op and call the ten thousand slaves in Fauquier County--the
bees will swarm, man! Can't you see them? Can't you hear the roar when
I've placed these pikes in their hands?--_I want you_ to hive them."

Douglas hesitated for only a moment. His vivid imagination had seen the
flash of the hell-lit vision of the slave insurrection and his soul
answered with a savage cry. But he slipped from Brown's arms, rubbed his
eyes and flung off the spell.

"My good friend," he said at last, "you're walking into a steel trap.
You can't come out alive."

He turned to Shields Green, the negro guard who was now one of the old
man's disciples. Green had been a friend of Douglas' in Rochester. He
had introduced him to the Crusader. He felt responsible for his life. He
had a duty to perform to this ignorant black man and he did it, painful
as it was.

"Green, you have heard what I've just said to my friend. He has changed
his plans since you volunteered. You understand, now. You can go with
him or come home with me to Rochester. What will you do?"

His answer was coolly deliberate.

"I b'lieve I go wid de ole man!"

With a heavy heart Brown saw Douglas leave. It was the shattering of his
most dramatic dream of the execution of the Great Deed. When the black
bees should swarm he had seen himself at the head of the dark, roaring
tide of avengers, their pikes and rifles flashing in the Southern sun.
Around his waist was the sword of George Washington and the pistols of
Lafayette. His Aide of Honor would ride, this negro, once a fugitive
slave. Side by side they would sweep the South with fire and sword.

On arrival at his headquarters on the hill he learned that a revival
of religion was going on in the town below and he fixed Sunday, the
seventeenth of October, as the day of the Deed. Harper's Ferry would not
only be asleep that night--every foe would be lulled in songs of praise
to God.

CHAPTER XXIX

At eight o'clock on Sunday night, the sixteenth of October, 1859, John
Brown drove his one-horse wagon to the door of the rude log house in
which he had hidden with his disciples for four months.

It was a damp, chill evening of mid fall. Heavy rain clouds obscured the
stars and not a traveler ventured along the wind-swept roads. From the
attic were loaded into the wagon crowbars, sledge hammers, iron pikes
and oil-soaked faggots.

The crowbars and sledge hammers might be used on the gates or doors.
There could be no doubt ab