s in the
wilderness. Youth, manhood, middle age had come and gone; two
marriages had been consummated, twenty children had called him father;
and through all the storms and vicissitudes of busy life, this one
thought, like the angel in the burning bush, had confronted him with
its blazing light, bidding him on to his work. Like Moses he had made
excuses, and as with Moses his excuses were overruled. Nothing should
postpone further what was to him a divine command, the performance of
which seemed to him his only apology for existence. He often said to
me, though life was sweet to him, he would willingly lay it down for
the freedom of my people; and on one occasion he added, that he had
already lived about as long as most men, since he had slept less, and
if he should now lay down his life the loss would not be great, for in
fact he knew no better use for it. During his last visit to us in
Rochester there appeared in the newspapers a touching story connected
with the horrors of the Sepoy War in British India. A Scotch
missionary and his family were in the hands of the enemy, and were to
be massacred the next morning. During the night, when they had given
up every hope of rescue, suddenly the wife insisted that relief would
come. Placing her ear close to the ground she declared she heard the
Slogan--the Scotch war song. For long hours in the night no member of
the family could hear the advancing music but herself. "Dinna ye hear
it? Dinna ye hear it?" she would say, but they could not hear it. As
the morning slowly dawned a Scotch regiment was found encamped indeed
about them, and they were saved from the threatened slaughter. This
circumstance, coming at such a time, gave Capt. Brown a new word of
cheer. He would come to the table in the morning his countenance
fairly illuminated, saying that he had heard the Slogan, and he would
add, "Dinna ye hear it? _Dinna_ ye hear it?" Alas! like the Scotch
missionary I was obliged to say "No." Two weeks prior to the meditated
attack, Capt. Brown summoned me to meet him in an old stone quarry on
the Conecochequi river, near the town of Chambersburgh, Penn. His arms
and ammunition were stored in that town and were to be moved on to
Harper's Ferry. In company with Shields Green I obeyed the summons,
and prompt to the hour we met the dear old man, with Kagi, his
secretary, at the appointed place. Our meeting was in some sense a
council of war. We spent the Saturday and succeeding Sunday