As he crossed the top of one hill he saw Rhoda driving down the long slope of the next. With a flourish of her carriage whip she responded to his hat-waving salute. “Let me hitch Prince on behind and get in and drive you back,” he said, as they met at the bottom of the hill. “So you had some U. G. baggage to deliver last night?” he continued, as he jumped in and took the lines from her hands. She flashed a smile at him. “Yes, a trunk and two handbags. And oh, Horace, they were the wife and children of the man to whom Mr. Delavan gave his freedom last June! I do hope they’ll get to him safely!” He remained silent, as he usually did if she spoke in his presence of Delavan. So she turned at once to another subject. “How did the party go off last night? I didn’t see Charlotte when she came home, so I don’t know anything about it yet. Did you have a good time?” “The party? Oh, yes, it was pleasant. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.” She cast a side glance at him. He was looking fixedly ahead and his expression seemed to indicate lack of interest in the social function to which he had escorted Charlotte. She tried another tack: “I spent the evening reading speeches. You’ve read George William Curtis’s oration, haven’t you?” He warmed up at this, with a look of relief, and they plunged at once into a discussion of the speech, comparing ideas upon it, and telling each other bits of news they had heard about its influence and about the progress of the campaign. “When the state elections are held next week, in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania,” said Hardaker, “we’ll have a good indication of how things will go in November. The side that gets Pennsylvania will be pretty sure to win. I hope we’ll carry it, but between you and me, Rhoda, I don’t like the look of things over there. They’re stealing our thunder. They’re yelling ‘Buck and Breck and Free Kansas’ all over the state. And Kansas has about as much chance of becoming free if Buchanan is elected as--Prince has of flying.” “Has Julia said anything in her letters to you about John Brown and what the free-state people in Kansas think about him? You know the others accuse him of most awful murders.” “War is always murder, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else,” he responded with energy. “The Buchaneers have been doing some atrocious lying about him and about everything else out there. According to them it’s war when the border ruffians drive the free-state settlers out of their homes and murder when Brown or anybody else helps to defend the settlers from their attacks. No, Julia hasn’t said anything particular about him, but my opinion is that at the greatest risk to his own life he’s helping to save Kansas from the grip of the slave power.”