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 sponded with alacrity. In less than ten minutes the company had saddled, packed, mounted, and was on the way to Topeka. Brown refused to follow the road, but insisted on taking a straight course across the country, guided only by the stars; and they had a rough time of it, floundering in the thickets and crossing streams.

Brown carried his wounded son-in-law, Henry Thompson, into Iowa, to be taken care of, and in August returned to the Kansas war-path again, doing some sharp skirmishing, at first in company with and under the leadership of James H. Lane. Brown commanded the "Kansas Cavalry" in these encounters. On the 30th of August Brown's son Frederick was shot and killed, apparently in cold blood, by a Pro-slavery preacher named White. The sort of life Brown was leading now, and the work he was doing, is told well in a letter which he wrote from Lawrence to