and efficient aid, but if thee would choose to stay with us, go early to the hay field to work.” Walton was a shrewd conductor, and he delivered them at Harrison’s U. G. R. R. station in Southwark, a suburb of the Quaker City, in due time.
The following day, about noon, Ridgley called at the house of the Quaker, and as dinner was ready he was invited to partake. He sat down with the family and soon entered into conversation about the fugitives. He spoke of them as having been frightened without cause and run off. They had always been well used, happy and contented, and he had no doubt they would be glad to go back among their friends, as he would assure them they should not be punished if they would go without making him trouble. He had heard that two negroes answering the description of his were living there, and as the people in the neighborhood had long been opposed to the return of fugitives, and might try to prevent their being carried back by process of law, he would like to see them, and if he was not mistaken about their identity, he believed they would rejoice to see him and go home willingly. He asked to have them called in without being told that he was there, that the family might witness their happiness on seeing their old master. The farmer said that his people were in the hay field at some distance from the house. “Thee will rest here until they come, and I will have them all come in and see if thee can identify them,” he added, meanwhile drawing Ridgley into conversation on the subject of slavery, maintaining that the white race had no better right to enslave the blacks than the blacks to enslave the whites. “I am aware,” said Ridgley, “that your people are opposed, honestly, no doubt, to our institution, but it exists among us, and must always be so, for should the mad schemes of the abolitionists prevail,
