Morris was right. It did not take him long to untie the clumsy knot. Three oars and some fishing-tackle lay in the flat-bottomed boat. They got into it, pushed off, and floated down the current without a sound. Morris steered with an oar at the stern. Once out of earshot, they rowed as fast as the darkness, intensified by the shadows of the overhanging trees, permitted. Just before they had pushed off, Tom had asked: "What is this boat worth, Morris?" "Old Massa paid five dollars fer a new one jest like it, dis lastest week." Tom's conscience had told him that even though a fugitive for his life in the enemy's country he ought not to take the "poor white's" boat without paying for it. He unbuttoned an inside pocket in his shirt and drew out a precious store of five-dollar gold pieces. There were twenty of them, each wrapped in tissue-paper and the whole then bound together in a rouleau, wrapped in water-proofed silk, so that there would be no sound of clinking gold as he walked. He figured that the three oars and the sorry fishing tackle could not be worth more than the boat was, so he took out two coins and put them in a battered old pan that lay beside the stump to which the boat was tied. There the "cracker"--another name for the "poor white"--would be sure to see them in the morning. As a matter of fact he did. And they were worth so much more than his vanished property that he was inclined to think an angel, rather than a thief, had passed that way. Tom's conscientiousness spoiled Morris's plan of having the owner think the boat had floated away, but the "cracker" was glad to clutch the gold and start no hue-and-cry. He was afraid that if he recovered his boat, he would have to give up the gold. It was much cheaper to make another. So he kept still. And still, very still, the fugitives kept as they paddled slowly down the stream until the first signs of dawn sent them into hiding. They hid the boat in the tall reeds that fringed the mouth of a tiny creek and they themselves crept a few yards into the forest, ate very much less than they wanted to eat of what was left of Morris's scanty store of food, and went to sleep. They slept until--but that is another story. CHAPTER VII TOWSER FINDS THE FUGITIVES--TOWSER BRINGS UNCLE MOSES--MR. IZZARD AND HIS YANKEE OVERSEER, JAKE JOHNSON--TOM IS PULLED DOWN THE CHIMNEY--HOW UNCLE MOSES CHOKED THE OVERSEER--THE FLIGHT OF THE FOUR. They slept until late in the afternoon.