forehead, thick, full beard and a wonderful, penetrating voice whose
tones once heard were never forgotten, his arrival was always received
with shouts by the Conwell boys. Had he not lived in the West and
fought real Indians! What surer "open sesame" is there to a boy's
heart? He was not so enrapt in his one great project, but that he
could go out to the barn and pitch down hay from the mow with Russell,
or tell him wonderful stories of the great West where he had lived as
a boy, and of the wilderness through which he had tramped as a mere
child when he cared for his father's cattle. Russell was entirely too
young to grasp the meaning of the earnest discussions that went on
about the fireplace of which this Spartan was then the centre. But in
later years their meaning came to him with a peculiar significance. A
light seemed to be shed on the horrors of slavery as if the voice of
his childhood's friend were calling from the grave in impassioned
tones, to aid the cause for which he had given his life.

Martin Conwell, progressive, aggressive, was not a man to let his
deeds lag behind his words. Such help as he could, he lent the
cause of the oppressed. He made his home one of the stations of the
"Underground Railway," as the road to freedom for escaping slaves was
called. Many a time in the dead of night, awakened by the noise of a
wagon, Russell would steal to the little attic window, to see in the
light of the lantern, a trembling black man, looking fearfully this
way and that for pursuers, being hurried into the barn. Back to bed
went Russell, where his imagination pictured all manner of horrible
cruelties the slaves were suffering until the childish heart was near
to bursting with sympathy for them and with fiery indignation at the
injustice that brought them to this pitiful state. Not often did he
see them, but sometimes childish curiosity was too strong and he
searched out the cowering fugitive in the barn, and if the runaway