school-house not far away; and Brown went and exhorted and preached to them. Meantime he worried lest Cook's loquacity should get him into trouble. Some of the neighbors saw negroes at the place, and suspected that old Isaac Smith and his sons were running off slaves. But they did nothing about it. The habitual apathy and indolence of the Maryland population fought on Brown's side.
A more alarming thing happened, though Brown knew nothing of it. Some one sent anonymously from Cincinnati a letter to Mr. Floyd, Secretary of War, warning him, in so many words, that "Old John Brown, late of Kansas," had a party ready with which he was about to "pass down through Pennsylvania and Maryland and enter Virginia at Harper's Ferry, with the purpose of liberating and arming slaves." It was, on the whole, a very accurate betrayal of the whole scheme. There have been
