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[224] the old man's presence. They returned to Atchison, I was told, and one of them indiscreetly related the story: the ridicule that overwhelmed them compelled them to leave the town.

The overland journey.

Kagi, in the mean time, arrived at Topeka from the South, and found the town in a great commotion. News had just arrived that Old Brown was surrounded. As soon as he appeared, all the fighting boys flocked around him. At the head of forty mounted men, he started at once to rescue his old Captain. He came up just in time to see the last of the posse retreating across the prairie. He advocated the hanging of the captured slave-hunters, but the old man opposed it, and the kidnappers were saved.1

Seventeen of the “Topeka boys” escorted the party of liberators to Nebraska City.

The kidnappers, on being released, asked the old man to restore their horses and weapons.

“No,” said John Brown, gravely; “your legs will carry you as fast as you want to run; you won't find any more Old Browns between this and Atchison.”

The party reached Tabor in the first week of February, and travelled slowly across the State of Iowa.

As he was performing this journey, men panting for the price of blood closely followed him; but the sight of his well-armed company prevented an attack on the

1 One of these men, since the capture of Captain Brown at Harper's Ferry, has spoken of him with the greatest admiration; and said, that “although evidently a monomaniac on the subject of slavery,” he was an honest and brave man. On being jestingly advised to go into mourning for him, he said: he might go into black for many a worse man. This testimony from a kidnapper is not without value.

Thayer and Eldridge, 1860.

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