“There’s no telling how many slaves they’ve hidden in there and sent on to Canada. Thousands of dollars worth, it’s likely. And their owners just raking the country and spending money trying to find them. Oh, it’s a shame the way these black abolitionists act! Father and Rhoda are just as bad as any of them. Nigger thieves! O, my! And that nigger out in the woodshed, he belongs to somebody just exactly the same as if he was a horse or a cow. He ought to be taken back. He’s somebody’s property, and it’s wrong and against the law to steal him, or to help anybody else to steal him. If I don’t tell somebody that he’s here, so he can be taken back to his owner, I’ll be a nigger-thief, just the same as they are.” She tied her bonnet under her chin, adjusted her cape around her shoulders, took a last look in the glass, and turned toward the door. Her eyes chanced to fall upon the letter, lying on the table. “O, my goodness, I’m about to forget that!” she exclaimed, seizing the missive. She giggled and tilted her chin and said aloud, “Yes, I shall, I shall do it!” Then she touched her lips to the superscription and airily waved the envelope toward the south. With another gay little laugh she tucked it into her pocket. And so it happened that when the mail-bag left the Hillside post-office that afternoon it carried three letters for Jefferson Delavan. As she came out of the post-office Charlotte found herself face to face with her admirer, Billy Saunders. “Is Susie at home?” she asked. “Yes, and expecting you. Are you going there?” He turned and walked up the street at her side. Her cheeks still showed a heightened color and the fires of her indignation glowed in her eyes. “You’re looking mighty pretty this afternoon, Charlotte. What’s happened?” “What’s happened, indeed!” Charlotte tossed her head. “Does there have to be a wedding, or a funeral, or a steamboat accident before I deserve a compliment?” “No, indeed! You always deserve more compliments than I have sense enough to think of. But you look excited, as if something unusual had happened.” Charlotte turned toward him, her heart swelling with excitement over the momentous secret she had discovered. At this final moment it was chiefly the childish need of sharing her knowledge that urged her to speech. “Say, Billy, can you keep a secret?” “As well as you can, I reckon.” “I’ve just got to tell somebody, or I’ll fly into a thousand pieces!” “Don’t do that!” he begged in mock alarm. “Out with it, and save the pieces!” “Well, then, there’s a nigger in our woodpile!” A flash crossed his face. “What do you mean?” he ejaculated, stopping short. “Just what I say. He’s hid among the wood in our woodshed. There’s a little house there.”