negro running, and looking like the advertisement that the landlord showed him in his barn. While he stood looking at it, a man came behind him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, what have we here? He turned to run, but the man held on to him, speaking kindly, and said, “don’t be frightened, let us see what this is about;" then he read the advertisement, and looking at Charley, said, “this means you; come with me, there is no time to be lost.” He took him to a safe place far back in the woods, and seeing that he had bread with him, he said, “I will bring you more food to-night,” and left him.
When he came to bring food, he told Charley that he would have to stay a few days until the men that were looking for him were gone. He was soon taken to a comfortable place, but it was two or three weeks before his kind conductor felt safe in starting with him.
The route from Wheeling was supposed to be towards Detroit at that season of the year, and the hunters were able to trace Charley going that way. They met, all along the way, men who had seen him, and could describe him as well as if they had known him from his childhood. Those rascally U. G. R. R. conductors were putting him through Carroll, Starke, Wayne, Ashland, and Huron counties, toward Detroit, where he could cross over. There were plenty of men along this route that were waiting to show them the way he had gone.
Meanwhile, Charley was on the short route to Buffalo, by way of Meadville, Pa., and Westfield, N. Y., though no man saw him on the way.
At Westfield Mr. Knowlton kept the station, and it was his splendid team, that on that cold day in December, came into Fredonia and turned off at the old Pemberton stand on the West Hill, and landed Charley at the cosy little station in Cordova, from whence he was
