Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/125

 per's Ferry, leaving John Henry Kagi in charge of the business at Chambersburg. Brown had had his lieutenant, John E. Cook, living in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry for some time, spying out the ground. The young man had blended himself so thoroughly with the life of the people that he had married a Virginian's daughter. But he left her, and came to John Brown.

Brown and his sons walked about the hilly farming country on the northern side of the Potomac, opposite Harper's Ferry, prospecting for a base of operations. They were Isaac Smith and his two sons; they had been farmers in northern New York, but the frosts there cut off their crops till they were sick of it. They had also made a business of buying up fat cattle and driving them into New York. They thought they could combine this business with a little farming in this favorable region. The Maryland country people, simple-hearted