She knew the history of the incident that had given to the Quaker poet inspiration for the lines--the branding by a southern court with the letters “S. S.”--“slave stealer”--of the captain of a little coastwise vessel for attempting to carry some slaves from Florida to the Bahamas and freedom under English law. Holding up her own long, slender hand with knitted brows and lips compressed she gazed at the palm, as if trying to imagine how it would seem to feel the red-hot iron searing her own flesh. Then with a disdainful gesture she threw out her arm, her head high and eyes shining. “They may brand me on my palms and my cheeks and my forehead too if they like--what would that be beside this work!” Counting on her fingers she murmured, “This makes twenty-five we’ve sent on to liberty--and in such a little time! Oh, we’re helping the slaves, and oh, please God”--she dropped on her knees beside her bed with her face in her hands, “please God, we’re doing something to help kill slavery!” At the breakfast-table the next morning Delavan asked concerning the entertaining peddler and was told that he must have made an early start, as Jim on his first errand to the stables had reported his wagon already gone. “Does he travel at night?” the young man asked. “Sometime in the night, when I wakened after my first sleep, I thought I heard his wagon leaving the barn.” Rhoda hastened to say that perhaps it was her father’s carriage he had heard, as he had had to make a night trip. Charlotte, chancing to look at her sister as Delavan asked his question, thought that Rhoda started and changed color ever so little. Immediately her alert mind began to wonder why, and she fixed her eyes sharply upon her sister’s face. Rhoda felt her gaze and endeavored to change the subject quickly in order to ward off the insistent questions which it would be like Charlotte to begin to ask. But at that moment Bully Brooks came unexpectedly to her assistance. Passing under her chair he emerged from beneath her skirt and playfully leaped at a bit of string on the floor. Charlotte saw him and, remembering certain kittenish tricks which he had not yet grown too old to play beneath her own hoopskirts, she smiled knowingly at her sister and dropped the subject from her thought. Later in the day Jefferson Delavan took his departure, and under his escort Mrs. Ware and Charlotte went down the river to Cincinnati. Since their argument on election day Rhoda had given him no opportunity to renew his love siege. Nevertheless, her heart was like lead in her breast, now that he was really going, and she was afraid to trust herself alone with him lest she would find herself saying, “Stay, oh, stay a little longer!” And yet she felt relief at the thought that the dear torment would now be lessened, glad that she might rest from the keener strife within herself that his presence provoked.