To Rhoda her father gave over most of the care of the fugitives upon their arrival and while they were secreted in the cellar. Not infrequently also she drove them on to the next station, sometimes in the night, sometimes by day, in a spring wagon with a false bottom which he had bought for this purpose. Occasionally Chad Wallace appeared in the neighborhood with his peddler’s wagon at their service, if it did not already contain its complement of hidden chattels. Now and then farmer Gilbertson, on a trip to town, hauled back some “baggage” well concealed in his wagon bed, to be stowed away in his hollow haystack until it could be sent on to the next station. A man who had a market garden out on the same road and drove back and forth a good deal with vegetables for the Hillside market and for steamboat supplies, and another who traveled about ostensibly selling reeds often carried black passengers. With hands and head and heart all so full Rhoda found little time to spend in thinking of her own unhappiness. Nevertheless, the day never went by that had not a little space saved out from other things and held apart for thought of her lover. Now and then a letter passed between them. But from these missives was dropped all mention of both slavery and love, although on both sides the correspondence breathed a sense of mutual tenderness and understanding that amounted to a sort of spiritual intimacy. To Rhoda these letters were the treasure of her heart. They were read over and over again, held caressingly in her hands during the brief minutes of each day when she gave herself up to thought of him, and kept under her pillow or upon her breast while she slept. Every night, when she knelt at her bedside, her petitions to the Heavenly Father begged for His blessing upon her efforts in behalf of the slaves, pleaded that He would soon put forth His hand and make an end of slavery, and implored the safety and the happiness of her lover. In the late summer there came a message from Fairmount. Emily Delavan, Mrs. Ware’s namesake, was to be married in October and the Ware family was bidden to the festivities. The news set Charlotte upon the borders of ecstatic delight. The visit, which was to be prolonged through several weeks, would not only be filled with no end of alluring pleasures and amusements, but it should open, she decided at once, the door of escape from her home into more congenial surroundings. It would be just the sort of environment,--a gay crowd of people with nothing to do but enjoy themselves--in which she knew she always appeared to best advantage. Two or three uninterrupted weeks of it, with Jefferson Delavan always there to feel the effects of her charms, and she could be quite sure of the result. But--there was Rhoda. “If she’s there,” Charlotte grumbled to herself, “she’ll just keep on making Jeff think she’s going to marry him some day, and have him dangling after her all the time.”