“I think I can cure him of it, if you will promise to keep the whole thing a secret.”
“I will,” was the reply.
“Let me have a sheet, and unloose your dog, and I will put the cure in motion,” I said. Rolla, the big Newfoundland dog, was unfastened, the sheet was well fitted around his neck, tightly sewed, and the pet told to go hunt his master.
Taking the trail, the dog at once made for the cemetery. Screams of “Help, help! God save me!” coming from the direction of the tombs, aroused the neighborhood. The cries of the man frightened the dog, and he returned home in haste; the sheet, half torn, was removed, and Rolla again fastened in his house.
Very soon Mr. Martin was led in by two friends, who picked him up from the sidewalk, with his face considerably bruised. His story was, that “The devil had chased him out of the cemetery, tripped him up on the sidewalk, and hence the flow of blood from the wound on his face.”
The above is a fair index to most of the ghost stories.
CHAPTER XIII.
Forty years ago, the escapes of slaves from the South, although numerous, were nevertheless difficult, owing to the large rewards offered for their apprehension, and the easy mode of extradition from the Northern States. Little or no difficulty was experienced in capturing and returning a slave from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, or Pennsylvania, the four States through which the fugitives had to pass in their flight to Canada. The Quaker element in all of the above States showed itself in the furnishing of food to the flying bondman, concealing him for days, and even weeks, and at last conveying him to a place of safety, or carrying him to the Queen’s dominions.
Instinct seemed to tell the negro that a drab coat and a broad-brimmed hat covered a benevolent heart, and we have no record of his ever having been deceived. It is possible that the few Friends scattered over the slave States, and the fact that they were never known to own a slave, gave the blacks a favorable impression of this sect, before the victim of oppression left his sunny birth-place.