put spirit for a second into his old heart. He knew the danger that lay in that yell. He meant to stop it, cost him what it might. Johnson was still on his knees in the ashes, still clutching Tom's ankle, the boy still sprawling on the hearth, half-dazed with the shock of discovery and of his fall, when Uncle Moses's withered old body hurled itself upon the overseer's broad back and his feeble fingers clutched the man's windpipe and choked him into a second's silence. That second was enough. Tom sprang to his feet and sprang at his foe like a wildcat, and good old Towser, rejoicing in the vengeance that beckoned to him, sunk his teeth in Johnson's shoulder and tore him down from the back while Tom struck his strongest just below the overseer's chin and knocked him out for the time being. Before he came to, he had been lashed hand-and-foot into a long bundle, had been effectually gagged with his own whip, had been blindfolded and had been rolled beneath the bed, from under which the food had been hurriedly withdrawn. Meanwhile Morris had neither been seen nor heard. Tom called up the chimney to him to come down. "I kain't, Massa Tom," said a stifled voice. It had never occurred to Morris to slip down and help in the fight he heard going on below. His one thought had been to escape himself. So he had climbed still higher up the chimney and in his frantic haste he had so wedged himself into it that it took Tom an hour to pull him down. It was a battered, bruised, and bleeding negro who finally appeared. That was a very long hour. Mr. Izzard might return in search of his overseer at any moment. The overseer himself must be conscious by this time. His ears must have told him much. Tom whispered to Morris and Moses to say nothing. His anxious gesture toward the bed beneath which Johnson lay frightened both negroes into scared silence. Fortunately for them the overseer's ears had told him nothing. Towser's teeth had drawn so much blood--the mighty hound had been pried off his foe with difficulty--that the man lay in a faint until the four fugitives had fled. For there were four fugitives now. Neither Moses nor Towser could stay to face the coming wrath. The rest of Moses's chickens were killed, the rest of his vegetables gathered. When darkness fell, the old flat-boat, laden until she had a scant two inches of free-board above the water, was slipping down the river again. Uncle Moses was no longer "a-waitin' fer freedum." He was going in search of the freedom he had so long craved. He and his fellows had two clear days in which to get away without pursuit, for Johnson lay in his dark prison beneath the bed for fortyeight hours before he was found. One of the ropes used to bind him had caught upon an old nail in the wall. He was too weak to tear it away and so could not even roll himself to the outer air. On the second day of his unexplained absence, Mr. Izzard had sent all the negroes in search of him and had offered a reward for his finding.