This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[63]
and was strongly attached to his wife and children.
At length, he ventured to hire a small house in a very secluded situation, not far from the village of Haddonfield; and once more he gathered his family around him. But his domestic comfort was constantly disturbed by fear of men-stealers.
While at his work in the day-time, he sometimes started at the mere rustling of a leaf; and in the night time, he often woke up in agony from terrifying dreams.
The false friend, who betrayed him to his cruel master, likewise suffered greatly from fear.
When he heard that John had again escaped, he was exceedingly alarmed for his own safety.
He dreamed that his abused friend came with a knife in one hand and a torch in the other, threatening to murder him and burn the house.
These ideas took such hold of his imagination, that he often started up in bed and screamed aloud.
But John was too sincerely religious to cherish a revengeful spirit.
The wrong done to him was as great as one mortal could inflict upon another; but he had learned the divine precept not to render evil for evil.
The event proved that John's uneasiness was too well founded.
A few months after his family rejoined him, Isaac T. Hopper heard that his master had arrived in Philadelphia, and was going to New-Jersey to arrest him. He immediately apprised him
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.