abe must be passing through the front hall, her uncle Tom said, "Oh, I've left my glasses upstairs!" and started to go for them.
"Let me," said Patty, for the whole hall was visible from four steps up on the front stairs.
"No, I'll go myself," said her uncle Tom, and he moved toward the foot of the stairs, and for one second Patty felt at her wits' end. Then she knocked over a vase of flowers on the table. The water ran all over the pictures. Both girls exclaimed; Mr. Mason turned to help mop it up with his handkerchief also, and the danger was over.
At breakfast-time the next day Mr. Mason said, "You came in late, or rather, early. Jack. Did you have a hard night of it?"
"Tiresome," said the doctor.
It was true, for he had driven Abe about sixteen miles up the river.
Abe was sent from Northampton to Canada by rail, and it was not until he was safe there that Mr. Mason, who was then in Boston, learned from his overseer of his disappearance; for just as Abe had hoped and supposed, he had not been missed for several days. Then Mr. Mason, very much cut up by his running away, went directly back to Virginia with his daughter.
That was the only time Patty's station ever held a waiting passenger.