"Don't think it," cried Mr. Holman. "He swam underwater with the current, came up clear, took a big breath, dived toward the shore, and swam away perfectly safe. I saw him climb into the bushes on shore. He will roll in somebody's hay until his dress is dry; then travel north to-night, watching for the Quakers to pick him up." "The Society of Friends is working out a regular plan for helpin' runaways that is liable to grow into a big thing one of these days," was Simon Kenton's prophecy. When the first Quaker who felt a throb of pity for the wretched runaway cowering for mercy at his feet, resolved to be a true Friend to the unfortunate, by defying man's law of property and obeying God's law of mercy, he surveyed in his mind the earliest routes for the underground railway, as he considered to which Friend farther north he should send this fugitive. The underground railway was never built of wooden cross-ties nor of steel rails. Its right of way was in the hearts of those who guarded the secret paths and the hidden shelters through which the slaves passed to the land of their hopes. Past the perils of the auction-block, the lash, and the bloodhounds, a vast emigration of blacks were smuggled through Cincinnati--the Cumberland Gap of their race--and, guided by that celestial scout, the north star, won their way to Canada and to freedom. Doby was vastly relieved about his lyric tenor. Still, he asked, "How will he know which way to go?" Simon Kenton sang softly, "He wave hes tail, Hes sma', wee tail, At no'th star in de sky." Then Doby smiled happily, "And he won't mind cold and hunger and he can't be captured while he has such faith in the luck that a boy--almost red-headed--gave him; and he wears in his kinks the left hind foot of a stolen rabbit!" VII THE DROWSY VILLAGE _Edward Eggleston's Favorite Spring at Vevay_ A STEAMBOAT'S paddles churned the Ohio backwater as she strove to make a landing at Vevay, coming down. Everybody on ships and on shore rushed for places to get a view of her. Plainly her name showed on her sides, the _New Orleans_. A queer little vessel was she. Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steam-engine, had himself designed and built her. She was the second steam craft in the whole wide world, and the first on Western waters. Several others had been set afloat in the four years since she had made her initial trip, but she was still certain to have a crowd of cheering admirers whenever she chose to show off her great accomplishment of going up-stream against the current. For two months he had been a river-traveler, and, therefore, Obadiah Holman knew that she could puff away as soon as she cared to do so, no matter if the landlubbers did use hot arguments to prove that, "It stands to reason that she cain't never go ag'in natur'."