“There is a law above all the enactments of human codes,—the same throughout the world, the same in all times: it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud and loathe rapine and abhor bloodshed, they will reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy than man can hold property in man.”—Lord Brougham.

The policeman, Blake, was a Vermonter whose grandsire had been one of the eighty men under Ethan Allen at the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. The traditions of the Revolution were therefore something more than barren legends in Blake’s mind. They had inspired him with an enthusiastic admiration of the republic and its institutions. His patriotism was a sentiment which all the political and moral corruption, with which a New York policeman is inevitably brought in contact, could not corrode or enfeeble.

Even slavery, being tolerated by the Constitution of the United States, was, in his view, not to be spoken of lightly. He shut his eyes and his ears to all that could be said in its condemnation; he opened them to all its palliating features and facts. Did not statistics prove that the blacks, in a state of slavery, increase in double the proportion they do in a state of freedom, surrounded by whites? This comforting argument was eagerly seized by Blake as a moral sedative.

The Fugitive-Slave Law he was satisfied was strictly in accordance with both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States. Therefore it must be honestly enforced. The Abolitionists, who were striving to defeat the execution of the law, were almost as bad as Mississippi repudiators who were swindling their foreign creditors. So long as we were enjoying the benefits of the Constitution, was it not mean and dastardly to undertake to jockey the South out of the obvious protection of that clause in it which has reference to the “person held to service or labor,” which we all knew to mean the slave?

Considerations like these had made Blake one of the most earnest advocates of the enforcement of the law among his brethren of the police; and when at last he was called on to carry it out in the case of Peek, he felt that obedience was a duty which it would be poltroonery to evade. He went forth, therefore, with alacrity that morning, resolved to allow no mawkish sensibility to interfere with his obligations as an officer and a citizen.

Accompanied by Iverson, he waited on Colonel Delancy Hyde at the New York Hotel. They found that worthy in the smoking-room, seated at a small marble table, with a cigar in his mouth and an emptied tumbler, which smelt strongly of undiluted whiskey, before him. The Colonel graciously asked the officers to “liquor.” Iverson assented, but Blake declined.

A refusal to “liquor,” the Colonel had been bred to regard as a personal indignity; and so, turning to Blake, he said: “Look here, stranger! I’m Colonel Delancy Hyde. Virginia-born, be Gawd! From one of the oldest families in the State! None of yer interloping Yankee scum! No Puritan blood in me! My ahncestor was one of the cavalyers. My father was one of the largest slave-owners in the State. Now if yer want to put an affront on me, I’d jest have yer understand fust who yer’ve got to deal with.”

“Bah!” said Blake, turning on his heel, and walking to the window.

Iverson, who dreaded a scene, smoothed over the affront with a lie. “The fact is, Colonel,” whispered he, “Blake wouldn’t be fit for duty if he were to drink with us. A spoonful upsets him; but he’s ashamed to confess it. A weak head! You understand?”

The explanation pacified the Colonel. Indeed, his sympathies were at once wakened for the unhappy man who couldn’t drink. This representative of the interests of slavery certainly did not prepossess Blake in favor of his mission; but justice must be done, notwithstanding the character of the claimant.

An addition was now made to the circle. Captain Skinner and Biggs, the sailor already mentioned,—a short, thick-set stump of a man, with only one eye, and that black and overarched by a bushy, gray eyebrow,—a very wicked-looking old fellow,—entered and made themselves known to the Colonel. They had come up from New London, to serve as witnesses. As a matter of policy, the Colonel could not do less than ask them to join in the raid on the whiskey decanter; and this they did so effectually that the last drop disappeared in Biggs’s capacious tumbler.

As it was not yet time for the appointment at Charlton’s office, the party, all but Blake, took chairs and lighted cigars, and the Colonel asked Captain Skinner to narrate the circumstances of Peek’s appearance on board the Albatross.

“Well, you see, Colonel,” said Skinner, “we had been ten days out, when one night the second mate, as he was poking about between decks, caught a strange nigger creeping into a cotton-bale just for’ard of the store-room. We ordered the nigger out, and he came into the cabin, and pretended to be a free nigger, and said he’d pay his passage as soon as he could git work in New York. In course I knew he was lyin’, but I didn’t let on that I suspected him. I played smooth; and cuss me, if the nigger didn’t play smooth too; for he made as if he believed me; and so when we got to New London, afore I could git the officers on board, he jumped into the water and swam to old Payson’s boat, and Payson he got him on board one of the Sound steamers, and had him put through to New York that same night. The next day Payson attakted me in the street, knocked me down, and stamped on me, and afore I could have him tuk up, he was on board that infernal boat of his, and off out of sight. There’s the scar of the gash Payson left on my skull.”

Blake, at these words, left the window, and came and looked at the scar with evident satisfaction. Colonel Hyde, with a lordly air of patronage, held out his hand to Skinner, and said: “Capting, the scar is an honor. Capting, yer hand. I love to meet a high-tone gemmleman, and you’re one. Capting, allow me to shake yer hand.”

“With pleasure,” said Biggs, taking the Colonel’s hand and shaking it in his own big, coarsely-seamed flipper, before the Captain had a chance to reach out. The Colonel smiled grimly at Biggs’s playfulness, but said nothing.

“Come! it’s time to go,” exclaimed Iverson, looking at his watch. The party rose, and proceeded down Broadway to Charlton’s office. We have already seen what transpired on their arrival. Our business is now with what happened after their departure.

Three o’clock struck. The small hand on the dial of Trinity was fast moving toward four; and still Blake paced the floor in Charlton’s office. Every now and then there would be a knock at the door, and Blake, with a menacing shake of his head, would impose silence on the conveyancer, till the applicant for admission, tired of knocking, would go away.

Blake’s thoughts were in the condition of a chopping sea where wind and tide are opposing each other. Reflections that reached to the very foundation of human society—questions of abstract right and wrong—were combating old notions adopted on the authority of others, and as yet untested in the cupel of his own conscience.

Brought for the first time face to face with the law for the rendition of fugitive slaves,—encountering it in its practical operation,—he found in it a barbarous necessity from which his heart recoiled with horror and disgust. Must he disregard that pleading cry of conscience, that voice of God and Christ in his soul, calling on him to do in righteousness unto others as he would have them do unto him? Could any human enactment exempt him from that paramount obedience?

How had he felt dwarfed in another’s presence that day! He had seen a man, and that man a negro, putting forth his manhood in the best way he could to parry the arm of a savage oppression, doubly fiendish in its mockery, coming as it did under the respectable escort of the law. Surely the negro showed himself better worthy of freedom than any white man among his hunters.

Would the fellow keep his pledge? Would he come back? Blake now earnestly hoped he would not. Was not any stratagem justifiable in such a case? Should we mind resorting to deception in order to rescue ourselves or another from a madman or a murderer? Why, then, might not Peek violate his written promise, made as it was to men who were trying to rob him of a freedom more precious than life to such a soul as his?

But had not he himself—he, Blake—made use of his poor show of generosity to impress it on Peek that he must prove worthy the trust reposed in him? This recollection brought bitter regret to the policeman. Instead of encouraging the negro to escape, he had put scruples of conscience or of generosity in his way, which might induce him to return. Would Blake have done so to his own brother, under similar circumstances? Would he not have bidden him cheat his persecutors, and make good his flight? Assuredly yes! And yet to the poor negro he had practically said, Return!

These reflections wrought powerfully upon Blake. Why not run and urge the negro to escape? It was still more than an hour to five o’clock. Yes, he would do it!

Then came a consideration to check the impulse. He, a sworn officer of the law, should he lend himself to the defeat of the very law he had taken it upon himself to execute? Was there not something intensely dishonest in such a course?

Well, he could do one thing at least: he could resign his office, and then try to undo the mischief he had perhaps done the negro by his injunction. Yes, he would do that.

Impulsive in all his movements, Blake looked at his watch, and found he would have just an hour in which to crowd all the action he proposed to himself. Turning to Charlton, he said: “Your conduct to this runaway slave will make your life insecure if I choose to go to certain men in this city and tell them what I can with truth. What you now are intending to do is to have the slave intercepted. I don’t ask you to promise, simply because you will lie if you think it safe; but I say this to you: If I find that any measures are taken before five o’clock to catch the slave, I shall hold you responsible for them, and shall expose you to parties who will see you are paid back for your rascality. Take no step for an arrest, and I hold my tongue.”

Glad of such a compromise, Charlton replied: “I’m agreed. Up to five o’clock I’ll do nothing, directly or indirectly, to intercept the nigger.”

Blake was speedily in the street after this. He hurried to the City Hall, found the Chief of Police, gave in his resignation, deposited Colonel Hyde’s pistol among the curiosities of the room, and said that another man must be found to attend to the case at Charlton’s office. Having in this way eased his conscience, Blake ran as far as Broadway, and jumped into an omnibus. But the omnibus was too slow, so he jumped out and ran down Broadway to Bunker’s. How the precious time flew by! Before he could be satisfied at Bunker’s that Peek was not there, the clock indicated five minutes of five. He rushed out in the direction of the slave’s lodgings. An old woman with wrinkled face, and bent form, and carrying a broom, was showing the apartments to an applicant who thought of moving from the story below. Where were the negro and his wife? Gone! How long ago? More than two hours! The clock struck five.

Wholly disheartened, Blake ran back to Charlton’s office. He found it locked. No one answered to his knock. Raising his foot he kicked open the door with a single effort. The office was deserted. No one there! He ran to the Jersey City ferry-boat that carries passengers for the Philadelphia cars; it had left the wharf some twenty minutes before. Baffled in all directions, he took his way to the police-station to find Iverson; but that officer was on duty, nobody knew where. After waiting at the station till nearly midnight, Blake at last, worn out with discouragement and fatigue, went home.

What had become of Peek all this time?

Anticipating that he and his wife might at any moment find it prudent to leave for Canada at half an hour’s notice, Peek had always kept his affairs in a state to enable him to do this conveniently. He had hired his rooms, furniture, and piano-forte by the week, paying for them in advance. Two small trunks were sufficient to contain all his movable property; and these might be packed in five minutes.

Flora, his wife, who like Peek was of unmixed blood, had been lady’s maid in a family in Vicksburg. Here she had become an expert in washing and doing up muslins and other fine articles of female attire. But the lady she served died, and Flora became the property of Mr. Penfield, a planter, who, looking on her with the eyes that a cattle-breeder might turn on a Durham cow, ordered her to marry one Bully Bill, a lusty African with a neck like the cylinder of a steam-engine. Flora objected, and learning that her objections would not be respected, she ran away, and after various fortunes settled at Montreal. Here she married Peek, who taught her to read and write. She had been bred a pious Catholic, and Peek, finding that they agreed in the essentials of a devout and believing heart, never undertook to disturb her faith.

They moved to New York, and Peek with his wages as waiter, and Flora with the money she got for doing up muslins, earned jointly an income which placed them far above want in the region of absolute comfort and partial refinement. Few more happy and loyal couples could have been found even in freestone palaces on the Fifth Avenue.

“Well, Flora, how long will it take you to get ready?” said Peek, entering the neat little kitchen, where she was at work at her ironing-board, while little Sterling sat amusing himself on the floor in building a house with small wooden bricks.

Flora, at once comprehending the intent of the question, replied, “I sha’n’t want more ’n half an hour.”

“Well, a boat leaves for Albany at five,” said Peek, taking the Sun newspaper, and cutting out an advertisement. “We’d better quit here, and go on board just as soon as we can.”

“Le ’m me see,” said Flora, meditatively. “The grocer at the corner will send round these muslins, ’specially if we pay him for it. My customers owe me twenty dollars,—how shall we collek that?”

“You can write to them from Montreal.”

“Lor! so I can, Peek. Who’d have thought of it but you?”

“Come, then! Be lively. Tumble the things into the trunks. We’ll give poor old Petticum the odds and ends we leave behind; and she’ll notify the landlord, and take care of the rooms.”

In less than an hour’s time they had made all their preparations, and were all three in a coach with their luggage, rattling up Greenwich Street towards one of the Twenties. Here they went on board an old steamer, recently taken from the regular line for freighting purposes, and carrying only a few passengers. Having seen Flora and Sterling safely bestowed with the luggage, and given the former his watch and all his money, except a dollar in change, Peek said: “Now, Flora, I’ve got to go ashore on business. If I shouldn’t be here when the boat starts, do you keep straight on to Montreal without me. Go to the post-office regularly twice a week to see if there’s a letter for you.”

“What is it, Peek? Tell me all about it,” said Flora, who painfully felt there was a secret which her husband did not choose to disclose.

“Now, Flora, don’t be silly,” replied Peek, wiping the tears from her face with his handkerchief. “I tell you, I may be aboard again before you start,—haven’t made up my mind yet,—only, if you shouldn’t see me, never you mind, but just keep on. Find out your old customers in Montreal, and wait patiently till I join you. So don’t cry about it. The Lord will take care of it all. Here’s a handbill that tells you the best way to get to Montreal. Look out for pickpockets. I shouldn’t leave you if I didn’t have to, Flora. I’ll tell you everything about it when we meet. So good by.”

Having no suspicion of the actual cause of Peek’s leaving her, and confident, through faith in him, that it must be for a right purpose, Flora cheered up, and said: “Well, Peek, I ’spec you’ve got some little debts to pay; but do come back to-day if you can; and keep clar’ of the hounds, Peek,—keep clar’ of the hounds.”

And so, kissing wife and child, with an overflowing heart Peek quitted the boat. He did not at once leave the vicinity. There was a pile of fresh lumber not far off. Dodging out of sight behind it, and then sitting down in a little enclosure formed by the boards, where he could see the boat and not be seen, he tried to orient his conscience as to his duty under the extraordinary circumstances in which he found himself.

Go back to the life of a slave? Leave wife and child, and return to bondage, degradation, subordination to another’s will? He looked out on the beautiful river, flashing in the warm spring sunshine; to the opposite shore of Hoboken, where he and Flora used to stroll on Sundays last summer, dragging Sterling in his little carriage. Was there to be no more of that pleasant independent life?

A slave? Liable to be kicked, cuffed, spit on, fettered, scourged by such a creature as Colonel Delancy Hyde? No! To escape the pursuing fiends who would force such a lot on an innocent human being, surely any subterfuge, any stratagem, any lie, would be justifiable!

And Peek thought of the joy that Flora would feel at seeing him return, and he rose to go back to the boat.

A single thought drew him back to his covert. “So help me God.” Had he not pledged himself,—pledged himself in sincerity at the moment in those words? Had he not by his act promised Blake, who had befriended him, that he would return, and might not Blake lose his situation if the promise were broken?

As Peek found conscience getting the better of inclination in the dispute, he bowed his head in his hands, and wept sobbingly like a child. Such anguish was there in the thought of a surrender! Then, extending himself prostrate on the boards, his face down, and resting on his arms, he strove to shut out all except the voice of God in his soul. He uttered no word, but he felt the mastery of a great desire, and that was for guidance from above. Tender thoughtsthoughts of the sufferings and wants of the poor slaves he had left on Barnwell’s plantation stole back to him. Would he not like to see them and be of service to them once more? What if he should be whipped, imprisoned? Could he not brave all such risks, for the satisfaction of keeping a pledge made to a man who had shown him kindness? And he recalled the words, once spoken through Corinna, “Not to be happy, but to deserve happiness.”

Besides, might he not again escape? Yes! He would go back to Charlton’s office. He would surrender himself as he had promised. The words which Colonel Hyde had conceived to be of no more binding force than a wreath of tobacco-smoke were the chain stronger than steel that drew the negro back to the fulfilment of his pledge. “So help me God!” Could he profane those words, and ever look up again to Heaven for succor?

And so he rose, took one despairing look at the boat, where he could see Flora pointing out to her little boy the wonders of the river, and then rushed away in the direction of Broadway. There was no lack of omnibuses, but no friendly driver would give him a seat on top, and he was excluded by social prejudice from the inside. It was twenty minutes to five when he reached Union Park. Thence running all the way in the middle of the street with the carriages, he reached Charlton’s office before the clock had finished striking the hour.

There had been wrangling and high words just before his entrance. Colonel Delancy Hyde was ejecting his wrath against the universal Yankee nation in the choicest terms of vituperation that his limited vocabulary could supply. The loss of both his nigger and his revolver had been too much for his equanimity. Captain Skinner and his companion, Biggs, were sturdily demanding their fees, which did not seem to be forthcoming. Charlton, in abject grief of heart, was silently lamenting the loss of his fifty dollars, forfeited by the non-delivery of the slave; and Iverson, the policeman, was delicately insinuating in the ear of the lawyer that he should look to him for his pay.

Peek, entering in this knotty condition of affairs, was the Deus ex machina to disentangle the complication and set the wheels smoothly in motion. No one believed he would come back, and there issued from the lips of all an exclamation of surprise, not unseasoned with oaths to suit the several tastes.

“Cuss me if here ain’t the nigger himself come back!” exclaimed the Colonel. “Wall, Peek, I didn’t reckon you was gwine to keep yer word, and it made me swar some to see how I’d been chiselled fust out of my revolver and then out of my nigger, by a damned Yankee policeman. But here you air, and we’ll fix things right off, so’s to be ready for the next Philadelphy train, if so be yer’ll go without any fuss.”

“Yes, I’ll go, Colonel,” said Peek, “but you’ll have an officer to see I don’t escape from the cars.”

“Thar’s seventy-five dollars expense, blast yer!” exclaimed the Colonel. “Yes, be Gawd! I’ve got to pay this man for goin’ to Cincinnati and back. O, but old Hawks will take your damned hide off when we git you back in Texas,—sure!”

Peek, to serve some purpose of his own, here dropped his dignity entirely, and assumed the manner and language of the careless, rollicking plantation nigger. “Yah! yah!” laughed he. “Wall, look a-he-ah, Kunnle Delancy Hyde. Les make a trade,—we two,—and git rid of the policeman altogedder. I can sabe yer fifty dollars, shoo-er-r-r, Kunnle Delancy Hyde, if you’ll do as how dis nigger tells yer to.”

“How’ll yer do it, Peek?” asked the Colonel, much pacified by the slave’s repetition of his entire name and title.

“I’ll promise to be a good nigger all the way to Cincinnati, and not try to run away,—no, not wunst,—if you’ll pay me twenty-five dollars.”

“Will yer sign to that, Peek, and put in, ‘So help me Gawd’?” asked the Colonel.

Peek started, and looked sharply at Hyde; and then quietly replied, “Yes, I’ll do it, if you’ll gib me the money to do with as I choose; but you must agree to le’m me write a letter, and put it in the post-office afore we leeb.”

The Colonel considered the matter a moment, then turned to Charlton, and said, “Draw up an agreement, and let the nigger sign it, and be sure and put in, ‘So help me Gawd.’”

The arrangement was speedily concluded. The witnesses and the officers were paid off. Charlton received his fifty dollars and Peek his twenty-five. The slave then asked for pen, ink, and paper, and placed five cents on the table as payment. In two minutes he finished a letter to Flora, and enclosed it with the money in an envelope, on which he wrote an address. Charlton tried hard to get a sight of it, but Peek did not give him a chance to do this.

The Colonel and Peek then walked to the post-office, where the slave deposited his letter; after which they passed over to Jersey City in the ferry-boat, and took the train to Philadelphia.

As for Charlton, no sooner had his company left him, than he seized his hat, locked up his office, and hurried to Greenwich Street, where he proceeded to examine the lodgings vacated by Peek. He found Mrs. Petticum engaged in collecting into baskets the various articles abandoned to her by the negroes,—old dusters, a hod of charcoal, kindling-wood, loaves of bread, and small collections of groceries, sufficient for the family for a week. Mrs. Petticum appeared to have been weeping, for she raised her apron and wiped her eyes as Charlton came in.

“Well, have they gone?” asked he.

“Yes, sir, and the wuss for me!” said the old woman.

Charlton took his cue at once, and replied: “They were excellent people, and I’m sorry they’ve gone. What was the matter? Were the slave-catchers after them?”

“I don’t know,” sighed Petticum; “I shouldn’t wonder. Poor Flora! That was all she worried about. I’d like to have got my hands in the hair of the man that would have carried her off. Where’ll you find the white folks better and decenter than they was?”

“Not in New York, ma’am,” said Charlton, stealthily looking about the room, examining every article of furniture, and opening the drawers.

“The furniture belongs to Mr. Craig; but all in the drawers is mine,” said the old woman, not favorably impressed by Charlton’s inquisitiveness.

“O, it’s all right,” replied Charlton; “I didn’t know but I could be of some help. You’ve no idea where they went to?”

“They didn’t tell me, and if I knowed, I shouldn’t tell you, without I knowed they wanted me to.”

“O, it’s no sort of consequence. I’m a particular friend, that’s all,” said Charlton. “Did you notice the carriage they went off in?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Could you tell me the number?”

“No, I couldn’t.”

Seeing an old handkerchief in one of the baskets, Charlton took it out, and looked at the mark. He could get nothing from that; so he threw it back. An old shoe lay swept in a corner. He took it up. Stamped on the inner sole were the words, “J. Darling, Ladies’ Shoes, Vicksburg.” Charlton copied the inscription in his memorandum-book before putting the shoe back where he had found it. The Sun newspaper lay on the floor. Taking it up, he found that an advertisement had been cut out. Selecting an opportunity when Mrs. Petticum was not looking, he thrust the paper in his pocket.

And then, after examining an old stove-funnel, he went out.

“He’s no gentleman, anyhow,” said Mrs. Petticum; “and I don’t believe he ever was a friend of the Jacobses.”