"That may be," Abe answered. "But I keep hopin' that we can swap a hen for the house and get rid of him. Anyhow, it's a good time to be careful." "He may be glad to live with me, but I ain't willin' to live with him," Samson rejoined. "I ain't awful proud, but his station in life is a leetle too far below mine. If I tried to live with him, I would get the smell on my soul so that St. Peter would wonder what to do with me." Abe laughed. "That touches the core of the trouble," said he. "In the North most men have begun to think of the effect of slavery on the soul; in the South a vast majority are thinking of its effect on the pocket. One stands for a moral and the other for a legal right." "But one is righter than the other," Samson insisted. That evening Samson set down the events of the day in his book and quoted the dialogue in Offut's store in which he had had a part. On the first of February, 1840, he put these words under the entry: "I wouldn't wonder if this was the first trip on the Underground Railroad." CHAPTER VII IN WHICH MR. ELIPHALET BIGGS GETS ACQUAINTED WITH BIM KELSO AND HER FATHER. In a musty old ledger kept by James Rutledge, the owner of Rutledge's Tavern, in the year 1832, is an entry under the date of January 31st which reads as follows: "Arrived this day Eliphalet Biggs of 26 Olive Street, St. Louis, with one horse." Young Mr. Biggs remained at Rutledge's Tavern for three weeks with his arm in a sling under the eye of the good doctor. The Rutledges were Kentucky folk and there the young man had found a sympathetic hearing and tender care. Dr. Allen had forbidden him the use of ardent spirits while the bone was knitting and so these three weeks were a high point in his life so to speak. It had done him good to be hurled against a barn door and to fall trembling and confused at the feet of his master. He had never met his master until he had reached Hopedale that morning. The event had been too long delayed. Encouraged by idleness and conceit and alcohol, evil passions had grown rank in the soil of his spirit. Restraint had been a thing unknown to him. He had ruled the little world in which he had lived by a sense of divine right. He was a prince of Egoland--that province of America which had only half yielded itself to the principles of Democracy. Sobriety and the barn door had been a help to his soul. More of these heroic remedies might have saved him. He was like one exiled, for a term, from his native heath. After the ancient fashion of princes, he had at first meditated the assassination of the man who had blocked his way. Deprived of the heat of alcohol, his purpose sickened and died. It must be said that he served his term as a sober human being quite gracefully, being a well born youth of some education. A few days he spent mostly in bed, while his friend, who had come on from Hopedale, took care of him. Soon he began to walk about and his friend returned to St. Louis.