Their next move was to return to their first Michigan home on my premises, a few months after the death of my husband, taking up their abode in the little log-house built for them a few years before, and working my land on shares. Another letter was soon received from their friend Deacon Bayliss, as they supposed, and they urged me to reply; but I firmly refused to write to any one in the land of the slaveholder, lest the message should fall into the hands of enemies, and advised them to leave their daughters in the hands of the Lord, who would yet provide a way of deliverance for them as he had for their parents. In their great anxiety, however, to hear from their children, from whom they had been separated so many years, their plea was strong and persistent: but I remained immovable to all their entreaties, and told them of a slave family, who, after living twenty years in Indiana, had but recently been captured and returned to hopeless bondage. Upon this they yielded to me for the time being, but in a few weeks came again with pleadings made eloquent by suffering. As they had felt the vice-like grip of the peculiar system on their own hearts and lives, they realized too keenly the fate that might any time overtake their daughters. But I still resisted all their entreaties, and in a few days after they applied to J. F. Dolbeare, one of the trustees of Raisin Institute, who, thinking there was no danger, wrote all they desired, telling the supposed Deacon Bayliss all their past life in the free States and all their plans for the future. This they kept from me for a time, but Elsie's heart refused to be quieted, and she finally told me about it, first telling her husband she believed it their duty "For," she says, "I have thought more about it since Aunt Laura told me she dreamed of three poisonous green vipers which she poked so near the fire that their sacks were burned to a crisp and the poison all ran out, so that she thought them powerless for harm, but they still kept their threatening attitude; and who knows but these vipers may be slaveholders?" Willis said he had felt like telling me all the while, and both came to me with their story. I much regretted this unwise step, but forbore all criticism, and told them we would hope for the best. A few days after a stranger appeared at our gate and inquired for a stray horse, which he said left him at Tecumseh. None having been seen he made similar inquiries at Hamilton's. He also asked for a glass of water, and while receiving it, says to Elsie: "Auntie, where does this road lead to, that crosses the river east?" "To Palmyra," she replied, and frightened at being addressed as "Auntie," in the Southern style, hastened into her house.