“O for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer’s praise; The glories of my God and King, The triumphs of His grace.” Thus sang Azel Tracy as he stood running a wheel in his little shop in Hartford, Ohio. The last words were uttered in a subdued tone. This done, the air was continued in a fine specimen of genuine Yankee whistling, intermingled with occasional snatches from “China,” or “Coronation.” It was only a sample of Mr. Tracy’s _railroad_ telegraphy, for the low attic of his shop, filled, in part, with bits of lumber and parts of defunct wagons, was an important _station_ and it frequently became necessary to signal the waiting passengers, of whom nearly one-hundred, according to the family reckoning, found rest and protection within its narrow limits, a fact one would scarcely believe as he passes it, looking to-day almost identical with its appearance fifty years ago. Notwithstanding Hartford is a historic anti-slavery town, there were not wanting those within its borders, who for “the recompense of reward,” would willingly have divulged the presence of any fugitives in keeping had he known their whereabouts. It was to guard against this class of persons frequenting his shop that the old wagon-maker had adopted a musical system of signalizing those in his care. When any danger threatened, and silence was imperative, he would sing a snatch of some familiar hymn or whistle its air; but when “the coast was clear,” Hail Columbia or Yankee Doodle was the signal for “unlimbering.” On this occasion both the words quoted and the whistling of “Old Hundred” were considered necessary as a double danger signal, for only three nights before there had climbed the narrow ladder in the corner of the shop, drawn it up and let down a board, thus completing the floor, an individual filling to a “dot” the description given in the hand-bill previously referred to, and which was already liberally scattered through Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. No questions had been asked and only necessary instructions and provisions given. Thirty-six hours later two strangers had put in an appearance in the quiet town, and soon avowed themselves as in quest of the subject of the reward offered. They had continued to lounge about the village till this Saturday afternoon, much of the time in uncomfortable proximity to the Tracy wagon shop, for they claimed the object of their search had been seen approaching it, and they were even now directly in its front in the highway, holding a colloquy with Dudley, the junior Tracy, and at present, 1894, the inheritor of his father’s trade and shop. “Dud,” as he is familiarly called, was then a strapping boy in his middle teens, bare-footed, without coat or vest, tow-headed, and to all appearances a fine subject for an interview.