'

They were not without allies. There might be no government aid from
Washington, but throughout the North were men who loved the cause of
Abolition better than their own ease, and they came in ever-increasing
numbers. Amongst them were several of Brown's upgrown sons, followed
by their father, ready to settle in this new State, where they might
turn the tide of public opinion in favour of Freedom.

Thus slowly the ranks of the righteous lovers of liberty were
replenished, and they began to form into bands for mutual protection,
farming and soldiering by turns as necessity dictated.

Some of John Brown's Northern friends, who knew the stuff of which he
was made, and saw that if Freedom had no blow struck on her behalf she
would be driven by outrage-mongers out of Kansas, equipped him with
money and rifles, or, as they had come to be called, 'Beecher
Bibles'--a tribute to Henry Ward Beecher's ardent championship of
advanced views upon the slavery question.

On October 6, 1855, he arrived at Osawatomie, and we find him writing
cheery words to his brave second wife and their family whom he had
left, telling them to hope in God and comfort one another, humbly
trusting they may meet again on God's earth, and if not--for his vow is
'to the death'--that they may meet in God's heaven. Of that second
wife--heroine in obscurity, sharer of the oath which ever knit the
household in one, mother of thirteen children--we might say much, but
her spirit breathes in these words she speaks concerning her solitary
days:

'That was the time in my life when all my religion, all my philosophy,
and all my faith in God's goodness were put to the test. My husband
was away from home, prostrated by sickness; I was helpless from
illness; in one week three of my little ones died of dysentery--this
but three months before the birth of another child. Three years after
this sad time another little one, eighteen months old, was burned to
death. Yet even in these trials God upheld me.'

Such was the wife who, while John Brown fought for liberty, grudged him
not to such a cause, and patiently trained others who should bear his
name worthily in days to come.

CHAPTER V

BIBLE AND SWORD

John Brown was now at his work; no longer the mere fingers, but the
soul of him had found a task. He set before himself this object, to
free Kansas from the slave-holders' grip.

The Free-State men had met and agreed to pay no taxes to a Legislature