All was uncertainty; but it was understood by all that several of the negroes were to go with the family and the rest to remain here. Griffith had decided to take to his new home Jerry and his wife, Ellen, and the twins; Mammy and Judy, and, if possible, Sally and John. It was here, and now, that he learned the inhospitality of the free states to the freed negroes.
"I intend to take several of them with, me and----"
"Can't do it," broke in the attorney, "Indiana's a free state."
"Well, I can take'em along and _hire_ 'em, I reckon."
"I said you couldn't take'em along and hire em.
"I'd like to know the reason for that. I--"
Griffith drew his hand across his face as if he had lost his power to think.
"You can't take _any_ of'em to Indiana, I tell you," said the attorney insistently, and Griffith seemed dazed. Then he began again: "Can't take them!" he exclaimed, in utter dismay.
"That's what I said twice--can't take them--none of them."
"But I shall pay them wages! Surely I can take my own choice of servants into my own household if they are free and I pay them wages I Surely--"
"Surely you _cannot_, I tell you," said the attorney, and added dryly, "not unless you are particularly anxious to run up against the law pretty hard." He reached up and took down a leather-bound volume. He turned the leaves slowly, and Griffith and Katherine looked at each other in dismay. "There it is in black and white. Not a mere law, either--sometimes you can evade a law, if you are willing to risk it; but from the way you both feel about leaving those two free niggers in Virginia, I guess you won't be very good subjects for that sort of thing--thirteenth article of the constitution of the State itself." He drew a pencil mark along one side of the paragraph as Griffith read. "Oh! you'll find these free states have got mighty little use for niggers. Came here from one of'em myself. Free or not free, they don't want 'em. You see," he said, slowly drawing a line down the other side of the page, "they prohibit you from giving employment to one! Don't propose to have free nigger competition with their white labor. Can't blame 'em." He shrugged his shoulders.
Griffith began to protest. "But I have read--I thought--"