At dawn on Thursday, the caravan started again, and this time without Brown. Two of his men accompanied the one ox-team, which was sent forward, one going ahead to act as pilot. This man, however, turned back, leaving the negroes to make their way to Osawatomie alone. They arrived, without any mishap, at the home of Mr. Adair, near Osawatomie, on Christmas Eve, where, it seems, no arrangements had been made to receive them. On the arrival of the slaves at his home, Mr. Adair says he referred the matter of sheltering them to his wife, calling her attention to the responsibility it would involve. "She considered the matter a few moments and then said: 'I cannot turn them away.' They were taken around to the back yard, and the colored people were brought into the back kitchen and kept there that night."[336] Continuing the narrative Mr. Villard says that at two A. M. of the morning after Christmas, the fugitives were finally placed in an old abandoned preëmption cabin on the south fork of the Pottawatomie, where kind neighbors brought them food and gave them encouragement.[337] In this location they remained until they were taken north. It is probable that Brown, in his selfishness, cared but little whether these negroes were returned to slavery or not. He had done his stunt in liberating them, and made no pretense of defending them or of caring for them until in January, and took care not to be near the fugitives while the pursuing bands were scouring the country in search of them. Naturally no public accounting was ever made of the property taken by the Shubel Morgan Plunder Company, nor has any statement ever been made as to the division of the plunder, or of a division of the proceeds, among the members of it. But it is known that it was the raid and the robbery, that Brown had in view, whereby he expected to raise the money to defray the expense of the return of the party to the East. January 11, 1859, he wrote to his family that he had been unable to finish up his business as rapidly as he had hoped to when he wrote previously--December 2d--and the delay of his departure from Kansas until about January 20th, was probably due to the fact that it required that length of time to close out the company property and make distribution of the proceeds. Final settlement was probably made at or near Lawrence. Mr. Villard says on page 380: Somehow or other Brown recruited his finances while near Lawrence, and his wagons, when he drove away, were creaking with the weight of provisions contributed by Major Abbott and Mr. Grover.