A call to halt was answered by so vigorous a charge and such effective use of the walking sticks that two of the challengers soon lay upon the ground and the others beat a hasty retreat. Taking advantage of circumstances the little train switched, and under the pressure of a full head of steam reached the “Old Tannery” station near Albion before daylight.
The conductor was now on strange ground, but knowing there was an agent in the vicinity named Low, he hunted him up and received such information as enabled them to make a little clump of hemlocks on the bank of a ravine not far from the residence of Elijah Drury, of Girard, the following night.
Farmer Drury was a stalwart, standing little less than six feet in height, always ready for any good word and work, and had been for many years engaged in the _transportation_ business. Always wary, however, he was not to be deceived when, in the morning, our bewhiskered conductor presented himself and asked for something to eat.
“O yes,” said Mr. Drury, “I can always furnish a man, though a stranger, something with which to satisfy hunger.”
“But I want something also for a friend.”
“I mean that I have a friend down yonder in the thicket, who is both weary and hungry.”
“Well, it is my opinion that you are a horse thief.”
“Will you come down and see the last nag I trotted off?”
Together the two men went down to the little thicket, and there the Elder not only exhibited the passenger, but to remove all suspicions, showed him the scars that indicated the floggings to which the slave had been subjected, a sight which Mr. Drury often afterwards said came very near making him swear outright. Thus commenced a friendship between the two men long continued and fraught with many acts attesting the generous nature of both.
When evening came, time being precious, our conductor drew the reins over Mr. Drury’s best roadsters, and about midnight deposited his passenger at the doorway of an old-fashioned house, with gable to the street, wing projecting northward, and a large elm tree nearly in front, standing on Federal Hill, in what is now South Erie, and for the first time XXX greeted officially a most redoubtable Keystone agent, known as the “Doctor,” in those days one of Erie’s well-known characters. He had gained some knowledge of herbs and roots, which he learned to apply medicinally, thus acquiring his appellation, which he wore with great satisfaction, soon coming to look upon all mere “book doctors” in great contempt. He was accustomed to drive about town with an old brown horse attached to a kind of carryall vehicle; always took his whisky straight and in full allopathic doses, though he affected to despise the practice generally, and prided himself on being the most _reliable agent_ in Erie county.