is cares for their spiritual welfare. Some of them sorely tried
his patience by their aloofness from the Christian conventions that
were dear to him; he yearns over their souls as he fears their
experience of the inner working of grace is not as his own, but they
swerved not in their allegiance to the cause of the slave. Let us
avail ourselves of some of their memories of their remarkable father.
How early the house became a city of refuge for the runaway negro we
learn from the eldest son, who tells us he can just recollect a timid
knock at the door of the log cabin where they lived. A fugitive slave
and his wife were there, for they had heard that there were a couple
residing in the house who loved the negro and would lend him a rescuing
hand. They were speedily made to know they were welcome, and the
negress, relieved of her last fear, takes young John in a motherly
fashion upon her knee and kisses him. He almost instinctively scampers
off to rub the black from his face. Returning, he watches his mother
giving them supper. Presently father's extraordinarily quick ear
detects the sound of horsehoofs half a mile away; weapons are thrust
into the hands of the terrified pair, and they are taken out to the
woody swamps behind the house to lie in hiding. Father then returns,
only to discover that it is a false alarm, whereupon he sallies forth
to bring them into shelter and warmth once more, and tells the
assembled family on their arrival how he had difficulty in the dark in
recognizing the hiding-place and really discovered them at length by
hearing the beating of their frightened hearts. No wonder. Quick as
any faculty he had was that of hearing a slave's heart beat. Had it
not been for that keen instinct there would have been no tale to tell
of John Brown.

The daughter says her earliest memory is of her father's great arms
about her as he sang to her his favourite hymn:

Blow ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound:
Let all the nations know
To earth's remotest bound.
The year of Jubilee is come,
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.

Then, ceasing, he would tell her with heart brimming with tenderness of
poor little black children who were slaves. What were slaves? she
wanted to know. And he was ready enough to tell her of those who were
riven from father and mother and sold for base coin, whom in some
States it was illegal to teach their A B C, but quite lawful to flog;
and then the dau