Off the coast of Labrador, in weather four degrees below zero, the _Scotia_ strained and groaned. There was something fiercely satisfying to one passenger in the struggle with the elements. Frederick Douglass, pacing the icy deck or tossing in his cabin, felt that the sky _should_ be black. The waters _should_ foam and dash, the winds _should_ howl; for John Brown lay in prison and his brave sons were dead! Back in Concord, the gentle Thoreau was ringing the town bell and crying in the streets, “Old John Brown is dead--John Brown the immortal lives!” By the time Douglass docked at Liverpool, England was as much alive to what had happened at Harper’s Ferry as the United States. Once more Douglass was called to Scotland and Ireland--this time to give an account of the men who had thus flung away their lives in a desperate effort to free the slaves. Having accepted an invitation to speak in Paris, he wrote for a passport. A suspicion current at the time, that a conspiracy against the life of Napoleon III was afoot in England, had stiffened the French passport system. Douglass, wishing to avoid any delay, wrote directly to the Honorable George Dallas, United States Minister in London. That gentleman refused to grant the passport at all on the ground that Frederick Douglass was not a citizen of the United States. Douglass’ English friends gaped at the Ministry letter. The “man without a country,” however, merely shrugged his shoulders. “I forget too easily,” he said. “Now I’ll write to the French minister.” Within a few days he had his answer--a “special permit” for Frederick Douglass to visit “indefinitely” in any part of France. He was packed to go when a cable from home arrived. Little Annie was dead. The sudden loss of his baby daughter seemed to climax all the pain and heartbreak of these months. Heedless now of peril to himself, he took the first outgoing steamer for Portland, Maine. During the seventeen dragging days of his voyage, Douglass resolved to make one stop even before going home. He had two graves now to visit--Annie’s and John Brown’s. Annie too had loved the old man. She would not mind if her father went directly to the house in the Adirondacks. No one was expecting the haggard dark man who descended from the train at North Elba. He could not find a driver to take him up to John Brown’s house. But from the livery stable he secured a horse. And so he rode up through the Indian Pass gorge, between two overhanging black walls, and came out under tall, white clouds above wine-colored mountains rising in a blue mist. And there beside a still, green pool, reflecting a white summit in its depths, he saw the house, with its abandoned sawmill. Mrs. Brown exhibited no surprise when he stood before her. Her husband’s strength sustained her now. John Brown and the sons that she had borne were no longer hers. They belonged to all the peoples of the world. She greeted Frederick Douglass with a smile.