Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/415

 her, and being set on shore by the boat, came up by land; and late that same evening he arrived at a retired and quiet house in the suburbs, indicated in the letter, at which Colter had procured lodgings for myself and Cassy.

The precaution we had taken was fortunate indeed. Mr Grip Curtis, as we afterwards found out, had employed some agent in New York to watch Montgomery's movements, and being informed of the vessel in which he came, soon after Montgomery had left, he boarded her, with a gang of assistants, on purpose to seize him.

My son, I have thee too! Snatched from the grasp, — saved, for the moment at least, from the already purchased cowhide of an infuriated and vindictive scoundrel, claiming to own thee! — Claiming to own my son, my boy, my child! no longer, as I left him, a prattling infant, but now full-grown in figure, features, every youthful grace and manly beauty, fit to compare with any body's son!

Never for me can the high ecstasy again be equalled of that moment in which I pressed my long lost boy to my bosom! But for his youthful heart, how choked with agony the pleasure of this, to me so joyous meeting! What was it to find even a father, whom, though he had heard so often of him from his mother, he had no personal remembrance of, when at the same time he learnt the dreadful situation of Eliza, his playmate, his girl-friend and confidant, his lover now and promised wife!

How the blood mantled into his cheeks! How his dark eyes — his mother's, but without their downeast mildness — flashed fire at the thought of her danger and distress! It was with much difficulty that we detained him for a moment; and that only by assurances that Colter already had spies about the house, so that if Eliza were removed, we should be able to trace her. He knew, he said, Mr Gilmore's house, and the adjoining premises, thoroughly. He knew also the servants in the family, having been, as