Cassey’s boy was a fine, active little fellow, and she determined to earn money to buy his freedom, for, being a very capable woman, she commanded high wages. The agent of the U. G. R. R., at Niagara Falls, was a wealthy gentleman, living some two miles back from the river, where he had an excellent farm, a fine mansion, splendid stock and superb horses. All the negro servants at the Falls were in the secret service of the institution, and not a few of the white citizens were friendly toward it. When Cassey had been in Canada three or four years our agent above mentioned applied to her to engage in his service, and as he would pay her much higher wages than she could obtain in Canada, she, supposing that all danger had passed, came over on the Suspension Bridge and went to work for him. She never went into the village except to go occasionally to meeting on Sunday. One Sunday, as she passed out of the church, she saw a man standing near the door, sharply scanning the features of every colored person that came out. Her eyes met his and they recognized each other, but she managed to get away in the crowd and he lost sight of her.
The facilities offered by the fugitive slave law for capturing runaway slaves had made it a profitable business, and Cathcart had bought “running” a large lot of fugitives, expecting to make a good speculation if he could capture even one in ten of them. He had come on to the Falls, rightly guessing that some of them would be about there, and he was at the church door in pursuit of his regular business. One of the shrewdest men, either white or black, that lived in that village, was Ben Jackson, a free negro. Ben was a servant in the hotel where Cathcart was stopping, and he had already, as was his custom, taken pains to talk with other colored servants in Cathcart’s presence about the slaves running away
