The question may occur to our readers, why a retreat which appeared so easily accessible to the negroes of the vicinity in which our story is laid should escape the vigilance of hunters.

In all despotic countries, however, it will be found that the oppressed party become expert in the means of secrecy. It is also a fact that the portion of the community who are trained to labor enjoy all that advantage over the more indolent portion of it which can be given by a vigorous physical system, and great capabilities of endurance. Without a doubt, the balance of the physical strength of the south now lies in the subject race. Usage familiarizes the dwellers of the swamp with the peculiarities of their location, and gives them the advantage in it that a mountaineer has in his own mountains. Besides, they who take their life in their hand exercise their faculties with more vigor and clearness than they who have only money at stake; and this advantage the negroes had over the hunters.

Dred's "stronghold of Engedi," as we have said, was isolated from the rest of the swamp by some twenty yards of deep morass, in which it was necessary to wade almost to the waist. The shore presented to the eye only the appearance of an impervious jungle of cat-brier and grapevine rising out of the water. There was but one spot on which there was a clear space to set foot on, and that was the place where Dred crept up on the night when we first introduced the locality to our readers' attention.

The hunters generally satisfied themselves with exploring more apparently accessible portions; and, unless betrayed by those to whom Dred had communicated the clue, there was very little chance that any accident would ever disclose the retreat.

Dred himself appeared to be gifted with that peculiar faculty of discernment of spirits which belonged to his father Denmark Vesey, sharpened into a preternatural intensity by the habits of his wild and dangerous life. The men he selected for trust were men as impenetrable as himself, the most vigorous in mind and body on all the plantations.

The perfectness of his own religious enthusiasm, his absolute certainty that he was inspired of God, as a leader and deliverer, gave him an ascendency over the minds of those who followed him, which nothing but religious enthusiasm ever can give. And this was further confirmed by the rigid austerity of his life. For all animal comforts he appeared to entertain a profound contempt. He never tasted strong liquors in any form, and was extremely sparing in his eating; often fasting for days in succession, particularly when he had any movement of importance in contemplation.

It is difficult to fathom the dark recesses of a mind so powerful and active as his, placed under a pressure of ignorance and social disability so tremendous. In those desolate regions which he made his habitation, it is said that trees often, from the singularly unnatural and wildly stimulating properties of the slimy depths from which they spring, assume a goblin growth, entirely different from their normal habit. All sorts of vegetable monsters stretch their weird, fantastic forms among its shadows. There is no principle so awful through all nature as the principle of growth. It is a mysterious and dread condition of existence, which, place it under what impediment or disadvantage you will, is constantly forcing on; and when unnatural pressure hinders it, develops in forms portentous and astonishing. The wild, dreary belt of swamp-land which girds in those states scathed by the fires of despotism is an apt emblem, in its rampant and we might say delirious exuberance of vegetation, of that darkly struggling, wildly vegetating swamp of human souls, cut off, like it, from the usages and improvements of cultivated life.

Beneath that fearful pressure, souls whose energy, well-directed, might have blessed mankind, start out in preternatural and fearful developments, whose strength is only a portent of dread.

The night after the meeting which we have described was one, to this singular being, of agonizing conflict. His psychological condition, as near as we can define it, seemed to be that of a human being who had been seized and possessed, after the manner related in ancient fables, by the wrath of an avenging God. That part of the moral constitution, which exists in some degree in us all, which leads us to feel pain at the sight of injustice, and to desire retribution for cruelty and crime, seemed in him to have become an absorbing sentiment, as if he had been chosen by some higher power as the instrument of doom. At some moments the idea of the crimes and oppressions which had overwhelmed his race rolled in upon him with a burning pain, which caused him to cry out, like the fated and enslaved Cassandra, at the threshold of the dark house of tyranny and blood.

This sentiment of justice, this agony in view of cruelty and crime, is in men a strong attribute of the highest natures; for he who is destitute of the element of moral indignation is effeminate and tame. But there is in nature and in the human heart a pleading, interceding element, which comes in constantly to temper and soften this spirit and this element in the divine mind, which the Scriptures represent by the sublime image of an eternally interceding high priest, who, having experienced every temptation of humanity, constantly urges all that can be thought in mitigation of justice. As a spotless and high-toned mother bears in her bosom the anguish of the impurity and vileness of her child, so the eternally suffering, eternally interceding love of Christ bears the sins of our race. But the Scriptures tell us that the mysterious person, who thus stands before all worlds as the image and impersonation of divine tenderness, has yet in reserve this awful energy of wrath. The oppressors, in the last dread day, are represented as calling to the mountains and rocks to fall on them, and hide them from the wrath of the Lamb. This idea had dimly loomed up before the mind of Dred, as he read and pondered the mysteries of the sacred oracles; and was expressed by him in the form of language so frequent in his mouth, that "the Lamb was bearing the yoke of the sins of men." He had been deeply affected by the presentation which Milly had made in their night meeting of the eternal principle of intercession and atonement. The sense of it was blindly struggling with the habitual and overmastering sense of oppression and wrong.

When his associates had all dispersed to their dwellings, he threw himself on his face, and prayed: "O Lamb of God, that bearest the yoke, why hast thou filled me with wrath? Behold these graves! Behold the graves of my brothers, slain without mercy, and, Lord, they do not repent! Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity. Wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he? They make men as fishes in the sea, as creeping things that have no ruler over them. They take them up with the angle. They catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag. Therefore they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag, because by them their portion is fat, and their meat plenteous. Shall they, therefore, empty their net, and not spare continually to slay the nations? Did not he that made them in the womb make us? Did not the same God fashion us in the womb? Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledgeth us not. Thou, O God, art our Father, our Redeemer. Wherefore forgettest thou us for ever, and forsakest us so long a time? Wilt thou not judge between us and our enemies? Behold, there is none among them that stirreth himself up to call upon thee, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. They lie in wait, they set traps, they catch men, they are waxen fat, they shine, they overpass the deeds of the wicked, they judge not the cause of the fatherless; yet they prosper, and the right of the needy do they not judge. Wilt thou not visit for these things, O Lord? Shall not thy soul be avenged on such a nation as this? How long wilt thou endure? Behold under the altar the souls of those they have slain! They cry unto thee continually. How long, O Lord, dost thou not judge and avenge? Is there any that stirreth himself up for justice? Is there any that regardeth our blood? We are sold for silver; the price of our blood is in thy treasury; the price of our blood is on thine altars! Behold, they build their churches with the price of our hire! Behold, the stone doth cry out of the wall, and the timber doth answer it. Because they build their towns with blood, and establish their cities by iniquity. They have all gone one way. There is none that careth for the spoilings of the poor. Art thou a just God? When wilt thou arise to shake terribly the earth, that the desire of all nations may come? Overturn, overturn, and overturn, till he whose right it is shall come!"

Such were the words, not uttered continuously, but poured forth at intervals, with sobbings, groanings, and moanings, from the recesses of that wild fortress. It was but a part of that incessant prayer with which oppressed humanity has besieged the throne of justice in all ages. We who live in ceiled houses would do well to give heed to that sound, lest it be to us that inarticulate moaning which goes before the earthquake. If we would estimate the force of almighty justice, let us ask ourselves what a mother might feel for the abuse of her helpless child, and multiply that by infinity.

But the night wore on, and the stars looked down serene and solemn, as if no prayer had gone through the calm, eternal gloom; and the morning broke in the east resplendent.

Harry, too, had passed a sleepless night. The death of Hark weighed like a mountain upon his heart. He had known him for a whole-souled, true-hearted fellow. He had been his counsellor and friend for many years, and he had died in silent torture for him. How stinging is it at such a moment to view the whole respectability of civilized society upholding and glorifying the murderer; calling his sin by soft names, and using for his defence every artifice of legal injustice! Some in our own nation have had bitter occasion to know this, for we have begun to drink the cup of trembling which for so many ages has been drank alone by the slave. Let the associates of Brown ask themselves if they cannot understand the midnight anguish of Harry!

His own impulses would have urged to an immediate insurrection, in which he was careless about his own life, so the fearful craving of his soul for justice was assuaged. To him the morning seemed to break red with the blood of his friend. He would have urged to immediate and precipitate action. But Dred, true to the enthusiastic impulses which guided him, persisted in waiting for that sign from Heaven which was to indicate when the day of grace was closed, and the day of judgment to begin. This expectation he founded on his own version of certain passages in the prophets, such as these:—

"I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke! The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord shall come!"

Meanwhile, his associates were to be preparing the minds of the people, and he was traversing the swamps in different directions, holding nightly meetings, in which he read and expounded the prophecies to excited ears. The laborious arguments, by which northern and southern doctors of divinity have deduced from the Old Testament the divine institution of slavery, were too subtle and fine-spun to reach his ear amid the denunciations of prophecies, all turning on the sin of oppression. His instinctive understanding of the spirit of the Bible justified the sagacity which makes the supporter of slavery, to this day, careful not to allow the slave the power of judging it for himself; and we leave it to any modern pro-slavery divine whether, in Dred's circumstances, his own judgment might not have been the same.

After daylight, Harry saw Dred standing, with a dejected countenance, outside of his hut.

"I have wrestled," he said, "for thee; but the time is not yet! Let us abide certain days, for the thing is secret unto me; and I cannot do less nor more till the Lord giveth commandment. When the Lord delivereth them into our hands, one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight!"

"After all," said Harry, "our case is utterly hopeless! A few poor, outcast wretches, without a place to lay our heads, and they all revelling in their splendor and their power! Who is there in this great nation that is not pledged against us? Who would not cry Amen, if we were dragged out and hung like dogs? The north is as bad as the south! They kill us, and the north consents and justifies! And all their wealth, power, and religion, are used against us. We are the ones that all sides are willing to give up. Any party in church or of state will throw in our blood and bones as a make-weight, and think nothing of it. And, when I see them riding out in their splendid equipages, their houses full of everything that is elegant, they so cultivated and refined, and our people so miserable, poor, and down-trodden, I haven't any faith that there is a God!"

"Stop!" said Dred, laying his hand on his arm. "Hear what the prophet saith. 'Their land, also, is full of silver and gold; neither is there any end of their treasures. Their land, also, is full of horses; neither is there any end of their chariots. Their land also is full of idols. They worship the work of their own hands. Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be on every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low! And upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, and upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up, and upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures! And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, the haughtiness of man shall be made low! And they shall go in the holes of the rocks, and in the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth!'"

The tall pines, and whispering oaks, as they stood waving in purple freshness at the dawn, seemed like broad-winged attesting angels, bearing witness, in their serene and solemn majesty, to the sublime words, "Heaven and earth shall not pass away till these words have been fulfilled!"

After a few moments a troubled expression came over the face of Dred.

"Harry," he said, "verily, he is a God that hideth himself! He giveth none account to any of these matters. It may be that I shall not lead the tribes over this Jordan; but that I shall lay my bones in the wilderness! But the day shall surely come, and the sign of the Son of Man shall appear in the air, and all tribes of the earth shall wail, because of him! Behold, I saw white spirits and black spirits, that contended in the air; and the thunder rolled, and the blood flowed, and the voice said, 'Come rough, come smooth! Such is the decree. Ye must surely bear it!' But, as yet, the prayers of the saints have power; for there be angels, having golden censers, which be the prayers of saints. And the Lord, by reason thereof, delayeth. Behold I have borne the burden of the Lord even for many years. He hath covered me with a cloud in the day of his anger, and filled me with his wrath; and his word has been like a consuming fire shut in my bones! He hath held mine eyes waking, and my bones have waxed old with my roarings all the day long! Then I have said, 'Oh, that thou wouldst hide me in the dust! That thou wouldst keep me secret till thy wrath be past!'"

At this moment, soaring upward through the blue sky, rose the fair form of a wood-pigeon, wheeling and curving in the morning sunlight, cutting the ether with airy flight, so smooth, even, and clear, as if it had learnt motion from the music of angels.

Dred's eye, faded and haggard with his long night-watchings, followed it for a moment with an air of softened pleasure, in which was blent somewhat of weariness and longing.

"Oh, that I had wings like a dove!" he said. "Then would I flee away and be at rest! I would hasten from the windy storm and tempest! Lo, then I would wander far off, and remain in the wilderness!"

There was something peculiar in the power and energy which this man's nature had of drawing others into the tide of its own sympathies, as a strong ship, walking through the water, draws all the smaller craft into its current.

Harry, melancholy and disheartened as he was, felt himself borne out with him in that impassioned prayer.

"I know," said Dred, "that the new heavens and the new earth shall come, and the redeemed of the Lord shall walk in it. But, as for me, I am a man of unclean lips, and the Lord hath laid on me the oppressions of the people! But, though the violent man prevail against me, it shall surely come to pass!"

Harry turned away, and walked slowly to the other side of the clearing, where Old Tiff, with Fanny, Teddy, and Lisette, having kindled a fire on the ground, was busy in preparing their breakfast. Dred, instead of going into his house, disappeared in the thicket. Milly had gone home with the man who came from Canema. The next day, as Harry and Dred made a hunting excursion through the swamp, returning home in the edge of the evening, they happened to be passing near the scene of lawless violence which we have already described.