Thus matters passed until the fourth night came. The sun set amid gathering clouds. The returned hunters gathered in their quarters, some of them to tell how earnestly they had sought to find nothin’; others to depict their true loyalty to Mar’s Jones, and the whites in their homes around, to swear vengeance on every nigger caught fleeing. As the storm broke and the darkness became more intense, George came forth. A little bundle of clothing, with three days’ rations of food, had been carefully prepared for him. There was an embrace, tender as though the participants had been free, a “God bless you, Mother,” a “May de Lor’ still be wid yer as he hab bin,” uttered as earnestly as though by cultured lips, and mother and son parted, never to see each other again. George Gray went forth fearlessly into the darkness. The country he knew for miles around, and for weary hours he made his way directly up the south bank of the James. Long after midnight the moon arose, and seeking a fitting place, he crossed the river and just as the first gray streakings of the dawn appeared, quietly secreted himself in a jungle of bushes upon the mountain which here comes down close to the river. The rain had obliterated all traces of his course; he was thought to have gone in an opposite direction four days before. Thus far his plans had worked admirably, and feeling safe, he partook of his rations and lay down to a refreshing sleep. Night found him again in motion, and by the time morning came he had made considerable progress. Again he rested and refreshed himself, and quietly surveyed the prospect for the future. He knew he was a long way from the Ohio; that much of the way was wild and mountainous, and that wherever there were people the dangers were greatest. His little stock of provisions would soon be gone, and then the berries and fruits of the forest would be his almost sole dependence, only occasionally he might go down to some bondman’s cabin. With these facts before him he faltered not, but pressed resolutely forward, only to find as he approached the river, after weary weeks of vigil, that his master’s advertisement had preceded him, and that base men were watching that they might claim the reward. This news came to him from colored men whom he occasionally contrived to see, for the great humanitarian thoroughfare of the days _ante bellum_ had its ramifications among the mountains of Virginia, as well as its broader lines on freer soil, though unlike those of the latter their officers were of somber hue. Taken in charge by one of these, George was safely put across the river one stormy night, and in care of a genuine “broad-brim conductor” on a main trunk line, but not until his presence had been scented by a pack of white bloodhounds all too anxious for the recompence of reward, and whose unholy avarice was equalled only by the wary alertness of the disciple of George Fox. II.