Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/450

 424 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1859,

for invading the South, and consult him about some moral questions that troubled his mind. His companion listened gravely, and hurried the horse towards Acton. Merriam grew more positive and suspicious, &quot; Perhaps you are Mr. Emerson ; you look somewhat like him.&quot; l &quot; No, I am not,&quot; said Thoreau, and drove steadily away from Concord. &quot; Well, then, I am going back,&quot; said the youth, and flung himself out of the wagon. How Thoreau got him in again, he never told me ; but I suspected some judicious force, accompanying the grave persuasive speech natural to our friend. At any rate, he took his man to Acton, saw him safe on the train, and reported to me that &quot; Mr. Lockwood had taken passage for Canada,&quot; where he arrived that night. Nothing more passed between us until, more than two years after, he inquired one day, in his last illness, who my fugitive was. Mer riam was then out of danger in that way, and had been for months a soldier in the Union army, where he died. I therefore said that &quot; Lockwood &quot; was the grandson of his mother s old friend, Francis Jackson, and had escaped from Maryland. In return he gave me the odd incidents of their drive, and mentioned that he

1 See Tkoreau s Autumn, p. 331. Merriam mentioned Tho- reau s name to him, but never guessed who his companion