Gradually a desire to be out in the spiritual solitude of the night came upon him. He rose from his seat, closed the window, took his hat from the wall, and setting the night-lamp in the open chimney, turned it down to a faint glimmer, and left the room, locking the door behind him.

A feeble growl reminded him of the dog, and he delayed a moment to go to the kennel of the animal. The creature knew him, and lazily yawning as he approached, pawed feebly in its nest in the packing case, and wagged its tail. Patting it on the head, and murmuring a kind word or two, he turned from it, and abstractedly wandered out at the gate, and away from the house, with his head bent upon his breast, and his arms behind him.

It was the dead of night, and the shadowy streets, wanly lighted by the setting moon, were intensely still. The air was bleak and cold, but the wind, which had been stirring before midnight, had gone down. On that memorable night, as he afterward remembered, he was in such a condition of mental abstraction, that he took no note of the course his steps pursued, nor did he once lift his head to look around him. The strangeness of the moon as he crossed the streets where it was visible, would have roused him to observation, had he chanced to look at it. But he did not, and meeting no person, not even a watchman, and unmindful of the route he took, he wandered mechanically on.

What thoughts engaged him, if any, he never could recall. It seemed to him, however, that his mind must have been in blank vacancy, uncrossed by any shadow of mentality. Yet he was remotely sensible of the echoes of his footfalls in the solitary streets and of his passage under the overshadowing bulks of the dark houses. Remotely sensible, too, that there was moonlight, that the air was ghast and cold, and that he was loitering on, alone, with his head sunk upon his breast, and his hands clasped behind him.

He knew, too, when he had reached Washington street, though he did not look up, but he felt, as it were, the character of the street, and was dimly aware of the great multitude of signs that covered the buildings. He was conscious of wandering up the deserted thoroughfare for some distance, then of returning, still in the same absent mood, of crossing several moonlit spaces formed by the intersecting streets, of passing the grey, towering spire of the Old South Church, and of turning up School street. In all this route, he did not meet a single person, or once arouse even for a moment from his intense abstraction.

But as he turned up School street on the left hand side, the solemn and funereal clang from the Old South steeple startled him from his lethargy, striking with gloomy clangor the hour of two. He stopped, listening to the sombre and heavy blare of the great bell as it tolled the hour, and then died away in ghostly and aËrial reverberations. Hearkening till the last faint dinning of the swarming tones seemed to fail into soundless vibratory waves, he waited till these too failed, and the awful silence of the night again descended brooding on the air. Two. The hour when spirits, as some wild seer avers, have power to enter from without, and walk the earth till dawn. Looking up, as the fancy crossed his mind, he saw the street, a lonely vista darkling in blue and melancholy gloom, so strangely litten, so unearthly in its whole appearance, that a sudden and silent diffusion of awe spread softly through his being, and held him still.

Had he been brought there blindfolded, and the bandage removed, he would scarcely have known where he was, so changed was the street from its familiar aspect. The gibbous moon, a huge, misshapen mass of watery light hanging low in the dead, dark blue, poured a flood of wan, metallic brilliance down one side of the vista, bringing out its architectural features in vivid lustre and ebon blackness, while the structures on the side on which he stood, loomed dark and sharp in deep shadow. So lone, so ghast, so supernaturally still, so changed in the weird and frigid glitter, so desolate and splendid in the melancholy light, the haggard darkness, the mournful and marble silence, that the gazer might have dreamed he stood in the demon-city of the Hebrew story, where foot of man hath seldom trod, and the evil night broods eternal.

Tranced with wondering awe, he moved slowly up the pavement, gazing upon the solemn palaces of ebony and silver, with his imagination darkly stirred. Beyond him lay a garden space, breaking the line of the vista, with two chestnut-trees in front on the pavement, whose thick cones of foliage seemed sculptured in metal, and were dimly silvered by the moon. Further on rose the square belfry and high-windowed wall of the Stone Chapel, with its flank gleaming, and its panes glittering in the wan lustre. As his glance rested on this, he saw a gaunt and spectral figure emerge from a shadowed angle, and move slowly, with a strange, uncertain motion, along the base of the chapel wall, with the unearthly light upon its shapeless outlines, and its long, black shadow distinct upon the gleaming pavement. Now creeping on, now halting and appearing to waver, strange in movement, strange and alien in form, it intensified the ghastly and desolate solitude with its presence, and seemed like some lone vagrant fiend slinking abroad from his lair, in the pallor of the waning moon.

Vaguely attracted by the strangeness of its shape and movements, which had something unusual about them he could not define, Harrington kept his eyes fixed upon it, as he moved on. The figure halted and wavered in its shambling walk as he drew nigh, and finally stood still, looking toward him. A secret tremor stirred his blood, for the nearer he approached the figure, the more inexplicable was the gauntness and shapelessness of its outlines. He was still some twenty or thirty yards distant from it, and without well knowing why he did so, for he had no intention of accosting it, he slowly crossed the street, and walked as slowly forward. As he drew nearer, a vague disgust mingled with the faint tremor of his veins, for a horrible and poisonous smell, which grew stronger as he approached, burdened the cold air. What dreadful outcast is this? he thought. Suddenly he stood still, aghast, petrified, filled with an icy affright mixed with unutterable loathing, and his eyes riveted to the awful shape before him. He was within a couple of yards of it, and as it stood trembling in the weird brilliance of the moon, it seemed some terrific scare-crow risen from Hell.

It was the figure of a man, but save for the wild, dark face that glared at him, the long, gaunt hands, like claws, that hung by its side, the thin legs half bare, and gaunt, splay bare feet on which it stood trembling, it seemed liker some monstrous rag. A loathsome and abominable stench exhaled from it. Its clothes were a dark shirt and trowsers, which hung in jagged tatters on its wasted skeleton frame. Wound round and round its neck in a thick sug, which gave it that appearance of shapelessness he had first noticed, was what seemed an old blanket. Above this glared a face of livid swarth, lit by the gloomy moon, the cheek bones protruding, the cheeks horribly sunken, the mouth fallen away from the white teeth, the eyes hollow and staring, the whole face that of some appalling mummy, burst from the leathern sleep of its Egyptian tomb, and endowed with horrid life to make night hideous.

The blood of Harrington seemed turned to ice as he gazed, and his hair rose.

“In the name of God,” he gasped, “what manner of man are you?”

The figure did not answer, but stared at him and trembled.

Harrington’s heart was stout, and conquering at once his affright and the sickening disgust which the stench gave him, he made one stride nearer to the figure.

“Who are you? Where did you come from?” he demanded.

The figure made no answer, but still stared rigidly at him, and trembled.

Harrington closely scanned the ghastly and hideous face, but could not determine anything concerning it. In the wan light of the moon, its horrible emaciation and livid duskiness of hue, together with the terrific expression the fallen mouth and exposed teeth gave it, made it seem like the face of a ghoul.

“Where do you live? Have you no home?” asked Harrington, shuddering.

“No, Marster.”

If a corpse could speak, its voice might be the weak and hollow quaver in which the outcast made this answer. An awful feeling rose in the heart of Harrington, for he knew by the accent of the ghastly stranger that he was a negro, and the title he had bestowed upon him indicated that he was a runaway slave.

“Where do you come from? Where have you been?” he asked quickly.

The outcast trembled violently throughout his lank frame, and his jaws chattered.

“Oh, Marster, don’t ask me,” he answered in his weak, hollow voice. “I’ve been in hell, Marster, and I’ve got away. I’ve been in hell, Marster, sure. Don’t send me back, now don’t. Have a little mercy, Marster, and let me go.”

So awful were the words in that lone hour; so awful the hollow and sepulchral voice that uttered them; so awful the motion of the face which writhed in speaking, as though in some rending agony; so awful and so dreadful the black skeleton gauntness, the monstrous raggedness, the Druidic filth of the trembling figure, with its swathed neck showing like some enormous circle of wen, and the poisonous stench sickening the whole night with its exhalations, that Harrington instinctively recoiled. Up from the lowest abysses of social wretchedness they swarmed into his mind;—the degraded of every low condition and degree—the neglected, the forgotten, the forlorn, the scum and dregs and ordure of mankind—the thieves, the beggars, the tatterdemalion sots and prostitutes and stabbers—the bloated, brutal, malformed nightmare monsters of a Humanity transformed to shapes more fearful than the foulest beasts;—up from the dark and fetid dens of the filthiest quarter of the city—up from the sinks and stews of the Black Sea—a wild and grisly company—they swarmed upon him. In all their misery, no misery like this—in all their number, no shape to pair with this. Below the lowest abyss of their wretchedness, yawned a lower, new-come from which, in the haggard pallor of the moon, stood a figure from whose ghastly and abominable Pariah shape the foulest and the vilest of them all would have shrunk away. Below the lowest hell wherein, in sunless crime and vice, their ruined natures were immerged, lay, as in the Inferno of Dante, a hell still lower—the hell decreed by avarice for innocent men, new-risen from which, all loathly foul, all awful with long suffering, stood the dark fugitive, afraid to tell his name, afraid to say from whence he had come, afraid to stand in the presence of his fellow, as though he were some frightful felon dreading the vengeance of mankind!

Gasping and shuddering through all his frame, Harrington gazed at him.

“O my country!” he murmured, “that such a thing as this should be! That such a wrong as this should be wrought by you!”

The fugitive seemed to hear some fragment of his words, for he spoke instantly.

“Marster,” he said, “you’ll be a friend to me, won’t you? I’ve gone through a good deal to git away, Marster. I have, indeed, and I’ve got so fur now, you won’t send me back. Oh, Marster, don’t send me back!”

He tried to kneel to him on the pavement. The tears sprang to Harrington’s eyes, and conquering his disgust, he strode forward, caught the foul form, and raised it to its feet. The fugitive shrank a little at his touch, and stood trembling.

“You poor fellow,” sorrowfully said Harrington, “don’t be afraid of me. I won’t harm you. No, I won’t send you back. And if you’ll trust in me, you shall be safe and no one shall lay a hand upon you. But it’s not safe for you to be out here in the street. Come with me, and I’ll give you a place to sleep, and food to eat, and take care of you.”

The fugitive hesitated a moment, still trembling.

“Marster, I’ll trust in you,” he said at length. “I’ll trust in you, Marster, and I’ll go along with you, if you won’t send me back.”

“I promise you, before God, that you shall be safe with me,” said Harrington, solemnly. “Come.”

He grasped, as he spoke, the thin arm of the trembling fugitive, and so assisting him, they moved slowly away together in silence, across Tremont street, and up the slope of Beacon street, with the light of the sinking moon in their faces. The fugitive was very weak, and tottered as he walked, despite the support the arm of his protector gave him. An overmastering pity, mixed with sombre sadness, filled the heart of Harrington as he felt the tottering motion, and heard the faint, stertorous panting of the miserable creature beside him. The slow pace at which they moved, combined with the nauseating odor of the rags which covered the fugitive, was an added trial to him, but he saw there was no help for it, and was patient.

Somewhat apprehensive about meeting a watchman, and not liking to be interrogated with a companion whom it was prudence to hide as much as possible, Harrington took the least public route he could under the circumstances. As they turned into Somerset street, the fugitive faltered, stopped, and began to cough. A terrible cough, weak, hoarse, incessant, which shook his whole frame. It ended at last, and with a faint groan of exhaustion, he sat down on a doorstep, panting, and breathing hard.

Shaken with pity, and doubly anxious lest the noise should attract some wandering night-policeman, Harrington stood over him, impatient to resume the journey.

“Do you feel better now?” he said, gently. “We must get on as fast as we can.”

“Oh, Marster,” gasped the fugitive, slowly and painfully rising. “I feel as if I couldn’t go no further. I’m so powerful weak, Marster.”

He tottered as he spoke; and Harrington, thinking he was going to fall, hastily, and somewhat awkwardly, threw up his arms to catch him, and struck his hand against something hard. Confused and startled, he withdrew his hand to rub it, wondering what could have hurt it. He thought it had come in contact with the sug around the fugitive’s neck; but, as that was clearly only a wrappage of cloth, and as the fugitive’s head was bent at the time, he fancied he might have struck his hand against the man’s teeth.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, hastily. “Did I hit your teeth?”

“No, Marster,” replied the fugitive, fumbling with the folds around his throat.

“Why do you wear that blanket so?” asked Harrington.

“Felt cold, Marster.”

He said no more, but stood feebly handling the wrappage, and trembling. Harrington thought it strange that he should thus guard his throat, when his body was so bare, yet admitted to himself that perhaps the cloth could not have been better disposed for comfort, and thinking no more of it, he again grasped the fugitive’s arm, and drew him on. They moved as slowly as before over the dark slope of Somerset street, under the shadow of the dwellings. Presently, the fugitive stopped again, and began to cough. This time Harrington formed a desperate resolution.

What was it? There are people who think they love mankind. But among the natural barriers that divide us from our fellows, there is none more impassable than a loathly uncleanliness. How many of the lovers of men could so have conquered nature as to clasp that leprous form in their arms? How many could have borne the test of their love which such an act would impose? For this was the test that proved the mighty heart of Harrington, and this was his resolution.

“Listen to me, friend,” he said, when the cough had subsided. “It will never do for us to get on as slowly as this, for we have some distance to go. Now you keep still, for I’m going to carry you.”

He quickly took off his coat and vest as he spoke—for he did not wish to spoil them by contact with the filthy body of the fugitive—rolled them up in a close bundle, which he secured with his neckerchief; then without permitting himself to feel the strong repugnance which the foulness of the poor creature’s apparel inspired, he flung his strong arms around him, and lifting him across his breast, with his head above his shoulder, deaf to his feeble remonstrance, set off at a rapid stride. The remonstrance ceased presently, and Harrington, hardly feeling the weight of his burden, strode at a masterly pace over the dark slope of Somerset street, turned into Allston, from thence into Derne, crossed Hancock to Myrtle, wheeled into Belknap, kept the grand stride down the hill to Cambridge street, crossed into Chambers, and set his load down at the garden gate.

A little heated by his exertion, he opened the gate with one hand, rubbing his shoulder with the other, and with a nod of his head invited the fugitive to enter, wondering meanwhile what it was about the man’s neck that had pressed so hard against his shoulder all the way. Something as hard as iron, and several times he had even felt a point, like a muffled spike, press upon his flesh, through the folds of his blanket. There was something mysterious under those folds, he thought, as he unlocked his door, and he was curious to know what it could be.

Congratulating himself that he had been so lucky as not to meet a single person during his nocturnal march, he held the door open till the fugitive had entered, and then closing and locking it, he took the glimmering lamp from the chimney, set it on the table, and turned up the flame. The fugitive stood, shaking on his gaunt legs, with his eyes wildly revolving upon the rows of books all around him, and ever returning to rest for a moment on the bust of Lord Bacon on its pedestal. Poor Tom in Lear—that wild figure plucked up from the low gulfs of the Elizabethan wretchedness, and set in Shakspearean light forever—was tame compared to the lank and ghastly figure of the lorn wanderer from slavery. Less unearthly in the light which fell upon his visage from the funnel of the lamp, than in the weird rays of the moon, he was not less hideously pitiable. His face, which was naturally quite dark, was terribly emaciated, with the skull almost visible through its wasted features, or, at least, suggested by the prominence of the teeth and forehead, the projection of the cheek-bones, the hollow pits of the cheeks, and the cavernousness of the eyes, which were ridged with heavy eyebrows. Harrington took in his aspect with one firm glance, and mindful of his weakness, brought him a chair, and made him sit down; then opened the windows, to let the fresh air relieve the smell of his rags in the close room.

Going up his ladder the next minute, he lit a lamp above, and turned on the water into his bath-tub. He came down presently, bare to the waist, the light gleaming on his muscular arms and massive chest, and stood fronting the fugitive with his watch in his hand, his head bent toward him on the kingly and beautiful slope of his white shoulders.

“Now, friend,” said he, with naive gravity, “you must be washed. In five minutes the bath-tub will be full, so take off those things, and I’ll give you some other clothes.”

“Yes, Marster, I’m in need of bein’ washed. I ain’t fit to be in this nice house,” quavered the fugitive abjectly, rising feebly as he spoke.

Harrington, without replying, watched him curiously as he fumbled at the blanket on his neck, and saw that he was loth to remove it.

“O Marster, Marster,” he groaned, “I’m afeard to let you see it. But, Marster, you’ll be friendly to me, and you won’t send me back, Marster?”

“Come, come, poor fellow, you know you’re safe with me,” said Harrington, kindly, all alive meanwhile with curiosity. “Come, off with it.”

The negro still fumbling at the blanket, without undoing it, and sighing piteously, Harrington laid his watch on the table, and stepping forward, unwound the wrappage from his neck, fold after fold, pulled it off, and disclosed an iron collar with a prong, and the letters distinct upon it—Lafitte Brothers, New Orleans.

He did not start, nor stagger back, but stood, like a statue struck by thunder, glaring at the collar with parted lips and starting eyes, a pallor like death upon his countenance, and a strong shudder quivering through his bare chest and arms, while the negro cowered with a hideous-piteous imploring face, his form crouching, and his hands clasped before him. In the dead silence, nothing was heard but the loud running of the water in the room overhead, and the faint gasping breath of the fugitive.

“God Almighty!” shouted Harrington, “what is this?”

The fugitive did not answer, but stood faintly gasping. The next instant Harrington started, with a strong muscular convulsion of his frame, and strode a pace forward.

“Who put that collar on your neck!” he demanded with awful anger.

“Marster Lafitte put it on, Marster.”

“Master Lafitte? which one? That says Lafitte Brothers,” cried Harrington, pointing with outstretched arm and finger straight at the name.

“Marster Torwood Lafitte put it on, Marster,” quavered the fugitive, affrighted at Harrington’s manner.

Harrington’s outstretched arm sank slowly, and dropped by his side. A deep and burning flush mounted to his face, and clenching his hands, he thundered a tremendous oath. Such an oath as Washington swore when Lee chafed him in his legions. Such an oath as had never before passed the calm lips of Harrington, but it burst from his heart’s core.

He stood in silence for a moment, the flush dying from his face, and his anger settling down from that explosion into calm.

“Who are you? what’s your name?” he demanded.

“Antony, Marster.”

Harrington was past surprise, but his brain whirled, and blankness gathered upon it. For a minute, he stood vacantly staring at the fugitive. Then, recovering from his stupefaction, he sighed vaguely, and wiped away the perspiration from his face with the palm of his hand. Glancing presently at his watch, he saw that the five minutes had not expired, and going to a drawer, he produced a bunch of keys.

“We’ll have that collar off,” said he, approaching the fugitive.

Key after key was tried, but none fitted. Throwing down the bunch, Harrington looked at the watch, and went up-stairs to stop the water. He came back presently, took the shade from the lamp, and holding the light to the collar, inspected its make carefully. He saw that it opened on a hinge behind, and was secured by a lock before. Putting the lamp on the table, he reflected for a moment.

“Lie down on the floor,” he said, presently.

The fugitive obeyed, with as much alacrity as his feebleness permitted. He already had the most entire and perfect confidence in his protector.

Bending over him, Harrington turned him on his side. Then taking up the poker, he inserted it between the neck of the fugitive and the under side of the collar, and putting his foot on this for a purchase, thus holding the collar firmly to the floor, he seized the upper side near the lock with both hands.

“Now lie still,” he said. “I don’t know whether I’m strong enough to break the lock, but, by mankind!” he shouted, “I’ll try!”

Slowly, the muscles in Harrington’s arms straightened, his bent leg grew firm as iron, the arms became two stiff, white corded bars, the muscles in his back and shoulders tensely trembled, the blood mounted to his face and body, and in the midst of the slow, tremendous strain, there was a faint clicking gride, a sudden snap, a screaking wrench, and one half the collar rose on its rusty hinge in his hands. The deed was done! Harrington stood up, and stepped back, exercising his arms, while the bought thrall of Lafitte scrambled erect, ghastlily grinning, and stood surveying the accursed necklace, which lay open as his neck had abandoned it, with the bent poker lying on its inner surface.

“To-morrow,” said Harrington, quietly, “you are to tell me all about this. Now undress yourself.”

“Yes, Marster,” and the fugitive, with a sort of ghastly joyfulness, hastily divested himself of his foul rags, which Harrington at once threw into the yard.

An awful sight was that black skeleton of a body. As it lankly straddled across the room, and up the ladder, following Harrington, Holbein might have taken it as Death come for the Scholar—a grimmer and grislier figure than any in the Dance Macaber. Few men would have borne to abide even for a moment in the same room with it. The very dog in the yard, himself the Pariah of brutes, would have bayed at it and shrunk into his kennel.

Our free and happy country had been at work upon that form. North and South had wrought together to bring it to perfection. The old scars which covered it, the horny wheals of many a scourging, the thick ring of callosed flesh left by the iron collar around its neck—these were the special tool-marks of the South. The recent cuts and bruises, the swollen contusions left by fist and boot upon it, the raw, blue sores, the general offence and stench it had contracted in the noisome pit of a vessel’s noisome hold—these showed the tooling of the North. That ghastly gauntness, that lank emaciation, that livid swarth, those signs and tokens of ferocious abuse, of cold and hunger and sickness and privation—our free and happy country had done it all!

Servant and soldier of mankind, thy menial task of love is set, thy work is here! Purge the pollution from this wasted body, and with thy own hand, tender and skillful as a woman’s, bind up these wounds, anoint and dress these sores! For him, the lowest and the loathliest of thy brethren, are these mean toils—the meanest man can do for man. Thy free and happy country would say thou doest ill; and “ill” the snickering whinny and brute scoff from the jaws of her slavers and traders; and “ill” her hell-dog statute dragging thee to the jail and fine for helping the lorn wanderer. Thou call’st the spirit of the ages by another name than ours—thou call’st it Verulam, we call it Christ. Oh, man beloved of Christ and Verulam, thou doest well!

An hour passed on and the solemn task was done. His matted hair cut off, his body clean, his wounds dressed, the fugitive, clad in a shirt and drawers of Harrington’s, a world too large for his wasted frame, was placed by the young scholar in his bed, and sitting there was fed with biscuit, and wine and water—the only food and drink accessible then. The repast ended, Harrington washed himself, put on clean clothes, arranged the room, and then turned to go down. The fugitive lay weakly sobbing.

“Good night, Antony,” said Harrington, gravely, standing with the lamp in his hand, its light shining on his beautiful and bearded countenance.

Suddenly, before he could be stopped, the fugitive scrambled from the bed, and flinging himself at Harrington’s feet, embraced them with his thin wrists and huge hands, and laid his head upon them.

“The Lord Jesus bless you, Marster,” he sobbed in a broken and sepulchral voice, “Oh, Marster, the Lord Jesus bless you, for there’s not no such Marster as you, Marster, nowhere—Oh Marster”—

Harrington stopped him by suddenly starting away to lay down the lamp, and returning, lifted him to his feet and got him into bed again.

“I know all you feel, Antony,” he said, pulling the clothes over him; “but you musn’t talk to-night, poor fellow. Now go to sleep, and have a long rest, and to-morrow or the next day, we’ll talk. Good night.”

“Good night, Marster,” sobbed the submissive negro.

Harrington took from a nail on the wall, an old camlet cloak which had been his father’s, and seizing the lamp, went down.

The first thing was to take the collar from the floor, and put it in a drawer; then untying his bundled coat and vest, he shook them out, and hung them up; then opening the door and windows, for the taint of the foul rags was still in the room, he went into the yard, and stood breathing the cool, pure air, and gazing, with a sense of boding at his heart, upon the thick hordes of stars. The night seemed all wild and alive. Something sinister and evil pervaded the atmosphere, and the dark blue spread like an astrologic scroll bright with burning cyphers and diagrams of doom.

Returning to the house with a mind ill at ease, he closed the door and shutters, leaving the windows open. Then taking a revolver from its case in a drawer, he drew the charges, and reloaded the weapon. It was altogether unlikely that the hunters would come to his dwelling; still there was nothing like being ready; and Harrington with his Baconian faith that men without natural good were but a nobler sort of vermin, was quite resolved both to “prevent the fiend and to kill vermin,” as the Shakspearean phrase has it, if they crept near the hiding-place of the fugitive.

His pistol loaded, he laid it on the table, and sat a few minutes thinking of the strangeness of his night’s adventure. How awful and marvellous it all was! The brother of Roux, whom he had tried to ransom, in his keeping—Roux himself in danger—Lafitte in the city, and master of the secret of his locality! The air seemed thick with peril.

Rising presently, he put the lamp in the fire-place, and turned it low; then taking the cushion of his chair for a pillow, he wrapped himself in the camlet cloak, and lay down on the sofa. A few moments’ dazed reflection on the events of the night, and fatigued by his labors, he dropped away into dreamless slumber.