owards an opportunity to show it on condition of
holding their peace. Do not delay one moment after you're ready: you
will lose all your resolution if you do. Let the first blow be the
signal for all to engage; and when engaged do not do your work by
halves; but make clean work with your enemies--"

It was the slow way in which he spoke the last words that gave them
meaning. Sam could hear in his tones the crash of steel into human flesh
and the grating of the blade on the bone. It made him shiver.

Every negro present joined the League.

When the last man had signed, John Brown led in a long prayer to
Almighty God to bless the holy work on which these noble men had
entered. At the close of his prayer he announced that on the following
night at the People's Hall on the Bowery in New York, the Honorable
Gerrit Smith, the noblest friend of the colored men in the North, would
preside over a mass meeting in behalf of the downtrodden. He asked them
all to come and bring their friends.

The ceremony of signing over, Sam turned to the guide with a genial
smile.

"I done jine de League."

"That's right. I knew you would."

"I'se a full member now, ain't I?"

"Of course."

"When do we eat?" Sam asked eagerly.

"Eat?"

"Sho."

"We ain't organizin' de Gileadites to eat, man."

"Ain't we?"

"No, sah. We'se organizin'--ter kill white men dat come atter runaway
slaves."

"But ain't dey got nuttin ter eat fer dem dat's here?"

"You come ter de big meetin' ter-morrow night an' hear sumfin dat's good
fer yo' soul."

"I'll be dar," Sam promised. But he hoped to find something at the
meeting that was good for his stomach as well as his soul.

CHAPTER XI

The negroes in New York and Brooklyn were not the only people in the
North falling under the influence of the strange man who answered to the
name of John Brown. There was something magnetic about him that drew all
sorts and conditions of men.

The statesmen who still used reason as the guiding principle of life had
no use for him. Henry Wilson, the new Senator from Massachusetts, met
him and was repelled by the something that drew others. Governor Andrew
was puzzled by his strange personality.

The secret of his power lay in a mystic appeal to the Puritan
conscience. He had been from childhood afflicted with this conscience in
its most malignant form. He knew instinctively its process of action.

The Puritan had settled New England and fixed the princ