Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/425

 

very next morning, by Colter's assistance, kind and zealous to the last, we were on a steamboat bound up the river, in which we reached Pittsburg without accident or adventure. Thence we crossed the mountains to Baltimore, and hastening to New York, took passage in one of the Liverpool packets, feeling no security, night nor day, till the good, blue, deep waier of the ocean at length rolled beneath us; nor indeed hardly then, so long as the significant stripes of the American flag waved above our heads.

When we touched the British shore we felt safe. Thank God, there is a land that impartially shelters fugitives alike from European and from American tyranny — Hungarian exiles and American slaves!

Before leaving New Orleans, Eliza had executed a power of attorney to Mr Colter, — to whom the copy of Mr Curtis's will, intrusted to Montgomery, was delivered, — to proceed under it at law for the recovery of her share of her father's inheritance, with an agreement for an equal division between them of whatever might be got.

Colter encountered all the obstacles which the ractised chicanery of Gilmore could place in his way; but he entered into the contest with great spirit; indeed, it seemed to have for him all the excitement of the games to which he was accustomed. He studied the law himself, the better to push it; and whether or not his experience in his former profession was any help to him in his new one, he presently made himself known as a very shrewd and managing member of the bar. Pursuing Gilmore up and down, through every quirk and turning, to aid in which we sent occasional supplies of money, he finally established the validity of the will, and after a contest of five years, remitted to Eliza her half of the proceeds, having well earned the other half for himself. He