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 way, the negroes being met now and then with demonstrations of welcome and rejoicing, but often with cold reprobation. He reached Chatham, Canada, in March, 1859, with all his fugitives alive and well. Then he went to Ohio, and at Cleveland sold his captured Missouri horses and mules at public sale, "warning the purchasers," Mr. Sanborn says, "that there might be a defect in the title."

He made sure that his Virginia stores were safe. His son John had kept the two hundred rifles and other arms and munitions, first in a furniture warehouse at Cherry Valley, Ohio, covered over with ready-made coffins, and then, upon an alarm, in an abolitionist farmer's bam. In the early summer of 1859 John Brown, Jr., shipped themas "hardware" to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, which was only forty-five miles from Harper's Ferry, Virginia. The curtain was about to rise on the last act of the tragedy.