and, as the test proved, he sustained himself well in his part. On boarding the boat that was to carry him to freedom he discovered his owner, Mr. Brennan, but so effectual was the slave's make-up that the master failed to penetrate the disguise.[165] [162] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 242. [163] Letter of Valentine Nicholson, Indianapolis, Ind., Sept. 10, 1892. [164] _The Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times_, p. 10. [165] _Ibid._, p 34. _et seq._ [Illustration: BARN OF SEYMOUR FINNEY, ESQ., DETROIT, MICHIGAN. A shelter for fugitives in Detroit, formerly standing where the Chamber of Commerce Building now stands.] [Illustration: THE OLD FIRST CHURCH, GALESBURG, ILLINOIS. Fugitive slaves were sometimes concealed in the gallery of this church.] A similar story is told by Mr. Sidney Speed, of Crawfordsville, Indiana, when recalling the work of his father, John Speed, and that of Fisher Doherty. "In 1858 or 1859, a mulatto girl about eighteen or twenty years old, very good-looking and with some education, ... reached our home. The nigger-catchers became so watchful that she could not be moved for several days. In fact, some of them were nearly always at the house either on some pretended business or making social visits. I do not think that the house was searched, or they would surely have found her, as during all this time she remained in the garret over the old log kitchen, where the fugitives were usually kept when there was danger. Her owner, a man from New Orleans, had just bought her in Louisville, and he had traced her surely to this place; she had not struck the Underground before, but had made her way alone this far, and as they got no trace of her beyond here they returned and doubled the watches on Doherty and my father. But at length a day came, or a night rather, when she was led safely out through the gardens to the house of a colored man named Patterson. There she was rigged out in as fine a costume of silk and ribbons as it was possible to procure at that time, and was furnished with a white baby borrowed for the occasion, and accompanied by one of the Patterson girls as servant and nurse." Thus disguised, the lady boarded the train at the station. But what must have been her feelings to find her master already in the same car; he was setting out to watch for her at the end of the line. She kept her courage, and when they reached Detroit she went aboard the ferry-boat for Canada; her pretended nurse returned to shore with the borrowed baby; and as the gang-plank was being raised, the young slave-woman on the boat removed her veil that she might bid her owner good-by. The master's display of anger as he gazed at the departing boat was as real as the situation was gratifying to his former slave and amusing to the bystanders.[166] [166] Letter from Mr. Sidney Speed, Crawfordsville, Ind., March 6, 1896.