he did come to see his wife. It would have been very strange if he did not. I hope that by this time the man is hundreds of miles away. He was brutally treated by a brutal master, who, I believe, deliberately set to work to make him run away, so that he could hunt him down and punish him. I presume, sir, you do not wish to search this house, and you do not suppose that the man is hidden here. As to the slave-huts and the plantation, you can, of course, search them thoroughly; but as it is now more than a fortnight since the man escaped, it is not likely you will find him hiding within a few miles of his master's plantation."
So saying she went into the house and shut the door behind her.
Mr. Jackson ground his teeth with rage, but the sheriff rode off toward the slave-huts without a word. The position of Mrs. Wingfield of the Orangery, connected as she was with half the old families of Virginia, and herself a large slave-owner, was beyond suspicion, and no one would venture to suggest that such a lady could have the smallest sympathy for a runaway slave.
"She was down upon you pretty hot, Mr. Jackson," the sheriff said as they rode off. "You don't seem to be in her good books." Jackson muttered an imprecation.
"It is certainly odd," the sheriff went on, "after what you were telling me about her son pitching into Andrew over flogging this very slave, that she should go and buy his wife. Still, that's a very different thing from hiding a runaway. I dare say that, as she says, the fellow came here to see his wife when he first ran away; but I don't think you will find him anywhere about here now. It's pretty certain from what we hear that he hasn't made for the North, and where the fellow can be hiding I can't think. Still the woods about this country are mighty big, and the fellow can go out on to the farms and pick corn and keep himself going for a long time. Still, he's sure to be brought up sooner or later."
A thorough search was made of the slave-huts, and the slaves were closely questioned, but all denied any knowledge of the runaway. Dan escaped questioning, as he had taken up Vincent's horse to the house in readiness for him to start as soon as he had finished breakfast.
All day the searchers rode about the plantation examining every clump of bushes, and assuring themselves that none of them had been used as a place of refuge for the runaway.
"It's no good, Mr. Jackson," the sheriff said at last. "The man may have been here; he ain't here now. The only place we haven't; searched is the house, and you may be quite sure the slaves dare not conceal him there. Too many would get to know it. No, sir, he's made a bolt of it, and you will have to wait now till he is caught by chance, or shot by some farmer or other in the act of stealing."
"I would lay a thousand dollars," Andrew Jackson exclaimed passionately, "that young Wingfield knows something about his whereabouts, and has lent him a hand!"
"Well, I should advise you to keep your mouth shut about it till you get some positive proof," the sheriff said dryly. "I tell you it's no joke to accuse a member of a family like the Wingfields of helping runaway slaves to escape."
"I will bide my time," the planter said. "You said that some day you would lay hands on Tony dead or alive. You see if some day I don't lay hands on young Wingfield."
"Well, it seems, Mr. Jackson," the sheriff remarked with a sneer, for he was out of temper at the ill success of the day's work, "that he has already laid hands on your son. It seems to me quite as likely that he will lay hands on you as you on him."
Two days afterward as Vincent was riding through the streets of Richmond he saw to his surprise Andrew Jackson in close conversation with Jonas Pearson.
"I wonder what those two fellows are talking about?" he said to himself. "I expect Jackson is trying to pump Pearson as to the doings at the Orangery. I don't like that fellow, and never shall, and he is just the sort of man to do one a bad turn if he had the chance. However, as I have never spoken to him about that affair from beginning to end, I don't see that he can do any mischief if he wants to."
Andrew Jackson, however, had obtained information which he considered valuable. He learned that Vincent had been away in a boat for five days, and that his mother had been very uneasy about him. He also learned that the boat was one belonging to Mr. Furniss, and that it was only quite lately that Vincent had taken to going out sailing.
After considerable trouble he succeeded in getting at one of the slaves upon Mr. Furniss' plantation. But he could only learn from him that Vincent had been unaccompanied when he went out in the boat either by young Furniss or by any of the plantation hands; that he had taken with him only his own slave, and had come and gone as he chose, taking out and fastening up the boat himself, so that no one could say when he had gone out, except that his horse was put up at the stables. The slave said that certainly the horse had only stood there on two or three occasions, and then only for a few hours, and that unless Mr. Wingfield had walked over he could never have had the boat out all night, as the horse certainly had not stood all night in the stables.
Andrew Jackson talked the matter over with his son, and both agreed that Vincent's conduct was suspicious. His own people said he had been away for five days in the boat. The people at Furniss' knew nothing about this, and therefore there must be some mystery about it, and they doubted not that that mystery was connected with the runaway slave, and they guessed that he had either taken Tony and landed him near the mouth of the York River on the northern shore, or that he had put him on board a ship. They agreed, however, that whatever their suspicions, they had not sufficient grounds for openly accusing Vincent of aiding their runaway.
CHAPTER V. SECESSION
While Vincent had been occupied with the affairs of Tony and his wife, public events had moved forward rapidly. The South Carolina Convention met in the third week in December, and on the 20th of that month the Ordinance of Secession was passed. On the 10th of January, three days after Vincent returned home from his expedition, Florida followed the example of South Carolina and seceded. Alabama and Mississippi passed the Ordinance of Secession on the following day; Georgia on the 18th, Louisiana on the 23d, and Texas on the 1st of February.
In all these States the Ordinance of Session was received with great rejoicing: bonfires were lit, the towns illuminated, and the militia paraded the streets, and in many cases the Federal arsenals were seized and the Federal forts occupied by the State troops. In the meantime the Northern Slave States, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, remained irresolute. The general feeling was strongly in favor of their Southern brethren; but they were anxious for peace, and for a compromise being arrived at. Whether the North would agree to admit the constitutional rights of secession, or whether it would use force to compel the Seceding States to remain in the Union, was still uncertain; but the idea of a civil war was so terrible a one that the general belief was that some arrangement to allow the States to go their own way would probably be arrived at.
For the time the idea of Vincent going to West Point was abandoned. Among his acquaintances were several young men who were already at West Point, and very few of these returned to the academy. The feeling there was very strongly on the side of secession. A great majority of the students came from the Southern States, as while the sons of the Northern men went principally into trade and commerce, the Southern planters sent their sons into the army, and a great proportion of the officers of the army and navy were Southerners.
As the professors at West Point were all military men, the feeling among them, as well as among the students, was in favor of State rights; they considering that, according to the constitution, their allegiance was due first to the States of which they were natives, and in the second place to the Union. Thus, then, many of the professors who were natives of the seven States which had seceded resigned their appointments, and returned home to occupy themselves in drilling the militia and the levies, who were at once called to arms.
Still all hoped that peace would be preserved, until on the 11th of April General Beauregard, who commanded the troops of South Carolina, summoned Major Anderson, who was in command of the Federal troops in Fort Sumter, to surrender, and on his refusal opened fire upon the fort on the following day.
On the 13th, the barracks of the fort being set on fire, and Major Anderson seeing the hopelessness of a prolonged resistance, surrendered. The effect of the news throughout the United States was tremendous, and Mr. Lincoln at once called out 75,000 men of the militia